McClendon Gets a Little Help ($1.7B) from His Friends in OH Utica
After the mass(acre) firings at Chesapeake Energy earlier this week (see The Great Chesapeake Massacre: Lawler Fires 800 People in One Day), we expect there may be a line out of the door at the Oklahoma City-based American Energy Partners (AEP), a company founded by former Chesapeake CEO, Aubrey McClendon–who was fired from Chesapeake earlier this year. Fired Chesapeake employees may have good reason to head on over to AEP HQ.
Yesterday McClendon announced AEP has raised $1.7 billion and plans to use that money this year to (a) snap up 110,000+ acres in the OH Utica, and (b) begin drilling on that acreage. He even has deals set up with midstream companies for gathering and processing. The details from McClendon and AEP (cue music to “With a Little Help from my Friends” by the Beatles):
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As MDN has said before and will no doubt say again, we believe Chesapeake Energy will rue the day they fired its founder, Aubrey McClendon. Just a few short months after being tossed out the door by board member and corporate raider Carl Icahn, McClendon founded a new company and was already active in Ohio’s Utica Shale (see 
Investors and those who watch the Utica Shale industry, including MDN, have long called on the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) to abandon annual reporting of gas and oil production and instead move to a more frequent reporting system–quarterly would be about right. Late last year MDN prematurely told you quarterly reporting was on the way (see 
An Ohio Oil and Gas Association (OOGA) representative told attendees at the YOUNG 2013 conference held this week in Youngstown that counties in southeastern Ohio are the “sweet spot” of the Utica Shale play because the pressure there is higher and because the shale layer includes an abundance of natural gas liquids. However, another speaker–an executive from CONSOL Energy–said counties in northeastern Ohio will continue to see successful drilling too. So don’t despair!