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Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling in Foreign waters

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Is this a case of "NIMBY" when it comes to environmental issues?

* AUGUST 18, 2009

Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.

The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.

This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html#
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Update: Who else besides Obama has taken an interest in Petrobras? Hmmmmmm:

His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

Soros is taking advantage of the spread between the two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, said Luis Maizel, president of LM Capital Group LLC, which manages about $4 billion. The common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. …

Petrobras preferred shares have also a 10 percent additional dividend, said William Landers, a senior portfolio manager for Latin America at Blackrock Inc.

“Given that there will most likely never be a change in control in the company, I see no reason to pay a higher price for the common shares.” Brazil’s government controls Petrobras and has a majority stake of voting shares.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.V5sgGzdsQY
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
More to the story, it seems. Wouldn't this be a kick in the butt. Anybody else know anything about this?

Almost sounds like the US is being sold off in pieces to pay off debts. I guess it's profitable for Soros to be chummy with Obama.

Anybody starting to wonder who the "domestic enemies" are yet?

According to reports from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, President Barack Obama has generously agreed to lend $2 billion to the oil industry for the purpose of offshore drilling. Those of you who have been proponents of this for some time now are probably thinking that the president has finally come to his senses and has taken the first of many concrete steps required in order to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Not so fast.

Like everything else coming out of the Obama administration, there’s more to this than meets the eye. The government is not lending the money (your money, actually) so that our domestic oil industry can drill offshore and in oil-rich areas with proven reserves such as the Gulf of Mexico. Rather, the government is lending the money to Brazil, so that they can drill offshore and in the Gulf of Mexico.

The recipient of this great act of generosity is Brazil’s quasi-public national oil company, Petrobras, which will use the money for the exploration and drilling of 270 sites in the Gulf of Mexico and over 200 more off the coast of Brazil itself.

For those not knowing much about Petrobras, here are a few interesting facts:

• The Company has been run since 2005 by José Sergio Gabrielli, a firebrand socialist member of Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party.

Brazil’s socialist government holds 40% of Petrobras’ shares. The Communist Chinese–who have been guaranteed a supply of 200,000 barrels of oil a day for ten years by the Brazilians in exchange for a $10 billion loan from China’s government earlier this year–also own a significant stake in Petrobras.

• Petrobras’ largest individual shareholder, by far, is none other than leftist billionaire George Soros, whose hedge fund, by some remarkable coincidence, increased its holdings in Petrobras just prior to Obama’s loan announcement.

• Petrobras is currently under investigation by Brazil’s Congress amid allegations that it has padded contracts and paid off politicians.

So the Brazilians will soon be taking oil from the Gulf of Mexico, one of the richest oil fields in the world (and where, until recently, environmentalist protestations have thwarted any drilling attempts by our own government). And, it seems, they will have plenty of company. China, India, Norway, Spain and Russia, to name a few, have all signed agreements with countries bordering the Gulf, such as Cuba and the Bahamas, enabling them to initiate exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico as well.

Within the next two years, when rigs proudly displaying the flags of Brazil, China, Russia, Cuba and other countries are extracting oil right off our coast in order to fuel their economies, take note of the fact that the one flag you won’t be seeing is the Stars and Stripes. For that, you may have to visit a wind farm.

http://newsrealblog.com/2009/08/25/obama-to-the-world-come-and-take-our-oil/
 
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