(DNAINFO) Nadia Prupis, May 4, 2016 — The bankruptcy wave hitting U.S. fossil fuel companies is evoking comparisons with the dot-com burst more than a decade ago, as the number of oil companies filing for creditor protection hit 59 this week, Reuters reports—a number that’s “closing in on the staggering 68 filings seen during the depths of the telecom bust of 2002 and 2003.”
As the filings pile up, experts say the industry collapse has not even hit its midway point. Charles Gibbs, a restructuring partner at the Texas-based firm Akin Gump, told Reuters reporters Ernest Scheyder and Terry Wade that he expects to see more bankruptcies in the second fiscal quarter of the year.
And while neither of those crises hit the same levels as the housing or economic collapse that began in 2007, losses for energy investors “are significant,” they report. “It remains unclear how long it will take to get through the worst of the declines, and who will be left standing when it is over.”