Change is hard. This bromide—so beloved by the uninspiring TED speaker and corporate hatchet man alike—is both obvious and trite. It’s also true. Adapting to the changes that inevitably appear in business and life is difficult. Indeed, if more businesspeople were better at this task, many restructuring professionals would have to find another line of work. That our industry remains as relevant as ever demonstrates just how poorly many people perform when forced to manage change in their businesses and industries.

In recent years, extraordinary change has typified the energy sector—the focus of this month’s issue of the Journal of Corporate Renewal. Waves of bankruptcies and restructurings crashed over the industry beginning in 2015-2016, as falling oil and gas prices forced many oilfield service companies and independent exploration-and-production firms to restructure or go out of business.

This period of uncertainty swelled to a crescendo in 2020, as government-imposed lockdowns and the pandemic-driven reduction in global economic activity drove U.S. bankruptcy filings by large companies (i.e., more than $100 million in assets) to their highest level since 2009. As the price of NYMEX West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude bottomed out at under $17 per barrel in mid-April 2020, scores of energy companies filed. By one estimate, 2020 saw 107 bankruptcies by oil and gas-related companies alone—a number comparable to the depths of the 2016 crisis.

Then, in a development that few foresaw, these waves receded in 2021. According to Haynes & Boone, a Texas-based law firm that has been tracking oil and gas bankruptcies since 2015, the United States saw only 56 oil and gas cases in 2021, a drop of approximately 48% from 2020. Surging commodity prices—NYMEX’s WTI crude stood at $93.10 per barrel as of February 11, 2022—no doubt had much to do with this reversal of fortune. The likelihood of continued high, or even higher, prices in 2022 suggests that this year will probably look like the last, with few workouts or restructurings and even fewer bankruptcies. The energy industry’s waters, so turbulent in the recent past, appear calm for now.

And yet, trouble could be looming on the horizon. In his article, Dillon Zwick considers the threat that climate change policies and reduced capital investment, among other things, pose to the industry. Similarly, two separate pieces, one by Michael Jacobs and Matthew Daffurn and another by Michael Pluta—examine how the high commodity prices so beneficial to energy producers could spell disaster for energy suppliers in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Other challenges considered in this issue include Brad Knapp’s examination of the possible loss of a legal strategy popular with troubled energy companies—the so-called “Texas Two-Step”—and an article by David Curry and Doug Brickley about the complications presented by multiparty negotiations when the parties lack the resources to make negotiating worthwhile. Arrayed against all this doom and gloom, though, is a detailed appraisal of three loan programs available from the U.S. Department of Energy. As Kathleen Sifer and Frances Nwachuku note, these programs are designed to help energy companies avoid the “Valley of Death” and, ultimately, to prosper.

This month’s JCR provides helpful information and analysis for restructuring professionals who remain interested in the energy sector during this relatively quiescent period. Wrestling with these issues now, when times are good, I think, represents the best strategy for managing and adapting to the billows of change that will one day roll back over the industry when the skies darken again. I hope that you agree and find the articles as valuable as I did.