“The big question is whether the Saudis will put oil in storage and wait to ride this out; and if not, everyone is going to see less money coming in,” said Mr. Lynch, who has advised OPEC in the past. “For the big guys like Exxon Mobil and Chevron, it's not a big deal. But for the small guys, they are going to be hurting, and you could see the number of bankruptcies rise sharply in the next few weeks.”

Forty-two oil and gas companies filed for bankruptcy protection in North America last year; since oil prices plummeted in 2015, there have been 208 bankruptcy filings by producers, involving roughly $122 billion in aggregate debt, according to the Haynes and Boone law firm.

Oil prices have fallen despite the loss of up to one million barrels a day of Libyan exports because of political turmoil there. A hastily convened meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia, a possible prelude to a production cut, helped to stem the price slide, perhaps only temporarily.

American oil companies had already tightened their budgets last year, with roughly 14,000 of 750,000 employees in the United States losing their jobs. Over the last week, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron reported disappointing earnings because of low oil and gas prices and narrow profit margins.

A prolonged price collapse between 2014 and 2017 forced American oil and gas companies to lay off over 160,000 workers, and roughly 100,000 in Texas alone.

S&P Global Platts, the energy analytics firm, said the virus could shave global oil demand by as much as 4 percent, or 4.1 million barrels a day, in February. For the full year, the firm projects an average daily fall in global demand of 290,000 to one million barrels.

“There’s still too much uncertainty on the virus spread and its consequences on the economy,” said Claudio Galimberti, head of demand and refining analytics at S&P Global Platts.