Chesapeake to spend $1 billion to hasten natural gas adoption as fuel

Chesapeake Energy, a major producer of natural gas from shale, said it would invest $1 billion over 10 years in companies to hasten the adoption of natural gas as a fuel for trucks and cars.

It said it had purchased $150 million of convertible bonds in Clean Energy Fuels Corp., where natural gas promoter T. Boone Pickens owns a major stake and sits on the board. Chesapeake chief executive Aubrey K. McClendon said it would help underwrite 150 liquefied natural gas refueling stations along highway trucking routes.

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Chesapeake also paid $155 million for a 50 percent ownership stake in Sundrop Fuels, a privately held cellulosic biofuels company in Colorado that will use the funds to build a biomass-based gasoline plant. That plant will use natural gas as a feedstock.