Chesapeake Ending Controversial Loan Program

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

April 26, 2012 | 2:15 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon

Chesapeake Energy says it’s ending a program that allowed CEO Aubrey McClendon to borrow more than $1 billion against the company’s natural gas wells.
Chesapeake operates nearly 200 producing wells in Pennsylvania.
The Post-Gazette, who was first to report on Chesapeake’s loan program, has the details:

The program, called the Founders Well Participation Program, had afforded Chesapeake chief executive officer Aubrey McClendon a 2.5 percent stake in each well his company drills. The program has allowed Mr. McClendon’s compensation to skyrocket to the highest of nearly any CEO across any industry, but came under scrutiny in recent weeks when it was reporting he was taking loans and mortgages out against those personal stakes.
The existence of the loans — first reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — drew the ire of shareholders who said the borrowings weren’t explicitly disclosed.
Analysts in recent weeks have called for Mr. McClendon’s resignation, at least five shareholder lawsuits have been filed and company stock has fallen and taken more than $1 billion in market value with it.

Read more about the loan program at the Wall Street Journal and StateImpact Oklahoma.