Meet Mr. Gas (pg. 3)

Club for Growth and Americans United to Preserve Marriage went hard after Oklahoma Democrat Brad Carson. Picking a fight on same-sex marriage was Ward's idea, McClendon says now, done at the urging of Ward's friend and fellow Christian conservative Gary Bauer. McClendon kicked in $625,000; Ward, $525,000. A part of their treasure paid for a nasty TV spot in Oklahoma that suggested Carson was secretly in favor of same-sex marriage (even though he had voted against it in the House) and seemed also to imply that he was gay. "We never dreamed that it would become controversial," McClendon says now, adding that he has a brother-in-law who is gay and that he's campaign co-chair for corporation commissioner Jim Roth, the first openly gay elected official in Oklahoma. "We just thought we were doing what everybody else did when they gave money to ... 427s? 527s? Whatever it is." Whatever. The bottom line for McClendon is that Brad Carson got trounced.

Maybe none of this would have come back to bite McClendon so hard if two years later, in 2006, he and Ward had not pitched in with McClendon's best friend, Clay Bennett, and five other Oklahomans to buy the Sonics. Hearing about their political shenanigans gave the good people of Seattle all the more reason not to trust them. Speaking in public, Bennett, the principal owner, was clear: He and his Oklahoma buddies would keep the Sonics in Seattle.

Of course nobody believed him. Still, it came as at least a mild shock last summer when McClendon told the Oklahoma Journal Record, "But we didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here." Afterward McClendon backpedaled ("It was my fault for saying something that was not accurate," he told me), but he still had to pay a $250,000 fine to the NBA. Then they all looked like idiots when this e-mail exchange from April 2007 surfaced recently in a suit brought by the City of Seattle to try to prevent the Sonics from breaking their lease:

Tom Ward: Is there any way to move here [Oklahoma City] for next season or are we doomed to have another lame-duck season in Seattle?

Clay Bennett: I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can. Thanks for hanging with me boys, the game is getting started!

Tom Ward: That's the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here [in Oklahoma City] next year.

Aubrey McClendon: Me too, thanks Clay!

McClendon's latest obsession cuts a little closer to the heart of Chesapeake's interests: He's on a campaign to expand the market for natural gas. In February 2007 an organization calling itself the Texas Clean Skies Coalition placed ads in newspapers across the state to oppose utility giant TXU's plan to build new coal-fired power plants. The ads featured pictures of sad-looking people with coal-like soot on their faces, as well as facts and analysis lifted from a website operated by the Environmental Defense Fund. "We don't know who they are or where they're from," the Environmental Defense Fund said in a hastily issued press release the day the ads appeared. Turns out it was Chesapeake.

Since then McClendon has created the American Clean Skies Foundation in Washington, D.C. It puts out a glossy journal printed on biodegradable polypropylene. ("No trees were harmed in the production of this magazine.") CleanSkies.tv, a web-based news channel ("Content will be fair and fact-based"), launched on Earth Day.

This new role for McClendon - as champion of the environment - is not obvious casting. He's a huge supporter, after all, of Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who claims global warming is a "hoax." But here he stands nonetheless, at what he acknowledges is "a nice intersection between my moral thoughts about the problem and my economic thoughts about the problem," pushing a very big story. A story about a new era for the American economy, when natural gas is plentiful and cheap, American manufactured goods are more competitive in the global marketplace, our balance-of-payments deficit declines because we import less oil, our skies are cleaner because we burn less coal, global warming slows down, and ordinary Americans in out-of-the-way places get rich on royalty checks from gas companies. It assumes that gas prices will rise, but not as fast as oil prices. And that not just electricity producers (who today use more coal than gas) and homeowners (who use a lot of heating oil) but also cars and trucks will come to rely increasingly on natural gas. And it's nothing if not audaciously ambitious. Just like McClendon himself.

"I think our community, our state, our country, and our world need us to be successful," McClendon says, wrapping up his remarks to the Chesapeake employees gathered in the Blue Room. It's cozy in here, and the décor lives up to the name. Blue carpet, blue vinyl upholstery, and glowing blue walls that suggest a gas oven on full broil. Packed from pit to rafters, everybody paying close attention to their leader. "We're doing things that nobody else in the world is doing," he continues. "Drilling wells that other people wouldn't have. We've made discoveries that other people would never have found. When I wake up in the morning I'm ready to go because I get to work for a company that drilled more rock than anybody else on earth ..." Wait, did that guy just say Chesapeake is the No. 1 driller on the planet? It's just the U.S., actually, for now. The world will have to wait.

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE Patricia A. Neering contributed to this article. 

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