Crude oil prices accelerated their recent downtrend this week. West Texas Intermediate Crude at Cushing Oklahoma, the North American benchmark, has now dropped from high 70s to mid 40s in less than three months.

Prices in more transportation-constrained basins have fared worse. Edmonton Mixed Sweet, for example, is now trading for less than $40 a barrel. WTI Midland is as well, $7 a barrel less than WTI Cushing as swelling Permian Basin output has swamped available pipeline capacity.

Given the pounding we’d already seen in many energy stocks before this selloff, investors can be forgiven for thinking the sector is headed for another 2014-16 crash. This issue is devoted to those concerns.

Our feature article focuses on both the supply side and the demand side, with comparisons to two periods of steeply falling oil prices:

• The Financial Crisis of 2008, a period when global demand fell off a cliff.

• The 2014-16 oil crash, when Saudi Arabia and other traditional producers tried to flush out US shale producers by dramatically increasing output to flood supply and drive down prices.

It’s hard to tell from the volatility of sector stocks. But third quarter earnings season is going well for best in class energy companies up and down the value chain.

A lot of oil and gas in North America is still bottlenecked by transportation constraints. That’s hampering producers in many places, notably the booming Permian Basin. Canada, meanwhile, is in a virtual depression with Western Canada Select recently fetching less than $20 a barrel and natural gas at the AECO hub going for just 48 cents per million BTU.