Chesapeake Bankruptcy: How the Fracking Trailblazer Ignited the American Energy Revolution

In late June 2020, Covid-19 claimed one of the largest giants in the energy industry: Chesapeake Energy. Chesapeake is a leader in the fracking industry that had been on the rocks for a few years now. In this episode, we detail the rapid rise of the fracking industry with Russell Gold, WSJ senior energy reporter in Texas. Gold’s first book, "The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World," documents the invention of hydraulic fracturing in 1974, how it is both a threat and a godsend for the environment, and how it led the revival of manufacturing in the United States. We also discuss Gold’s second book, "Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy," in which he discusses renewable energies and focuses on the legendary figure Michael Skelly, who used his Harvard Business School contacts to create impressive companies. The midwest can produce the most amount of renewable energies because of the cheap land and suitable climate, so Skelly’s vision was to build low-cost clean energy options between places such as Oklahoma and non-midwest states. The already crazily complicated deal was even further complicated by the strong political opposition at the time, from which we discuss the today’s landscape from The Green New Deal to a realistic vision for sustainable energy use. Russell Gold is an award-winning investigative journalist at The Wall Street Journal, responsible for covering all facets of global energy with a particular focus on the U.S. energy boom, power generation and the global energy transition. He’s been covering energy for the journal since 2002 and his reporting has taken him to five continents and above the Arctic Circle two times. In 2010, he was part of the Wall Street Journal team that covered the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. The Journal’s work was awarded the Gerald Loeb Award for best business story of the year and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. In 2020, he will inaugurate a new beat the Journal: Climate change and business. Outside of his work at the Wall Street Journal he’s written two books. His first book, The Boom, was longlisted for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the year prize in 2014. Superpower, his second book, was published in June 2019.