{"id":55345,"date":"2020-10-17T06:35:19","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T11:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55345"},"modified":"2020-10-17T06:35:19","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T11:35:19","slug":"the-great-american-oil-gas-massacre-bankruptcies-hit-new-milestone-as-bigger-companies-let-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55345","title":{"rendered":"The Great American Oil &#038; Gas Massacre: Bankruptcies Hit New Milestone as Bigger Companies Let Go"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2020\/10\/14\/great-american-oil-gas-massacre-bankruptcies-hit-new-milestone-now-bigger-companies-let-go\/\">The Great American Oil &amp; Gas Massacre: Bankruptcies Hit New Milestone as Bigger Companies Let Go<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>The American Oil Boom Was Where Money Went to Die.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The amount of secured and unsecured debts, such as loans and bonds, listed in bankruptcy filings in the third quarter by US oil and gas companies, at $34 billion, pushed the total oil-and-gas bankruptcy debt for 2020 to $89 billion, according to data compiled by law firm\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.haynesboone.com\/publications\/energy-bankruptcy-monitors-and-surveys\">Haynes and Boone<\/a>. And this nine-month total already surpassed the full-year total of oil-bust year 2016.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-64974\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-oil-gas-bankruptcy-filings-2020-Q1-Q3-dollars-by-year.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 394px) 100vw, 394px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-oil-gas-bankruptcy-filings-2020-Q1-Q3-dollars-by-year.png 394w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-oil-gas-bankruptcy-filings-2020-Q1-Q3-dollars-by-year-260x234.png 260w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-oil-gas-bankruptcy-filings-2020-Q1-Q3-dollars-by-year-160x144.png 160w\" alt=\"\" width=\"394\" height=\"355\" \/><\/p>\n<p>These are predominately exploration and production companies (E&amp;P) and oilfield services companies (OFS) but also include some \u201cmidstream\u201d companies (they gather, transport, process, and store oil and natural gas).<\/p>\n<p>In mid-2014, the price of crude-oil benchmark WTI, which had been over $100 a barrel, started plunging. The companies involved in fracking couldn\u2019t even generate positive cash flows at $100 a barrel. And as prices plunged, all heck broke loose. Creditors and equity investors, after drinking the Kool-Aid for years, suddenly got scared, and new money dried up to service the old money. A slew of bankruptcies ensued among the smaller players, reaching a high in 2016. And people thought that was it, the oil bust was over, and new money started pouring back into the sector.<\/p>\n<p>But then came Phase 2 of the Great American Oil-and-Gas Bust in late-2018, with the price of WTI in the futures market eventually\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2020\/04\/20\/holy-wtf-moly-wti-crude-oil-may-contracts-collapse-to-negative-35\/\">collapsing briefly to minus $37 a barrel<\/a>\u00a0in April 2020. In recent weeks, WTI has been hovering around $40 a barrel, at which the US oil industry is still burning millions of barrels of cash per day, so to speak:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-64975\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-WTI-2020-10-14.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 471px) 100vw, 471px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-WTI-2020-10-14.png 471w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-WTI-2020-10-14-260x230.png 260w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/US-WTI-2020-10-14-160x142.png 160w\" alt=\"\" width=\"471\" height=\"417\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The total number of oil-and-gas bankruptcies so far this year, at 88 filings, remains a lot lower than the 141 filings in 2016. Back then, scores of small companies were shaken out. Now the bigger ones with multi-billion-dollar debts are letting go as the crisis is working up the ladder.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Great American Oil &amp; Gas Massacre: Bankruptcies Hit New Milestone as Bigger Companies Let Go The American Oil Boom Was Where Money Went to Die. The amount of secured and unsecured debts, such as loans and bonds, listed in bankruptcy filings in the third quarter by US oil and gas companies, at $34 billion, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[1361,195,1729,3521,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-55345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-bankruptcy","tag-debt","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-oil-bust","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55347,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55345\/revisions\/55347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}