Chesapeake Energy Corp. , a fracking pioneer, is once again betting big on natural gas after recently emerging from bankruptcy, agreeing last week to buy another gas company to position itself to sell the commodity in Europe and Asia.
Chesapeake, co-founded by the late shale trailblazer Aubrey McClendon, agreed to buy Vine Energy Inc., a gas producer in northwestern Louisiana, in a stock and cash deal valued at about $1.1 billion. The transaction comes six months after Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy, in which it cut about $7 billion in debt.
The purchase of Vine Energy would make Chesapeake the largest gas company in the Haynesville Shale, a large gas-producing region in Louisiana and East Texas. The assets would provide much of the gas Chesapeake needs to eventually serve foreign markets for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, as demand for the fuel rises overseas, said Mike Wichterich, Chesapeake’s chairman and interim chief executive officer.
“The premier market is going to be the LNG market,” Mr. Wichterich said in an interview. Other countries, he said, “just don’t have the resources the United States has.”
He added, “Let’s start moving in that direction.”
