The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters (50 page)

4
.  Russell Gold, “Oil and Gas Boom Lifts U.S. Economy,”
Wall Street Journal,
February 8, 2012.

5
.  Selam Gebrekidan, “100 Years After Boom, Shale Makes Texas Oil Hot Again,” Reuters, May 3, 2011.

6
.  Stephen Moore, “How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia,”
Wall Street Journal,
October 1, 2011.

7
.  Josh Harkinson, “Who Fracked Mitt Romney,”
Mother Jones,
November/December 2012.

8
.  “Chiropractor Follows Patients to Oil Patch,”
Talkin’ the Bakken
magazine, June 2013.

9
.  Clifford Krauss, “U.S. Company, in Reversal, Wants to Export Natural Gas,”
New York Times,
January 27, 2011.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1
.  Clifford Krauss and Eric Lipton, “After the Boom in Natural Gas,”
New York Times,
October 20, 2012.

2
.  John Shiffman, Anna Drive, and Brian Grow, “Special Report: The Lavish and Leveraged Life of Aubrey McClendon,” Reuters, June 7, 2012.

3
.  Scott Detrow, “More on DEP Tests: Hanger Downplays Radiation Threat,” WITF.org, March 7, 2011.

4
.  “McClendon Values Utica Shale at Half a Trillion Dollars, NGI Reports,” BusinessWire, September 21, 2011.

5
.  Christopher Helman, “Billionaire Wildcatter, Risk Addict Aubrey McClendon Has Bet It All on Shale,”
Forbes,
October 6, 2011.

6
.  Russell Gold, “Board Turns on Chesapeake’s CEO,”
Wall Street Journal,
April 26, 2012.

7
.  Max Abelson, “Icahn, Icahn! Son’s $2.9 M. PH, Lawyer’s $4.2 M. Condo,”
New York Observer,
October 13, 2009.

8
.  Miles Weiss and Zachary Mider, “Chesapeake CEO Pledges Mementos for Billionaire Kaiser’s Debt,” Bloomberg News, June 13, 2012.

9
.  Christopher Helman, “The Sordid Deal That Created the Okla. City Thunder,”
Forbes,
June 13, 2012.

10
.  Asjylyn Loder, “McClendon Eating Healthy No Help in Bet Undermining Chesapeake,” Bloomberg News, June 27, 2012.

11
.  Michael Erman, Anna Driver, and Brian Grow, “Insight: How SandRidge Energy’s CEO Adapted the Chesapeake Playbook,” Reuters, January 14, 2013.

EPILOGUE

1
.  Ben Lefebvre, “Gas Glut Favors Would-Be Exporter,”
Wall Street Journal,
January 23, 2012.

2
.  Steven Mufson, “The Natural Gas Revolution Reversing LNG Tanker Trade,”
Washington Post,
December 7, 2012.

3
.  Ben Lefebvre, “Cheniere CEO: Traders Needed as Natural Gas Appetite Grows,”
Wall Street Journal,
March 7, 2013.

4
.  Tom Fowler, “U.S. Oil-Production Rise Is Fastest Ever,”
Wall Street Journal,
January 18, 2013.

5
.  Jennifer Hiller, “EOG Resources: Eagle Ford Shale Is ‘Steaming Ahead,’”
FuelFix,
May 16, 2013.

6
.  Frank Bass, “Eagle Ford Shale Boom Fuels ‘Madhouse’ in South Texas Counties,”
Bloomberg News, March 15, 2013.

7
.  John Kemp, “Is Bakken Set to Rival Ghawar?,” Reuters, November 9, 2012.

8
.  Joshua Schneyer, Brian Grow, and Jeanine Prezioso, “Special Report: Lack of a Prenup Imperils Oil Billionaire’s Fortune,” Reuters, June 14, 2013.

9
.  Daniel Gilbert and Tom Fowler, “Chesapeake Investors Tired of the ‘Aubrey Discount,’”
Wall Street Journal,
January 30, 2013.

10
.  Brianna Bailey, “Outgoing CEO McClendon Bids Chesapeake’s Oklahoma City Workers Farewell,”
Oklahoman,
March 28, 2013.

AFTERWORD

1
.  Laura Legere, “Sunday Times Review of DEP Drilling Records Reveals Water Damage, Murky Testing Methods,”
Scranton Times-Tribune,
May 19, 2013.

2
.  Ibid.

3
.  Mead Gruver, “Wyoming Air Pollution Worse Than Los Angeles Due to Gas Drilling,” Associated Press, March 8, 2011.

4
.  Cassie Werber and Sarah Kent, “U.K. Increases Estimates of Shale-Gas Reserves,”
Wall Street Journal,
June 27, 2013.

5
.  Mark Seddon, “The Long, Slow Death of the UK Coal Industry,”
Guardian,
April 10, 2013; Andrew Bounds, “Coal No Longer King but Still Important,”
Financial Times,
April 21, 2013.

6
.  Taos Turner and Daniel Gilbert, “Chevron, YPF Sign $1.5 Billion Shale-Oil Deal,”
Wall Street Journal,
July 16, 2013.

7
.  Elizabeth Muller, “China Must Exploit Its Shale Gas,”
New York Times,
April 12, 2013; Edward Wong, “Pollution Leads to Drop in Life Span in Northern China, Research Finds,”
New York Times,
July 8, 2013.

8
.  The Boston Company,
End of an Era: The Death of Peak Oil,
February 2013.

*
McKetta denies being skeptical about Steinsberger’s idea or telling Steinsberger he’d eat his diploma if it worked.

*
Undercover activity was commonplace in the Barnett, part of the legal cat-and-mouse game played by wildcatters and drilling companies. An unrelated lawsuit later filed against an active investor in the Barnett, Trevor Rees-Jones, suggested that Rees-Jones’s company, Chief Holdings, LLC, had hired “spies,” “moles,” and other “contacts brazen enough to scale barbed-wire fences and sneak onto private property for precious information.” Other times they would conduct “daring trespasses and reconnaissance at competitor well sites,” according to the suit, filed by a disgruntled backer of Rees-Jones.

At least once, Rees-Jones called the intelligence he received from the field a “Special Ops Report,” according to the lawsuit. Sometimes the intelligence gathered had to do with internal estimates of the value of certain acreage. After appearing to uncover details of a high valuation another company, Devon Energy, had placed on its holdings in the Barnett, one of Rees-Jones’s contacts sent him an excited e-mail: “Either someone at Devon is smoking crack or we’re gonna be rich.” The case was eventually settled.

*
Around that time, another George Mitchell, no relation, was elected as a senator representing the state of Maine, the beginning of his own illustrious career.