Thursday, October 23, 2008

Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy and the Seattle Sonics

In a wonderful piece of poetic justice Chesapeake Energy's CEO, Aubrey McClendon lost a couple billion bucks a couple weeks ago during the worst of the financial meltdown. His company has been in full retreat ever since.

FW Weekly's cover article this week is an in depth look at Chesapeake Energy's CEO Aubrey McClendon.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before but I'm originally from the Seattle zone of the country. The only professional sport I've ever had any interest in is basketball. I've been to a lot of Seattle Sonics games.

So, I followed the developments that led to Seattle refusing to give in to the Sonic's new owners demands for a new basketball arena to replace one the voters had just spent hundreds of millions of dollars on in the early 1990s, with the result being that the Seattle Sonics are now the Oklahoma City Thunder.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but I can be really dense sometimes. I did not realize that the lying schemer who bought the Sonics is the same lying schemer who runs Chesapeake Energy. Sometimes I simply am not able to connect the most simple of dots.

Most of the FW Weekly article is about McClendon's other dirty dealings, mention was made of McClendon and the Sonics. Here's an excerpt below...

From the beginning, the new ownership group assured Seattle fans that the team would stay there. And like most team owners, they wanted tax money to refurbish Key Arena, to the tune of $300 million. Negotiations with local and state officials continued into this year.

But while the other Oklahoma City-based owners were publicly saying the team would stay put, McClendon let the truth out. In an interview last April with The Journal Record, an Oklahoma City business publication, McClendon said, “We didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle, we hoped to come here. We know it’s a little more difficult financially here in Oklahoma City, but we think it’s great for the community and if we could break even we’d be thrilled.

“To the great amazement and surprise of everyone in Seattle,” he said, “some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we’ve been called, made off with the team.” To the amazement of Seattle political leaders, McClendon made that statement while negotiations were still going on.

Click to read the entire FW Weekly article about Aubrey McClendon and his dirty dealings.

1 comment:

kyle fuller said...

Durango-

hey, this is Kyle Fuller and I am an Austin-based filmmaker doing a documentary about the Haynesville Shale ( and parallels to Barnett) I will be in Ft. Worth next week ( Wed 11/5-- Fri 11/7) and wanted to see if I could meet with you and get your POV on things.

thanks-kyle fuller (kylefuller7@earthlink.net)
(512) 560-0670