I can guarantee you that any wells they are drilling right now are going to be generating a nice return on the initial capex.

Pete, I think what your friend was referring to was the assets that CHK is SELLING, not developing. Obviously when they sell they are not able to recoup the cost they paid to obtain a lot of the acreage they have because they bought in at a time when prices were high. Now demand is much lower and CHK doesn't have much leverage when buyers know they need to sell. So yes, in all their asset sales they are losing large amounts of money based on what they purchased it for. But now that their funding gap has been closed, that isn't as important as it used to be. That is entirely separate from the return they are generating off of their well production. Like I said, now that rig counts are down and they aren't having to drill like crazy to try and hold leases, they are focusing in areas where they are generating a very nice return.

Of course all this is in their investor presentations if you look.

Edit: I didn't mean the last sentence in an insulting way, just pointing out that a lot of this is detailed in their investor presentation on their website if anyone is curious. The August presentation even has a graph showing their company wide return on the wells they drill based off of their initial capex and the current production. The previous few months presentations even showed the average rate of return in all their main fields, but they seem to have taken that out in the current one.