An Australian energy company, Red Fork Energy, has quietly fallen, a victim of the recent collapse in oil prices. While this company's home is an entire hemisphere away, its demise does indeed make a sound that will be heard in the United States.
Red Fork is a shale driller in the US and produces oil and gas. It is completely exposed to the US shale industry, an industry that happens to be unviable with the price of oil under $100 per barrel.
While the collapse of a foreign oil company may not unleash a river of tears from those who oppose shale drilling in the US, an examination of this company's finances, and many like it, deserves more than an uttered "good riddance."
Most players in the shale gas industry are heavily in debt.
"Their costs of production are a bit higher, they've only been in the game really for a few years so their debt structure is a little bit higher than other companies, more mature companies," he said.
"Those two things are really putting pressure on them so with the price where it is they're just not making any margin."
Red Fork's major lender,
Guggenheim Corporate Funding, happens to be an American company, based in New York.
This article on Red Fork's bankruptcy lays out a major cause for concern:
"... if OPEC continues to flood the market, other shale gas producers were also at risk of collapse.
"So, now the price of oil is down where it is, the shale gas producers might find they are unable to service their debt, so there would be a lot of non-performing loans," Mr Strachan said.
"By some reports, $15 trillion of funds has been lent to this business, so it may well be in fact that it's not the oil companies that are in trouble, it's the banks.
In essence, what we have now is an already under-regulated shale drilling industry, highly leveraged with trillions of dollars in debt, facing a future ruled by the whims and desires of OPEC, which would prefer that it just die, and the demands of bankers. This is a formula for disaster.