He was passionate about the potential for gas to replace coal for power generation and oil for transport, telling an Oklahoma TV station in 2012: “You can’t really be against hydro-fracking and say you’re an environmentalist, because immediately the default options are fuels that are much less clean than natural gas.”
At times, he seemed to be trying to transform the US energy industry by sheer force of personality.
McClendon was born into the Oklahoma oil and gas aristocracy in 1959. His great-uncle was Robert Kerr, the first homegrown governor of the state, and a founder of Kerr-McGee, one of the big names among US independent oil and gas companies until it was bought by Anadarko Petroleum in 2006.