South Korea's SK in talks with U.S. oil co-source

Feb 14 (Reuters) - South Korea's SK Group is in talks to take over privately held U.S. oil and gas company Chaparral Energy, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The talks were previously reported by South Korean financial publication Money Today, which said that SK was in talks to buy a controlling stake of the U.S. company for 2 trillion won ($1.77 billion).

Private equity firm CCMP owns 36 percent of Chaparral and the company's chairman and chief executive, Mark Fischer, owns 26 percent, according to a February 2011 presentation. Chesapeake Energy has a 20 percent stake in the company and Altoma Energy owns around 15 percent.

Chaparral finished 2010 with reserves of about 149.3 million barrels of oil equivalent, with core assets in central Oklahom and the state's Anadarko Basin region, as well as the Permian Basin in West Texas.

Around 53 percent of the company's production is oil, an attribute that makes Chaparral attractive to potential buyers as natural gas prices have plummeted in recent months.

Chaparral and SK Group could not be immediately reached for comment.