The Day Before Chesapeake Shareholder Meeting, Reuters Publishes Another Critical Report

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.

June 7, 2012 | 12:24 PM

Reuters is out with another close look at Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, and our partners at StateImpact Oklahoma have summarized the latest report:

The enmeshment is so deep, the company has set up a unit — AKM Operations — in an annex office to help McClendon with his personal projects.
The personal business unit, executive jet flights and the Oklahoma City Thunder are all part of McClendon’s “lavish” lifestyle, Reuters reports.
And a lot of that lifestyle is leveraged.
McClendon’s contract affords him the use of Chesapeake facilities for personal businesses and investment activities. He’s required to reimburse the company for employees who primarily work on his personal business, but he doesn’t have to pay for secretarial and administrative support.

Chesapeake is one of Pennsylvania’a largest natural gas drillers, with nearly 200 producing wells.
The company holds its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow, and StateImpact Pennsylvania and Oklahoma will be live-blogging the proceedings. Check our website in the morning to follow the session’s details.
Want to catch up on Chesapeake’s loans and debt? Click here.