August 15, 2008
London: Billionaire investor George Soros bought an $811 million stake in Petroleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) in the second quarter, making the Brazilian state-controlled oil company his investment fund’s largest holding.
August 20, 2009
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil, long proud of its push to develop renewable energy and wean itself off oil, has a bad case of fossil-fuel fever. An enormous offshore field in territorial waters discovered by national oil company Petrobras, — the biggest Western Hemisphere oil discovery in 30 years — has Brazilians saying, "Drill, baby, drill,"
August 21, 2009
The Obama administration 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.
For this administration to offer billions in loans to a foreign oil company is an insult to US tax payers and makes a mockery of many Obama talking points. First, why does Petrobas need loan guarantees to pursue its exploration? Petrobras, is a very large, and rich corporation, which should have the resources to get to the oil on its own. Obama, who has ripped American corporations for their supposed subsidies in American tax policy, now wants to use our empty Treasury to give cash to a Brazilian oil company. A Brazilian oil company where George Soros is heavily invested.
Next, Obama keeps insisting that we cut back on our use of fossil fuels. He and his allies in Congress have blocked exploration of American oil fields off both shores for decades, and Obama insists that we would only keep enabling our oil addiction if we started drilling off of our own coasts. Yet he has no trouble committing TWO BILLION of our money for Brazil to drill off its own coast.
Oh yeah, Obama did institute the Cash For Clunkers program in order to make us less dependent on oil, and is pushing American to drive electric midget cars while wearing solar panels on our asses and wind propellers on our heads. Sorry, what was I thinking.
2 comments:
Wait, it gets better! The actual amount I am now reading is $10 Billion, and based on the release by the Ex-Im Bank this is going to support purchases of services and supplies from US companies. My read on that is that this could be a nice new subsidy for Halliburton, who needs to replace all the business they will be losing in Iraq.
Tony, my understanding is that Halliburton's involvement with Petrobras is rather small. They are basically providing drilling fluids and waste management services.
While I'm sure US Companies will be involved, the BIG beneficiary is Soros and his 'timely' investment makes it very suspect.
Post a Comment