Thus, as one astute analyst summarized,

The oil and gas industry, from extraction to transportation to refining, is no longer the profitable and financially stable enterprise it long was. Over the past decade, the industry's profits have sagged, revenues and cash flows have withered, bankruptcies have abounded, stock prices have fallen, massive capital investments have been written off as worthless and fossil fuel investors have lost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Needless to say, this lagging investment trend began long before the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the global economy. Thus, over the last decade:

The stock market value of the four largest oil and gas majors plummeted by more than half;
In five of the past seven years the oil and gas industry ranked last among all sectors of the S&P 500, falling to less than 3% of the total market cap of the index compared to 16% a decade ago and 30%a few decades earlier.

Since 2015, industry analysts Hayes and Boone listed nearly 800 exploration and production companies, oilfield services, and midstream oil and gas companies that have filed for bankruptcy, with a debt load of more than $300 billion.

2020 saw $145 billion of write-down of oil reserves and related assets, reflecting the diminishing value of the oil and gas sector.