A gambler on shale

IT WAS a tragic end to a life that epitomised the winner-takes-all spirit of American capitalism. On March 2nd, the day after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of rigging bids for oil-drilling rights, Aubrey McClendon, a founder of Chesapeake Energy and one of the pioneers of America’s natural-gas revolution, died after driving his car at high speed into a wall.

Mr McClendon, 56, was one of the high-rollers of the shale boom—and of its bust. He turned a $50,000 investment in 1989 in Chesapeake, based in Oklahoma City, into what became one of the two biggest natural-gas producers in the United States, with an acreage of leaseholds almost the size of West Virginia. He was also one of the champions of natural gas as a relatively clean fuel compared with coal, and an advocate for freeing America from dependence on Middle Eastern oil. “To hell with OPEC”, he was fond of saying.