Committed to Our Communities

The communities where we operate are also the communities where we live. We recognize the opportunity that we have been given — to be both a neighbor and an operator on someone’s land — and we approach this role with a focus on safety and stewardship. We commit to responsible operations while we also work to strengthen the areas where we do business, leaving a positive impact through economic and community support.

Strengthening the Communities We Call Home

Delivering on our business strategies provides a financial benefit to our shareholders and a positive impact on our communities. Our operations generate economic development through job creation, capital investment, tax payments to municipalities and payments to our royalty owners. In the last three years (2014 to 2016), we have paid nearly $1 billion in state and federal taxes. These funds helped facilitate infrastructure projects, education efforts and safety services. 

Working with Our Royalty Owners

Operating on someone’s land is a responsibility that Chesapeake takes seriously. We work to build long-term relationships with our royalty owners by being transparent and accessible.

Critical to this commitment is two-way communication. Our mineral and surface owners have access to our company through our local field employees, at community and industry events, and via our Owner Relations Department. The Owner Relations Department serves as a central information hub for owners, responding to inquiries about topics such as lease agreements, payments and production.

For further accessibility, the Owner Relations group has the ability for Spanish translation, and our owner administrative forms are now available in English and Spanish on our website.

It is our goal to meet owner needs directly and efficiently. Through initial communication with our Contact Center, we can determine if an individual needs to be put in touch with a specially trained or equipped employee. While it is our hope that our Owner Relations team can resolve owner communications without transfer, we recognize that sometimes additional knowledge may be necessary to get the right answers to our owners.

Each communication received by our Owner Relations team is tracked through a system that allows us to document the nature of the communications received and assign specialized employees for response, if necessary. More than just for tracking, the program creates accountability across our organization, enabling the Owner Relations group and business unit supervisors to monitor the timeliness of our owner communications.

Preparing First Responders

Partnering with local emergency responders is important to both our safety efforts and our community engagement. Many of our operations are served by rural, often volunteer, fire departments. With limited resources, it is especially important for these departments to know what to expect in an emergency and to have training on oilfield incident response. Chesapeake has a robust first responder outreach program to educate emergency responders on the lifecycle of a well and what they might expect should an incident occur.  

Social Responsibility

Another component of our community engagement is charitable support. We believe that being a responsible operator means giving back, which we do in a number of ways: