In an effort to decrease U.S. dependence on foreign oil imports and increase demand for U.S. natural gas, in July 2011, we announced our plan to create Chesapeake NG Ventures Corporation (CNGV), which is dedicated to identifying and investing in companies and technologies that have the potential to replace the use of gasoline and diesel derived primarily from imported oil with domestic oil, natural gas and natural gas-to-liquids fuels. We believe this plan, if successful, will benefit our industry and will also lower energy costs to American consumers, enhance national security, stimulate economic growth, create new high-paying jobs and improve the environment. To fund our commitment, we intend to redirect approximately 1 – 2% of our forecasted annual drilling and completion budget away from efforts to increase natural gas supply toward projects that instead are designed to stimulate natural gas demand. Over a 10-year period, we anticipate investing at least $1.0 billion in CNGV initiatives seeking breakthroughs in scalable, natural gas-focused technologies. To date, we have committed approximately $315 million in total to three separate ventures. In 2011, we agreed to invest $150 million in newly issued convertible promissory notes of Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (Nasdaq:CLNE), based in Seal Beach, California, to help CLNE accelerate the build-out of LNG fueling infrastructure for heavy-duty trucks at truck stops across interstate highways in the U.S. Also in 2011, we agreed to invest $155 million in preferred equity securities of Sundrop Fuels, Inc., a privately held cellulosic biofuels company based in Longmont, Colorado to fund construction of a waste biomass-based "green gasoline" plant, capable of annually producing more than 40 million gallons of gasoline from natural gas and cellulosic material. More recently, in 2012, we pledged an initial $10 million towards a collaboration with 3M (NYSE:MMM) to design, manufacture and market a broad portfolio of compressed natural gas tanks for use in all sectors of the U.S. transportation market.​