text: Haynesville Shale — The Haynesville Shale in Northwest Louisi- 
  ana and East Texas is the shale play of which we are most proud 
  (to date) because it was discovered by Chesapeake’s own geo- 
  scientists and engineers. We conducted our geoscientific inves- 
  tigation of the Haynesville in 2005–06 and tested our theories 
  through drilling in 2007. In 2008 we formed an innovative joint 
  venture agreement with our well-respected industry partner, 
  Houston-based Plains Exploration & Production Company, to 
  which we sold 20% of our Haynesville (and Bossier) assets for 
  approximately $3.2 billion in cash and drilling carries. 
  
  The Haynesville Shale is now the nation’s largest producing 
  natural gas shale play, having just recently passed the Barnett 
  Shale in production (in last year’s letter, I incorrectly estimated 
  it would take until 2014 for the Haynesville to reach this achieve- 
  ment, a testament to the play’s enormous productive poten- 
  tial). Ultimate recoveries from the Haynesville could exceed 250 
  tcfe, likely making it one of the five largest natural gas fields 
  in the world. Today, we are producing from more than 260 net 
  wells in the Haynesville on our 530,000 net leasehold acres, 
  are currently drilling with 35 rigs and estimate we could drill 
  up to 6,300 additional net wells in the years ahead. Our gross 
  operated production in the Haynesville recently set a record of 