UPDATE 1-SEC charges laywer in SemGroup insider trades

* SEC charges lawyer with insider trading

* Lawyer agrees to pay double the avoided loss

NEW YORK, April 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday it charged an Oklahoma lawyer with insider trading for selling shares of SemGroup Energy Partners LP (SGLP.PK) last year.

The lawyer, Matthew J. Browne, 56, worked for a law firm based in Tulsa whose client was a major lender to SemGroup Energy Partners LP's parent company, SemGroup LP, which sank into bankruptcy in July 2008.

Browne sold his 5,200 shares in SemGroup Energy Partners when he learned its parent was suffering from liquidity problems and that his law firm's client had made a $50 million margin call on it.

Under a settlement with the SEC, Browne agreed to pay double the loss of $81,773 that he would have suffered had he held the stock until SemGroup announced on July 18 it was having financial trouble, the agency said in a statement.

SemGroup LP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 22 after losing $3.2 billion trading energy futures and options.

Browne is cooperating with the SEC, David Peavler, assistant director in the SEC's Fort Worth office said, although he declined to comment on the nature of the issues it was probing around the SemGroup bankruptcy.

He also declined to name the SemGroup lender for whom Browne's firm worked.

In a report to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court earlier this month, former FBI director Louis Freeh blamed former SemGroup CEO Thomas Kivisto and other top executives for hiding SemGroup's finanical problems and mismanaging its energy trading as the cause of its bankruptcy. (Reporting by Matt Daily and Emily Chasan; Editing by Andre Grenon)