While the overall oil and natural gas depression has now extended more than two-and-a-half years, the negative impact of this unanticipated downdraft is generating alarm among many PVF distributors in the large swath of states depending on energy-oriented business growth and maintenance.
While a similar unexpected downturn in the early 1980s was sharp but relatively short, it put out of business Grant Supply, the only billion-dollar Texas-based distributor. A few others also succumbed at that time, but the beginnings of a rebound during the President Reagan-administered 1980s and the inflation moderation of the 1990s proved supportive of residential, commercial and industrial construction, maintenance/repair and export growth.