ms-cellanies:

rjzimmerman:

This story is more relevant today than it was on Saturday. Today, the price of a barrel of oil decreased to negative. What does that mean? That the oil producer has to pay the purchaser to buy the oil, and use it or store it. In other words, for a period today (and maybe going further into the week), a barrel of oil produced today has no value. Think about that, as the oil industry generally is losing ground to the renewable energy industry, regardless of the pandemic.

Excerpt from this story from DeSmog Blog:

The finances of the oil and gas industry are so dismal that the major banks that have funded the money-losing fracking boom are now exploring taking the unusual step of taking over the oil companies that cannot afford to pay back the banks’ loans.

Reuters reported that banks are exploring the option of seizing oil company assets because the more traditional route of bankruptcy will result in huge losses for the banks — while seizing assets and holding them until oil prices increase would likely minimize those losses.

Buddy Clark of law firm Haynes and Boone explained to Reuters that, “Banks can now believably wield the threat that they will foreclose on the company and its properties if they don’t pay their loan back.”

While banks seizing assets from borrowers who can’t repay loans is common for industries like real estate — especially residential real estate — it is an unusual move for the oil and gas industry. Reuters reported that the last time it happened was during the oil price crash of the late 1980s. In the most recent oil price crash, when oil dropped from prices over $100 a barrel to $40 a barrel, there was a rash of bankruptcies, but the banks did not seize assets.

One difference now is that shale oil companies have continued to increase debt — thanks to loans from the banks — to the point where most of these companies are not viable with low oil prices. As one industry observer recently noted in The New York Times, “This is late ’80s bad.”

One new angle that didn’t exist in the 1980s is a dramatic change in sentiment from parts of the investment community about the viability of the oil industry as an investment. Television investment advisor Jim Cramer of CNBC was saying oil stocks were in the “death knell phase” in January, before oil prices crashed to the current lows and the coronavirus had crushed global oil demand.

Well it couldn’t happen to a MORE DESERVING industry.  If only it would lead to an END TO FRACKING PERMANENTLY.  I’m not gonna hold my breath.