Aubrey McClendon, the one-time billionaire wildcatter whose meteoric rise and swift fall traced the arc of the shale revolution, died in a car crash in Oklahoma City on Wednesday morning. His death comes less than one day after McClendon, who was 56, was charged with rigging bids for oil and natural gas leases.McClendon drove his 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe “at a high rate of speed” and slammed into a bridge embankment in the northeast side of the city, Paco Balderrama of the Oklahoma City Police Department said at a press conference. The car burst into flames before responders could pull McClendon’s body from the vehicle, he said. “He pretty much drove straight into the wall,” Balderrama said, according to KFOR News Channel 4 in Oklahoma City. “The information out there at the scene is that he went left of center, went through a grassy area right before colliding into the embankment. There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct and get back on the roadway, and that didn’t occur.” McClendon’s rise in the North American energy arena was rapid. He grew to become a towering figure in the industry, building Chesapeake Energy Corp. from modest beginnings into a vast energy empire, thanks to his nimble championing of controversial hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling at a time when larger, more established players were skeptical of shale’s potential. -
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