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Imagine how you’d feel if instead of paying you the usual $5,000 a month, your employer suddenly whittled your paycheck down to $500 a month – in order to pay for your boss’s new private jet. Well, that’s pretty much how thousands of landowners who leased their land to natural gas giant, Chesapeake Energy feel right about now.
When we think of the downside of the natural gas boom in this country, we usually think of the potential of environmental harm. But as residents in places like Pennsylvania and West Virginia are discovering, financial hazards lay in the weeds as well. This week’s guest on Sea Change Radio, award-winning journalist, Abrahm Lustgarten, of Pro Publica, discusses his recent investigation that has exposed alleged mass-scale financial wrongdoing by Chesapeake Energy, one of the nation’s biggest oil and gas companies. Lustgarten will explain how sometimes when you make a deal with the devil, you get burned.