Great to see Chesapeake Energy and Aubrey McClendon getting back on their feet! Wonder if he’ll pay back some of the $112 million dollars he made in 2008 – which included a $75 million dollar bonus? 2008 was so bad for Mr. McClendon and Chesapeake, that he even had to sell his prized wine collection!

We’ve had our fair share of fun over the years calling OG&E (Oklahoma Gas & Electric) the state’s “dumbest utility company.” How else do you explain a company using it’s competitor’s (Chesapeake Energy) advertising agency when they were trying to get a coal fired plant approved a few years ago.

Well, we may have to change our tune after this story came out yesterday: Read more…

Aubrey McClendon’s compensation package, one of the largest for any corporate executive last year, included a one-time $75 million bonus, a $975,000 base salary, and $32.7 million in stock.

We’ve taken some flack over the years for our criticism of Chesapeake CEO and founder Aubrey McClendon on the way he and his company does business. After reading this article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, we now feel justified. We agree with the Chesapeake investor who says in the piece that MClendon’s compensation package, in light of the company’s recent struggles, is “shameful.”

* Siteowner is a shareholder of Chesapeake Energy Corp.

By Ben Casselman

Chesapeake Energy Corp. and its directors are under fire from shareholders for paying Chairman and Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon $112 million last year even as the company’s stock price tumbled.

The compensation package, one of the largest for any corporate executive last year, included a one-time $75 million bonus, a $975,000 base salary, and $32.7 million in stock, according to the company’s proxy statement.

Chesapeake, one of the biggest U.S. producers of natural gas, also disclosed several transactions involving Mr. McClendon or companies in which he has an interest, including a deal to buy Mr. McClendon’s collection of maps and artwork for $12.1 million.

“I have never seen a more shameful document than the Chesapeake proxy statement,” investor Jeffrey Bronchick wrote in a letter to Chesapeake’s board. “If I could reduce it to one page, I would frame and hang it on my office wall as a near perfect illustration of the complete collapse of appropriate corporate governance.”

Related:

OKPNS (2/6/09) WSJ: Is Aubrey McClendon Selling Off His Prized Wine?

Oh my God, it IS that bad over at Chesapeake! Wonder if Mr. McClendon’s [hopefully legal] domestic help is next?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Even though the market for collectible wines is slumping, Sotheby’s recently announced it will sell off 9,000 bottles in two auctions in March and April. The sale is titled “Classic Cellar from a Great American Collector.”

It is large by any standard. But what really caught my eye was the statement in Sotheby’s news release that the sale is a “single owner collection,” meaning that it is all coming from one seller’s cellar.

Who is this “Great American Collector?” And why would he or she try to unload 9,000 bottles at a time when wine prices are collapsing?

Sotheby’s won’t say. Jamie Ritchie, head of Sotheby’s North American wine department, was uncharacteristically silent when I asked about the seller. “Sorry, I just can’t comment,” he said.

According to three people familiar with the auction, the seller is Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy. These people say at least one other broker kicked the tires on Mr. McClendon’s collection before it went to Sotheby’s.

Mr. McClendon is one of the top wine collectors in the country, known for his love of Burgundy and Bordeaux. He also is known for his cash crunch. Last fall, he was forced to sell 94% of his stake in Chesapeake to pay back margin loans. Mr. McClendon’s stake once was valued at more than $2 billion. So it wouldn’t be surprising if he were to want to liquidate some of his, er, liquid assets.

Mr. McClendon, through a spokesman, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Sotheby’s says it expects the sale to fetch at least $5 million–not much for a former billionaire, but these days every little million helps. Read more…

Picture sent to us this morning from Oklahoma City. Location: 63rd and Penn.

Related:

Treehugger.com: Run Cars on Green Electricity, Not Natural Gas

OKPNS: “If CNG is the Answer, It Must be a Really Stupid Question!”

Local Gasoline price in St. Louis (9/16/08)

As what is customary in the public/crisis relations business, news you want to keep low key is provided to the press on a late Friday afternoon - usually after 2pm. This is about when we learned that former Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode was trading the chief con meister job at the Clean Skies Foundation for a similar position with the American Wind Energy Association. No doubt a tool of wind entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens.   Read more: (WSJ: Pickens’s Investors Ask for Exit)

With the fall of natural gas prices; Aubrey McClendon’s Chesapeake Energy holdings liquidated due to margin calls; and with cutbacks in “non essential expenditures,” the handwriting was plainly on the wall that the CSF gig for Bode was just about up. We got to hand it to these people, they are nothing but tenacious. T. Boone was on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday still pitching his “plan,” even with gasoline at prices we haven’t seen in over a year!

It was a very bad night for the political masterminds at Chesapeake Energy.

State Rep. Randy Terrill, who has bitch-slapped the company more times than a New Jersey pimp, completed his dominance of the organization as he easily won re-election to the House of Representatives, where he is the Chairman of the House Revenue and Tax Committee.

If that wasn’t enough, Chesapeake lost their boy, appointed Corporation Commissioner Jim Roth.

Despite the contrivance of the state’s two largest daily newspapers and the riches provided by the companies whose water he carried, Roth went down to defeat at the hands of Republican Dana Murphy. Murphy’s win confounded even the best of pollsters, most of whom believed Roth would win comfortably.

Consultant to Pat Hall and his cohort Mike Turpen, who are on the Chesapeake payroll, were chief strategists for Roth, and are being ridiculed for taking what seemed to be a sure win and turning into a defeat.

Now all eyes are on Murphy to see how she will treat Chesapeake, who bankrolled the vile and vicious attacks leveled on her created by their consultants. “She needs to paddle their butt. They’ll be crawling on the belly to her with cash, and everybody’s watching to see if she puts them in their place, or if she sells out, one corporation insider tells OKPNS. And observers say another big funder has something to fear: AT&T, since it is widely rumored that a Bob Anthony-Dana Murphy alliance is a certainly.

OKPNS 10/13/08 Pucker Up Time for Chesapeake Twins Jeff Cloud & Jim Roth

You need to know why your rates are going up, and why you are getting stuck with millions of dollars in legal bills. You don’t have to believe us, and you don’t have to worry about if the candidates are telling the truth – you can find out for yourself.

ITEM #1 – You paid for $1,123,280.62 for outside lawyers.

The Corporation Commission has almost as many government attorneys as the Attorney General’s office. So why are you paying this much in legal fees? For two reasons: to pay off political supporters and to cover up their own misconduct.

PAYING OFF POLITICAL CONTRIBUTORS

When you look at the contribution reports for Cloud and Roth you will find major contributions from oil and gas attorneys. Here’s the deal – they give $5000 to the Commissioners campaigns, and they get $100,000 or more in taxpayer funded legal fees. Great for them, expensive for you.

COVER UPS

There are two major taxpayer lawsuits that have exposed just how our Corporation Commissioners have been using your tax dollars to buy political support. Here is what a “taxpayer’s lawsuit” is all about. The founders of Oklahoma wanted a check on political power and corruption. If citizens believe elected officials misused taxpayer’s money and if the lawmakers did it knowing they were doing it (ignorance is a defense) then a taxpayers lawsuit holds the elected officials personally accountable.

“Your” commissioners are using your tax dollars to pay for their defense. That’s just wrong. Look, we hate frivolous lawsuits as much as you do, and we can all be sued, and if it is a groundless lawsuit, then the people who file it have to pay the legal fees of those who were sued (it’s called loser pays). So there is a real risk for filing a taxpayer’s lawsuit.

But instead of being like you or me who has to defend yourself against a lawsuit, your Corporation Commission voted to use your money to defend themselves against their own corruption. So what is the lawsuit about? $3.2 Million illegally paid to Phillips Petroleum as part of the Petroleum Storage Tank Program.

Here’s what the suit says: Jeff Cloud and others paid $3.2 million to Phillips even though they knew that it wasn’t authorized. The commission staff said it was wrong, but because of political pressure and cronyism the Commission did it anyway.

The only way to hold the elected officials accountable was for some very courageous citizens to risk hundreds of thousands of their own dollars to file suit. A local judge whose husband is a lobbyist initially dismissed the case, BUT the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that there is merit to the case and they ordered the judge to hear the case. That doesn’t happen very often.

When you look at the court case you realize that this is a serious rip-off of you and the State Supreme Court agreed that this is serious. Guess what? If you send Cloud and Roth back to the Commission, they will continue to use your tax dollars to defend themselves.

Item #2 Illegal Firings and Porn

WHY ARE YOUR TAX DOLLARS BEING USED TO DEFEND PORN USE ON STATE COMPUTERS?

The Corporation Commission fired the head of computer division because she complained that top staff of the Commission was using state computers to look at porn. The commission tried to force her to stop enforcing the law that keeps us from paying for porn use by state employees.

When you look at her lawsuit for wrongful termination, you will see a sick attempt to defend what these staffers were looking at. (Charles Gray was the author of the bill that made it illegal for state employees to be going to pornographic web sites with state computers – HB 1048 in 1996).

Because the Corporation Commission investigator took the approach of “boys will be boys” and defended the Administrative Law Judge who was visiting pornographic web sites, we got stuck with another expensive lawsuit and settlement.

Where is the outrage from any of our sitting Corporation Commissioners? This was a no brainer. You dismiss the person who violated the law and protect the people who run the computer system – but our good-old-boy Commissioners blew it and cost you money once again.

IT JUST GETS WORSE

Those of us who remember the last time the FBI investigated the Corporation Commission can recall the open bribes offered to officials in both political parties. Now the whole process has gotten more sophisticated because now our officials are being rewarded with campaign contributions.

Commissioner Roth supports Chesapeake Energies opposition to a clean coal plant – and he gets over a $100,000 from the natural gas companies employees to run his campaign.

Commissioner Cloud has secret fundraisers with AT&T executives in Texas and it gets caught on tape. Then it starts coming out that Cloud signs were being distributed at corporate offices to employees.

It just looks like it is time to clean house again.

Who’s paying for all the TV spots flooding the airwaves right now? Why do we expect that officials whose campaigns are financed by the people they regulate would support the rate payers?

And finally the whole sick system perpetuates itself by using your tax dollars to defend individual Commissioners who should answer for their own misdeeds. You don’t have to be a victim and you don’t have to continue business as usual. We have two incumbents running and two reformed minded opponents. In this election, we can get real reform over the commission, but the choice is yours.

Supporting documents:

Corporation Commission Settlement pdf

EEOC Complaint pdf

Corporation Commission Legal Costs pdf

Taxpayer Lawsuits pdf

Related:

Video: Jeff Cloud Gets Caught!

Is the energy giant in trouble?

Hat tip:millicentroberts

Video: Chesapeake Investigation Part 2 

We read it, but we can’t believe it.

Jeff Cloud, the incumbent Corporation Commissioner seeking re-election for another six-year term, has been a favorite topic for OKPNS because he’s so, well, entertaining.

We’ve documented his penchants for, shall we say, a lax work ethic. And we’ve criticized him for cozying up to apostate Republicans and trying to leverage his position into a high-paying, low workload position with a company he regulates as a commissioner. Cloud’s done pretty well for himself serving in a variety of jobs that he gained for being a trusted aid to folks like J.C. Watts, Kirk Humphries and Frank Keating. But then he lost track of his conservative roots and began voting with Jim Roth to screw ratepayers.

For most of the campaign, Cloud has led in the polls. But now, the heat has been turned up, and it appears Cloud is trying hard to blow his lead over Democrat challenger Charles Gray. The wheels began to come off when Gray’s sleuthing caught a frantic Cloud getting caught passing the hat at an AT&T fundraising event for Cloud in Dallas recently, and the video has been a hit on OKPNS and on YouTube. In response, Cloud has just plain freaked-out.

In a state with such mental giants as Senators Harry Coates, it’s difficult to imagine what we’re about to announce: Jeff Cloud must be the dumbest Republican politician in Oklahoma.

Okay, be seated before you read this: Cloud went on the Gwin Faulconer-Lippert show on KTOK in Oklahoma City Sunday night and announced that THERE WAS NO FUNDRAISER! That’s right, he denied it happened. No, we’re not kidding: see for yourself. And he goes on to say that the video is a doctored-up version of a basement tape concocted by the mad doctor, Charles Gray. That’s right, it never happened, it’s all camera tricks!!! You know, like the Bigfoot tape and the doctored-up Zapruder film.

But there’s more: Cloud goes on to say he doesn’t take money from those he regulates. That’s right. And the mouthed that roared doesn’t stop there with the insanity. He goes on to say he hadn’t seen Gray on the campaign trail, when virtually everybody familiar with politics knows Gray has been caring for his wife, former state legislator and current Oklahoma County District Judge Twyla Mason Gray as she recovers from several major surgeries resulting from her decades-long battle with breast cancer.

Several sources tell OKPNS that Gray has dropped a bundle on TV time for the last 7 days, and Cloud has been caught unprepared for the charges. So in a fit of pique, Cloud goes on the radio and lies about a fundraiser and about the money he’s taking from those he regulates. Not happy with that fine piece of strategy, he opens the doors to more criticism by insulting women, cancer survivors and care givers.

But all may not be lost for Mr. Jeff Cloud. Remember, it would take follow up by the capitol press corps to make this story grow legs, and of course, we all know how inquisitive that group of “journalists” are, don’t we?

Related:

Examiner.com: Roth Gets Free Ride On “Flashpoint” Program

“Your Vote Counts” Video: The countdown is on to election day  “[Cloud's] voting record frankly isn’t much different than Jim Roth’s.” – Rep. Terrill