Marc Rowland: We set aside 25 million shares to do that and we have been in discussions with various parties over the last two to three months to try and clean up some of the deals that were discussed in a different economic environment than the one that we''re in.

David Tameron (Wachovia Capital Markets, LLC): Working capital is an issue for all CFOs right now throughout the industry. What is your monthly working cap number?

Marc Rowland: Working capital basically swings from a high point in the end of the month for us, receiving all of our revenues for oil and gas sales and our hedging gains concentrated in the last few days of the month to the mid part to the third week of the month being the low point, which is three or three and a half weeks later. We''ve paid all of our bills and CapEx and so forth for the month with basically no revenue.
Thus if you basically look at our revenue on a monthly basis and just think that that''s our revenue swing or our working capital swing, that''s about what we do. It''s $700 million to $900 million per month depending on prices.

Gil Yang (Citigroup): What''s the terminal decline rate you''re using in the Haynesville and how many years do you model that getting out to?

Steve Dixon: The terminal decline''s 5% and that’s probably 8 to 10 years.

Marc Rowland: I think I saw one about a week ago and it may be in the 10 to 15 year time period. I think it gets down to 6% or 7% by year 8, 9 or 10 years.

Steve Dixon: Actually what we see in older shale plays like back East in those Devonian shales, they''re 3%. Thus we''re just artificially cutting these all off at 5%.

Marc Rowland: We have Devonian shale wells in Appalachia that have been producing for more than 100 years. These shales should continue to bleed in for a long time.

Gil Yang (Citigroup): If you get to investment grade at the end of 2010, some of your carries will be rolling off. What will then be happening to Chesapeake at that time? Will capital spending need to rise to fill the void left by the carries or do you see yourself going to 20% debt-to-cap by 2012?

Marc Rowland: I haven''t modeled it out to really think about it that carefully. The carries don''t roll off at the end of 2010. We''ve talked about a 2009 and 2010 budget and how much of the carries are in place, but actually I think about half of the carry still remains going forward from that point and I wouldn''t focus too much on the end of 2010 being different.
If we are a crossover or if we are investment grade, I really don''t see much changing and that''s why we''re not in such a flurry to get to investment grade. Our debt will still be outstanding or most of it from the senior not standpoint. What is callable will be callable at a premium. I don''t know what interest rate environment we''ll be in but I presume it will possibly be substantially higher than we are today and our current rates on our existing non-investment grade debt might be actually quite attractive and we may just keep it all in place.

Aubrey McClendon: I might just add that what we would see on the asset side, though, again is this continued differential widening between what happens on finding costs. I think that what we would see in 2011 and 2012 is I would expect our finding costs to be lower in the Big 4 shale plays than they are today on a combination of better efficiencies and perhaps lower cost, while at the same time our conventional assets probably do not get better over time and therefore require a higher gas price than we''ve seen in the last couple of years to make those plays work.

Thomas Gardner (Simmons & Company International): With respect to the Haynesville, can you address the gross off take capacity constraints?

Aubrey McClendon: We have said publicly in the past that we think a takeaway capacity will come into play in terms of restraining the overall growth of the Haynesville. However, we''ve been very proactive in establishing our own corporate takeaway capacity. You might have seen us take a Bcf a day of capacity on the latest pipe out of the area, the Tiger pipeline that''s an energy transfer project. That takes us up to 1.8 Bcf a day of firm transport; so we have our needs covered for quite some time.
With regard to how the whole play develops, it really depends a lot on gas prices and what happens to Barnett production. If Barnett production is close to a peak as the rig count in the Barnett has declined from around 200 rigs to around 120 or so today, this huge surge of production that we''ve seen out of the Barnett that has hurt gas prices throughout East Texas and into Louisiana will back off some and maybe even create some capacity at Carthage and at Perryville, while will open up the ability or increase the ability for the Haynesville gas to come on.
What we''ve done is we know our acreage. We can model what our production does for years to come in the Haynesville and, again, taking out 1.8 Bcf a day of firm transport from that play and so believe that while others may struggle to get their gas out, we will be in good shape.

Joseph Allman (J.P. Morgan): You previously spoke about five oil resource plays, and one of them is Wayloo. Any update on the other oil plays?

Aubrey McClendon: One has for sure not worked. We are working on a couple of others. Of course, probably none of them work at $35 oil. Hence we''re continuing to press forward there.
The challenges of finding new plays of significance do support what we said about shales on the gas side, which is we think the major ones have all been found. A number of shale plays have not worked in the last couple of years. We''ve discovered a few that have and they''re big and they''re important but to keep that in perspective, we don''t believe that we''re going to see additional Barnett, Haynesville, Fayettevilles or Marcelluses developed in years to come. There''s just simply no place for them to hide in the stratographic column after the industry has spent so much time and effort identifying shales over the last five years.
It''s tough to move oil through shales and that''s why there''s so few oil shale plays that work. We still have a shot at a couple of them working but that''s tough business to go out and find shales that allow oil to move through them. We are certainly encouraged by a couple of results that we have but we''ll wait until later in the year to decide if they''re going to be commercial. A lot of it is going to depend on price.

Eric Calamares (Wachovia): Could we get a little more clarity as to what the potential monetization strategies might be for later this year? Is it something where it would look similar to what we''ve already seen or are there different types of things that could potentially be offered up?

Aubrey McClendon: What we''ve talked about in the past is a VPP and also some JVs.

Marc Rowland: The four or five things that we''ve spoken about include VPPs. They include sale of some properties. They include some sale-leaseback transactions; we''re in the process of negotiating a sale and leaseback on some of our surface locations. They include the joint venture projects that we talked about. All of those things are still on the table. There is also the midstream partnership or monetization of some of those assets, which is still very active as well.
Hence nothing has changed in regard to those things proceeding. Obviously, it''s been a volatile time and one of the reasons we wanted to secure the debt that we used to pay down our revolver was because the timing and the amount and the price variability of all of these things is always in question and when you''re relying on some other party to come to the table and write you a check for any of those transactions, we don''t have a specific date. None of these things are in ink but they''re all in process.

Eric Calamares (Wachovia): Regarding lifting hedges at least to 2010 that is presumably going to be partially gas price driven. Can you give an indication as to what size we might be looking at for that?

Marc Rowland: You can look at our hedge position, which is outlined in the outlook for 2010 and know that that''s the maximum that we could do. It''s a big volume and so we''re not going to wake up one morning and say we''re going to remove all of our hedges. Just like we legged into those hedges, I suspect, if we do anything and that''s not certain either, it''ll be a leg out kind of a deal.
However, we''ve spoken about being well hedged in 2009. We still think that there''s a possibility of downside to prices during this year and so we''ve only talked about the possibility again, not even the probability but the possibility that if we do anything it''ll be for 2010 time range and probably the back half of 2010.