Quote:
Originally Posted by island911
Past 3 years, CA/US avg / Austin TX ...
Wow, gas was $1.45 in Austin in April of 2020 |
Wow, May 11th, 2020
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2020/05/11/369209/more-oil-and-gas-bankruptcies-could-be-on-the-way/
Houston oil and gas companies are reporting billions in losses for the first quarter of 2020, and the next few months are not looking much better. As Texas oil continues to hover around $20-25 per barrel, companies are slashing budgets and cutting workers.
Houston-based Diamond Offshore Drilling has already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid the conoronavirus pandemic. And experts who watch the industry say more bankruptcies are on the way.
Charlie Beckham specializes in oil and gas bankruptcies at Haynes and Boone in Houston. He spoke with energy reporter Kyra Buckley about why companies are vulnerable during the oil price crash.
Where you saw a lot of the interest in the oil and gas industry over the last 10 years was from investors who flooded money into the only gas industry generally on a junior basis — meaning they loaned money to oil and gas companies at generally low interest rates with an expectation that there was such tremendous cash flow in the oil and gas industry that it would be easy for companies to repay those loans on a timely basis. That simply has not happened.
Instead, you’ve had what we’ve seen the last month of oil going negative, which was an anomaly. But still oil is low today, in the $20s, and it’s simply not high enough to repay the billions of dollars of debt that was invested in the industry over the last decade.