In May, Oklahoma City-based SandRidge Energy Inc., known at the time as Riata Energy Inc., announced that Tom L. Ward planned to purchase a 41% stake in the company from founder Malone Mitchell and become its largest shareholder. Following the transaction, Ward became chairman and chief executive. The move was no small change for Ward, who was president and chief operating officer of Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp., which he founded with Aubrey McClendon in 1989. Under Ward and McClendon, who remains at Chesapeake as chairman and chief executive, the producer rose from limited capital access to proved reserves of some 8.1 trillion cubic feet of gas equivalent. Ward decided earlier this year that he enjoyed growing the small Chesapeake more than running what had grown into the third-largest U.S. independent. During a brief retirement, he was presented with the opportunity at SandRidge, a company much like the size of Chesapeake a decade ago with a focused asset base in West Texas, additional acreage and production in the Anadarko and Arkoma basins of Oklahoma and a largely undeveloped acreage position in the Piceance Basin of northwestern Colorado. For more on this, see the November issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-260-6441.

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