Chesapeake Energy campus Credit: Mark Hancock Despite being a vocal critic in 2005 of China’s efforts to buy the American oil company Unocal, he has declined comment regarding Chesapeake Energy’s recent $1.02 billion joint venture with a Chinese oil company for part of Chesapeake’s holdings in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas — acreage in the […]
natural gas
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Bashing coal
Colorado Springs, Colo., is a beautiful city. It has been declared one of the top 20 cleanest cities in the U.S. by various organizations, not the least of which is the American Lung Association. A city that is more susceptible/sensitive to said pollutants of coal because of its altitude burns coal for power. Wait … […]
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Piping up
Stefan Warner Credit: Mark Hancock Before dawn on Feb. 11 in the Seminole County town of Schoolton, Stefan Warner, youth pastor at Church of the Open Arms in Oklahoma City, suspended himself high above the ground to construction machinery used to build the Keystone XL pipeline. “I ascended a side boom and attached a platform […]
Posted inArts & Culture
It’s a gas
As far as the Landmark Fine Homes owner is concerned, the abode is 1.5 million British thermal units of what people will want — or should want — when buying or building their next home. A compressed natural gas vehicle filling station, a CNG-powered backup generator and tankless water heaters are among the clean-energy options […]
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Quake questions
Credit: Brad Gregg Earthquakes measurable on the Richter Scale are now commonplace in Central Oklahoma. The “why” part has puzzled experts, but last week University of Oklahoma seismologist Katie Keranen and two other researchers weighed in with a report attributing a series of November 2011 earthquakes near Prague — including one of a 5.7 magnitude […]
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McClendon’s genius
I’ve had the good fortune to know both men, who, by any measure, are two of the most visionary entrepreneurs responsible for much of Oklahoma City’s renaissance. Chesapeake is America’s second-largest natural gas producer. Early on, McClendon and Ward realized the promise of unlocking huge deposits of natural gas by fracking. In replacing McClendon, Chesapeake […]
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The shy, retiring type?
Aubrey McClendon Credit: Shannon Cornman Chesapeake did not offer details about why its co-founder was stepping down, but an email and statement from McClendon point toward clashes with the company’s new board of directors. In an email to Chesapeake employees, McClendon said the action was mutually agreed upon by him and the board. “Although this […]
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Saving oil
This tells me that McVay, while he may have a background in environmental studies, also has a predisposition to defend an industry that is his livelihood. This makes his perspective about as reliable as an asbestos salesman telling me that all those cancer studies are taken out of context. Of course, to his credit, the […]
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Sour shareholders
Credit: Brad Gregg TPG-Axon, which holds a 4.5 percent stake in SandRidge, charged in a Nov. 8 letter to SandRidge’s board that the company had engaged in reckless spending and that shareholders had experienced a 76-percent decline in stock price. TPG-Axon requested that the company be sold, Tom Ward replaced as CEO and board members […]
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Frack it up
Credit: Brad Gregg Oklahoma’s own corporate sugar daddy recently got the green light from Pennsylvania state officials to begin hydraulic fracturing a well located about a mile away from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Penn., along the Ohio River. While there is no proven link between seismic activity and hydraulic fracturing — […]