Report: Oklahoma City Thunder Co-Owner Aubrey McClendon Is A ... - Ology

Douchebag.

Senior Editor
On Jun 25, 2012

You might want to sit down before you read this, assuming you read the internet standing up. Then you're going to pop out of your seat when I tell you that Aubrey McClendon, part owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder and CEO of Chesapeake Energy, is kind of a shady asshole who allegedly colluded with a competitor in order to drive down prices on energy-rich land. Catch your breath! 

For those of you unfamiliar with McClendon and his work, he partnered with Clay Bennett to wrench the SuperSonics from Seattle, relocating the franchise to Oklahoma City. We have previously covered how and why Clay Bennett is a douchebag owner, but McClendon has largely remained the financier, a puppetmaster who allows Bennett to be the face of the franchise. The two bought the Sonics in 2006, made some disingenous efforts (which resulted in a lawsuit) to keep the team in the Pacific Northwest, and eventually moved the team amidst much protest. Tears were shed, fists were pounded, etc.

But surely McClendon doesn't behave with such disregard for others in his normal business dealings, right? Wrong. According to an investigation by Reuters (Warning: Long read! Like, longer than five minutes, even) Chesapeake Energy colluded with competitor Encana Corp., Canada's largest natural gas producer, to drive down prices on energy-rich land in Michigan.

I'll try to condense Reuters' SUPER-LONG report into easily digestible internet form. Basically, the controversial hydrofracking process rendered previously inaccessible petroleum and natural gas TOTALLY ACCESSIBLE, at the expense of potable water and environmental preservation. Anywho, the new technology sparked a land grab, with energy companies rushing to buy the earth above shale formations that might yield black and gasseous gold. When a lot of people want the same thing, the price rises, and in Michigan, land prices were shooting through the roof, in part because Chesapeake and Encana were bidding each other up. 

Anyone who's watched Storage Wars knows this is a quick and easy way to overpay for a locker (or thousands of acres of land). So Chesapeake and Encana came up with a solution: agree not to bid against each other.

This is, of course, against the law because it violates the Sherman Antitrust Act and all sorts of other best practices to keep America's capitalism pure and unsullied with the taint of unfair competition and price-fixing. Still, PROVING such price-fixing occured is difficult, because most companies who do it make their agreements in smoke-filled rooms and the like. Not Chesapeake and Encana. From the Reuters report:

"Attempts at price-fixing by rival corporations are typically difficult to prove in court. That's because competitors rarely commit collusive agreements to writing.

"Top Chesapeake and Encana executives, however, spelled out their ideas in great detail, the emails show, from the beginning of June 2010 through that October."

Nice! McClendon apparently didn't learn from his experience with the Sonics that emails can become public eventually. Oh, wait, his punishment for collusion in that case was getting exactly what he wanted.

My favorite part about this whole saga -- and I have plenty of favorite parts -- is that it demonstrates the degree to which businessmen will go to circumvent the rules of a capitalism they claim to support vehemently. Mutual benefit? Land-sharing deals? Agreements? That sounds like some FRENCH, SOCIALIST BULLSHIT TO ME! Let's return to a pure form of capitalism, a dog-eat-dog style where everyone is everyone else's enemy and the consumer benefits from super-cheap, high-quality goods. That's how it works, right? That's how the ultra-rich make their money, not from family resources or shady deals. The way America was meant to be.

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