One after the other the big boys of oil delivered bad news of falling production, falling profits, or both.
Blame was apportioned to rising costs, lower prices and the need to book asset value write-offs.
Because the pattern was so consistently bad, a few people suggested that perhaps that management had taken its eye off the profit ball because the oil industry had become over-excited by the technology of shale cracking and the promise of increased production.
The biggest component of the book losses came from shale assets acquired in the North American stampede of a few years ago. Shell, for example, took a $US2.1 billion impairment charge as it struggled to generate earnings from oil and gas in shale.
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total and BP also all chipped in with their tales of weaker earnings and higher costs.
From an Australian perspective the next event to watch will be the August 20 profit statement from the country's biggest oil and gas producer, BHP Billiton.
While not flagged by financial commentators it is possible BHP Billiton will book a fresh asset-value write-down on its US shale assets despite copping $2.84 billion write-down on its Fayetteville dry shale-gas assets last year.
The key point about BHP Billiton is what its petroleum boss Tim Cutt thinks of the shale business, which was the brainchild of the recently-departed head of the division, Mike Yeager.
It is likely Cutt will persist with Yeager's vision of a shale-driven BHP Billiton Petroleum. However, it is also conceivable that he, and the chief executive of the parent company, Andrew Mackenzie, will plot a different course and take the opportunity to make even deeper cuts in the value of the shale assets.
Cutting early in your rein as a company boss is always a good idea because the blame for the book loss can be easily sheeted home to the man no longer there.
BHP Billiton's profit (and potential book losses) is a game for later in the month. The immediate issue today is what some critics are seeing as signs of a fluttering shale boom just as the US government talks up the industry as the country's ticket to escape reliance on imported liquid fuel.
Shell, as mentioned, is having a rough time in the North American shale patch and is planning to reduce its exposure to the sector after incurring that $US2.1 billion write-down, which helped slash its profit for the June quarter by 60% to $US2.39 billion.
So bad is the performance of shale assets that Shell has dropped its target of producing four million barrels of oil equivalent by 2018 to a more realistic 3 million a day, which is the same as the present output.
Jason Kenney, an oil industry analyst with the Spanish bank, Santander, described Shell's performance as "spending more and growing less" - a variation of profitless prosperity.
Chevron's second quarter result was almost as bad as Shell with net income falling from $US7.2 billion to $US5.4 billion thanks to a slide in revenue from $US63 billion to $US57 billion.
ExxonMobil's June quarter performance was a classic in profitless prosperity as overall oil equivalent production slipped by just 1.9% while profit fell 25% to $US6.3 billion.
Critics have been quick to seize on the latest reports and question whether management has fallen for the oldest trick in the resource-company handbook of chasing growth at the expense of profit.
Chevron, for example, said it spent $US9.5 billion on project development work in the latest quarter. That was $US1 billion more than it generated in cash - and that was the second consecutive quarter that it performed that trick.
ExxonMobil did much the same, spending $US10.2 billion on projects, an outlay that was $US2.2 billion more than the cash generated.
It is possible the cash outlays reflected a period when it was necessary to invest in order to earn future profits though that argument is dependent on oil and gas prices being high enough to generate profits, which might not be the case in extracting North American gas from shale.
What the latest financial numbers expose is the dark side of the shale boom, which has delivered dramatically higher oil and gas reserves for North America - and alarmingly sluggish profit flows.
The end result of this situation will be a decline in field work, fewer drill rigs turning, and fewer people employed.
Profitless prosperity, as will soon be seen, is not a happy time in the oil patch.
