McClendon Steps Down From Chesapeake Energy

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.

January 30, 2013 | 12:18 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon addresses a 2011 natural gas drilling conference

The controversial head of the energy giant operating more Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale wells than any other company is retiring later this year.
StateImpact Oklahoma has more on the scrutiny Chesapeake Energy faced in the months before CEO Aubrey McClendon decided to step down:

Chesapeake recently faced a shareholder revolt and board shakeupafter reports surfaced questioning the intertwined finances of McClendon and the company, the country’s second-largest natural gas producer after Exxon Mobil.
Some of Chesapeake’s land purchases have come into question, too, and the company’s financial dealings have been the subject of probes by federal and state investigators.

Those financial practices were first reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as detailed in the Chesapeake Energy reading guide StateImpact published last year.
Chesapeake’s stock jumped nearly 11 percent after the news was announced yesterday.
Check out all of Chesapeake’s Pennsylvania wells here.