The number of filings had already started to trend up in 2019 after a drop in prices in Q4 2018, but this year, the U.S. energy industry is setting some grim records as indebted cash-strapped producers face a day of reckoning from the borrowing exuberance of the past years.

So far this year, bankruptcies in the U.S. energy industry have exceeded 20 filings from companies with more than US$50 million in liabilities. This is the highest number of first-half filings for protection from creditors since the first half of 2016, during the previous oil price collapse, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In June alone, seven oil and gas companies filed for Chapter 11, matching the record from the monthly peak in bankruptcy filings set in April 2016.