{"id":6925,"date":"2012-05-30T10:22:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T15:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=6925"},"modified":"2012-05-30T10:25:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T15:25:26","slug":"is-chesapeake-energy-for-sale-and-who-might-buy-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/05\/30\/is-chesapeake-energy-for-sale-and-who-might-buy-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Chesapeake Energy for Sale? And Who Might Buy It?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6887\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Chesapeake Energy's Oklahoma City campus.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2012\/05\/chesapeake-campus1.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6887\" title=\"Chesapeake Campus\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2012\/05\/chesapeake-campus1-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chesapeake Energy&#39;s Oklahoma City campus.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>The Oklahoma City natural gas giant has been battered by a decade-low natural gas price and <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/05\/29\/chesapeake-energy-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-worlds-biggest-fracker\/\">investigations<\/a> into CEO Aubrey McClendon\u2019s personal finances.<\/p><p>The country\u2019s No. 2 natural gas producer is more than $13 billion in debt and may be facing a cash shortfall.<\/p><p>And it might be a heck of a deal, a fund manager <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2012-05-30\/chesapeake-valuation-seen-luring-major-oil-merger-deal-real-m-a.html\">tells<\/a> Bloomberg.<\/p><p><!--more--><\/p><p>The undervalued stock price <a href=\"http:\/\/business.time.com\/2012\/05\/29\/billionaire-raider-carl-icahn-just-what-chesapeake-energy-needs\/\">hooked<\/a> billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn, who recently bought a 7.6% stake of the company for about $785 million. Icahn has invested in Chesapeake before, but sold his interest when shares were $30, a move that reportedly netted the investor $500 million.<\/p><p>Icahn\u00a0is already <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/christopherhelman\/2012\/05\/25\/carl-icahns-letter-to-chesapeake-energy\/\">pushing<\/a> to break up the board.<\/p><p>Despite the recent drama, Chesapeake has very desirable assets, Bloomberg reports. And other companies might want to buy in and bet on natural gas prices rebounding.<\/p><p>Tara Lachapelle, Jim Polson and Joe Carroll report:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cFor any of the major integrated oil companies that want to pick up reserves on the cheap, this would be a good one,\u201d said Peter Sorrentino, who helps oversee $14.7 billion at Huntington in Cincinnati.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Some potential buyers, according to the Bloomberg report: Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell.<\/p><p>So is Chesapeake for sale? From Bloomberg:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Michael Kehs, a spokesman for Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake, declined to comment on whether the company is for sale, may be for sale or has been in talks with potential buyers of the whole company.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Exxon, Chevron and Shell also declined comment to the news service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Oklahoma City natural gas giant has been battered by a decade-low natural gas price and investigations into CEO Aubrey McClendon\u2019s personal finances.The country\u2019s No. 2 natural gas producer is more than $13 billion in debt and may be facing a cash shortfall.And it might be a heck of a deal, a fund manager tells [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301],"tags":[360,275],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6929,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925\/revisions\/6929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}