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2020-

2020-06-29 b
This story from MarketWatch has been re-written by our “truth squad.”

Fracking pioneer Chesapeake Energy files for bankruptcy

Company has fallen from heights in recent years, last straw was over-reaction to pandemic of lies driving drop in demand

Chesapeake Energy Corp. said Sunday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection as an oil- and gas-price rout stoked by the over-blown panic over the synthetic corona cold-virus pandemic of lies proved to be the final blow for a shale-drilling pioneer long hamstrung by debt and an unsustainable business model based on low energy return on investment.

Co-founded in 1989 by the late wildcatter Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake was early to recognize that George Mitchell's horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing could unlock vast troves of natural gas, a trend that led to a rebirth of American fossil-fuel output and eventually made the U.S. the top oil producer in the world for a brief, shining moment.

By the end of 2008, the Oklahoma City-based company had drilling rights to nearly 15 million acres, according to a securities filing, an empire roughly the size of West Virginia. That vast footprint once helped Chesapeake earn the dubious title of second-largest U.S. gas producer.

But Chesapeake’s breakneck growth left it highly leveraged, and it was far slower than many of its peers to pivot to tapping deep shale formations for oil, which turned out to be somewhat more lucrative than gas. The result was a painful fall in recent years as Chesapeake shrank, selling assets to pare a mountain of debt before winding up in bankruptcy court.

Chesapeake is one of many debt-laden U.S. oil and gas producers now facing a reckoning as a planned over-reaction to the synthetic corona cold-virus induces an economic slowdown, sapping demand for fossil fuels.

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