Tuesday, December 17, 2013

King Aubrey

A correspondent writes in with observations about Aubrey's booth at the NAPE.

There it is in all its glory - the monument to Aubrey McClendon's new personal piggy bank "American Energy Partners" shaped, appropriately in the form of a huge crown sticking up 25 feet in the air - testament to a monster of an ego with a large "Welcome media and press" sign out front, which is honest, upright and fair given the fact that American Energy Partners has nothing to sell or promote other than King Aubrey himself. 

Hey! But I gotta give the devil his due. Aubrey really did do a terrific job aggressively gobbling up choice assets at Chesapeake which the bureaucrats who took over will now run at a profit. But we shall see if the bureaucrats can successfully replace those assets at a profit on down the road. But as to King Aubrey, the question is whether his aggressive acquisition streak was skillfully timed or just the lucky streak of a wild bull in a proverbial china shop. Only time, and his latest venture, "American Energy Capital Partners, L.P." which proposes to throw off a modest yield on top of its return of capital to investors after paying King Aubrey monster fees, will tell the final tale.

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