In the third quarter of this year, U.S. oil and gas companies, loaded with $34 billion in debt, filed for bankruptcy protection. This brings the total oil-and-gas bankruptcy debt for the first three quarters of 2020 to $89 billion; just that nine-month total alone surpasses the full-year total that occurred in any year in U.S. history.
The cumulative debt of all the oil and gas sector companies that have gone bankrupt since 2015, is $297 billion. This has been building in the oil patch bubble for the past five years, significantly before the shutdown due to COVID-19. Just during 2020, the largest oil and gas bankruptcy filings include Diamond Offshore (offshore drilling) with $11.8 billion in debt; McDermott (offshore drilling) with $9.9 billion in debt; Chesapeake (fracking) with $9.2 billion; California Resources (exploration and production) with $6.3 billion in debt; and so on.
