Aubrey McClendon

1959 – 2016

Aubrey Kerr McClendon was an American oil-and-gas executive who co-founded Chesapeake Energy in 1989 and built it into the second-largest natural-gas producer in the United States during the shale-fracking boom of the 2000s. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on March 1, 2016, on charges of conspiring to rig bids on oil-and-gas leases in Oklahoma between 2007 and 2012, manipulating prices paid to landowners. He died the following morning, March 2, 2016, when his Chevrolet Tahoe slammed into a concrete bridge embankment in Oklahoma City at high speed in what investigators ruled an accident with no evidence of evasive action.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM