Chesapeake Energy Buys Haynesville Driller Vine Energy for $2.2B

Chesapeake announced yesterday it will buy Haynesville driller Vine Energy for $2.2 billion--mostly by trading or issuing shares of stock (payment will be 92% in stock, 8% in cash). The Reuters rumors were right: interim CEO Mike Wichterich will either go big or go bust with his mission to expand Chesapeake. We hope it's not the latter since Chesapeake still owns a huge amount of assets in the northeastern PA Marcellus. Is Chesapeake making the same mistake it made under the leadership of Doug Lawler when Lawler got a wandering eye and purchased WildHorse Resource Development Corp in the Eagle Ford Shale (see Chesapeake Now Gone from Ohio Utica; Spends $4B in Eagle Ford)? We don't think so. This time is different. You can't blame Chesapeake for expanding outside the Marcellus/Utica--they have a good reason for looking elsewhere...

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