{"id":1319705,"date":"2020-04-29T23:16:01","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T05:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/covids-killing-the-oil-industry-and-it-may-not-come-back\/"},"modified":"2020-04-29T23:16:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T05:16:01","slug":"covids-killing-the-oil-industry-and-it-may-not-come-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/covids-killing-the-oil-industry-and-it-may-not-come-back\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID\u2019s killing the oil industry, and it may not come back"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In early January \u2014 which seems like a lifetime ago in the age of COVID-19 \u2014 President Donald J. Trump crowed about the United States\u2019 new status as a net-exporter of petroleum. He claimed that the robust American oil industry, freed from the shackles of environmental regulations, had achieved energy dominance and thus liberated the nation from the yoke of Middle Eastern crude.<\/p>\n

Just weeks later the novel coronavirus would lay waste to oil markets, forcing Trump to beg Saudi Arabia to step in and save this nation\u2019s beleaguered oil industry. Energy independence, it turns out, was an illusion, and the so-called shale revolution was built upon a shaky foundation that was poised to collapse even before the pandemic ravaged the globe.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to near zero and otherwise encouraged investment in high-risk ventures. That opened up a gusher of easy credit for, among other enterprises, oil and gas companies looking to drill shale formations that new drilling techniques had made accessible.<\/p>\n

Companies dived into debt to finance thousands of new, multi-million-dollar \u201cfracked\u201d wells, sparking a drilling boom of unprecedented scale that lasted from 2009 to 2014, busted, and then came back in a limited way in recent years.<\/p>\n

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