Federal authorities seek to dismiss McClendon indictment

Mr. McClendon had a connection to the island, having purchasing a property in the Tucker's Town area.

McClendon was indicted on Tuesday by a grand jury on antitrust charges of conspiring with another company to rig oil and gas leases in Oklahoma to keep prices low between 2007 and 2012.

Officials at the department's antitrust division said the charge announced Tuesday against McClendon likely will be dismissed.

Barely a day after news of the indictment broke, McClendon was involved in a deadly auto crash in Oklahoma City.

In addition to an oil enterprise that rivaled ExxonMobil for natural gas extraction, McClendon owned a winery in France, and was part owner of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder. McClendon died when his sport-utility vehicle collided with a concrete embankment and burst into flames along an Oklahoma City expressway.

Over more than two decades, he built Chesapeake from a small wildcatter into one of the world's biggest natural gas producers before resigning in 2013, following a corporate governance crisis and investor concerns over his heavy spending.

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Carl Icahn led the shareholder revolt that provoked McClendon's deposition in 2013.

American business magnate T. Boone Pickens has noted that McClendon was a true American entrepreneur and a major player in leading the energy renaissance in America. After stepping down as Chesapeake CEO in 2013, he founded American Energy Partners in Oklahoma City. He was a great-nephew of former Oklahoma Governor Robert Kerr, co-founder of USA oil-and-gas pioneer Kerr-McGee Corp.

A department spokesman declined comment when asked what prompted the federal antitrust investigation into the industry.

The companies spun off from American Energy Partners will probably survive while the fate of other, less mature ventures will depend on their individual circumstances, said Rowland, who left Chesapeake in 2010 and went on to found IOG Capital, a Dallas-based energy investment firm.

Leasehold interests usually include the right to develop the land and to extract oil and natural gas for a period of time, typically three to five years. The company said in a statement Thursday that it will continue in McClendon's absence. One trip taking his family to Amsterdam and Paris cost $108,000 and was listed as a business expense, according to a Reuters report.