The company was created last year when Aubrey McClendon's American Energy - Permian Basin LLC, a company he founded in 2014 shortly after being ousted from Chesapeake Energy Corp, merged with its parent company in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy. McClendon died in 2016 in a fiery one-car crash in Oklahoma. He built Chesapeake from a small wildcatter into one of the world's biggest natural gas producers before resigning in 2013, after a corporate governance crisis and investor concerns over his heavy spending.