Economic meltdown and local energy companies

[wsucougz]

This is from today's WSJ regarding Chesapeake's cash position (punctuation, linefeeds and paragraphs are as published):

Chesapeake co-founder and chief executive Aubrey McClendon said his company expects to end the year with $5 billion to $6 billion in cash -- enough to keep growing without tapping the capital markets.

The company had no cash at the end of the second quarter.

"We can continue to be the number one driller in America, the number one leaser in America ... because we're a big company, we generate a lot of cash," Mr. McClendon said.

Let's hope so. It sounds like they need to horde as much cash as possible.