Chesapeake’s Chairman Buys 1 Million Shares – What Does it Mean?
Back in 2012 as the palace coup was getting under way at Chesapeake Energy, five new board members were installed by corporate raiders Carl Ichan and Mason Hawkins (the two biggest stockholders in the company). At that time, Ichan and Hawkins selected Archie Dunham, then 73 years old, as the new chairman of the board (see Chesapeake Energy’s Board Changes, Archie Dunham New Chairman). Dunham is the retired chairman of ConocoPhillips. He was previously chairman, president and chief executive officer of Conoco Inc. from 1999-2002, after being elected president and CEO in 1996. To his credit, Dunham has stuck around at Chessy. He’s obviously drinking the Doug Lawler (current CEO of Chesapeake) Kool Aid and believes mass firings and selling everything but the kitchen sink will turn the company into a money maker. He believes so much he just spent $13,980,000 of his own money to buy 1 million shares of stock, upping his stake in the company to 2.6 million shares. Dunham thinks the stock is at its rock bottom right now and has no place else to go but up. Is Dunham crazy like a fox? Or is he just plain crazy?…
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MDN is taking today, Good Friday, off from the normal story writing routine. We have, however, assembled a list of the top 30 most-read MDN stories over the past 30 days. We thought you might find it useful to see which stories were most appealing to the majority of MDN readers. As you scan the list, did you read these stories? You might spot a story or two you didn’t read that maybe you want to read now–or re-read!
A court case decided earlier this week by New York’s Court of Appeals (NY’s highest court), will, in our opinion, have a profoundly negative effect on oil and gas development in the state, forever. Or until another court case overturns it (which seems very unlikely). The case, as its core, is about the question of whether or not state action or inaction constitutes an extraordinary action, in essence an Act of God outside of the control of parties who sign a contract. Years ago landowners signed leases to allow oil and gas drilling, often for a few bucks and acre, long before Marcellus and fracking were common, household words. Then came delay after delay in New York–from the governor–and eventually a more or less semi-permanent ban on fracking. Energy companies argued that the leases they had signed could be extended until the day they are allowed to drill in the Marcellus because of “force majeure”–the concept that due to circumstances beyond our control we could not drill as we intended during the original term of the lease, usually five years. The NY Court of Appeals on Tuesday decided that the state preventing drilling does not qualify as force majeure after the original five-year period of a lease (full copy of the decision below). If the original lease was extended for some reason and then the driller was prevented from drilling during the extended time due to state laws preventing it, it’s not force majeure in the eyes of the “wise” justices in Albany…