George Soros, Obama's Brazilian Oil Man

Last August there was much criticism over the fact that President Obama agreed to give Brazilian Owned Oil Company Petrobras up to $10 Billion Dollars to look for Oil off the Brazil Coast.  At the time it was especially disturbing because the Administration objected to the US Drilling off its own coast, which would have worked toward keeping the price of oil low and help wean us off foreign oil.

Today it is even more disconcerting, Obama's drilling moratorium may have been blocked by a judge today, but Secretary of Interior Salazar intends to announce a new one tomorrow.   And the longer this "moratorium" lasts, the more likely we are to see the Oil Rigs in the gulf move down to Brazil where they are planning to drill for oil in seas twice as deep as the Deepwater Horizon site.

Why would the POTUS pay for a foreign country to drill for oil but object to his own country taking advantage of his own country's resources? And worse why would he fund the oil drilling of another country for it to "steal away" drilling resources from the Gulf sites? Payback.

Last August Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discovered that "coincidentally" just a few days before the announcement of the US Oil Exploration Aid, George Soros the presidential puppet-master, set himself up to make a lot more money from Brazilian Oil Exploration:

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.

NICE!  Making money on the spread, and putting himself in a position to make more money from higher dividends just before all the big bucks "donation" from President Obama. Soros must be master of the deal or Obama is the master of the quid quo pro.

According to Front Page Magazine, this Petrobras deal was put in place by the President as a nice way to say thank you to Mr Soros.

Now it’s time for Soros to collect on his investment. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Obama administration has committed up to $10 billion to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance oil exploration off of Brazil’s coast.

Yet Obama historically has opposed expanded oil drilling. This was not only a strategic decision, aimed at pleasing the environmental Left, but also a personal choice, since Obama sincerely believes that drilling is deeply destructive to the natural environment. Thus, as a Senator, Obama voted against permitting the U.S. to drill for oil and natural gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the grounds that it would be a crime to despoil such “beautiful real estate.” Similarly, during last year’s presidential campaign, he warned of the “environmental consequences” of oil drilling, and insisted that “we cannot drill our way out of the [energy] problem.”

But apparently George Soros can. The president has elected to help another nation with the same type of drilling that he opposes so vehemently for this country, and the reason seems to be Soros’s $811-millon investment in Petrobras. The company just happens to be the largest holding in Soros’s investment fund. Soros’s connection to the company is no secret; he has been investing in Petrobras since 2007. A profitable venture, Petrobras has estimated recoverable reserves for the so-called Tupi oil field of between 5 and 8 billion barrels. With his billion-dollar loan, Obama has taken patronage politics to striking new level.

The Petrobras loan may be a windfall for Soros and Brazil, but it is a bad deal for the US. The administration is prepared to lend up to $10 billion to a foreign company to drill off its coast, when it could bring in $1.7 trillion in government revenue, as well as create thousands of new jobs, by allowing drilling off the coast of the United States.

....The oil deal stinks for other reasons, as well. For instance, there is the rank hypocrisy of Soros – an enthusiastic proponent of global warming theory and environmental liberalism – investing in the fossil fuels whose use he otherwise condemns – and doing so in part with the aid of taxpayer funds. For years, Soros has urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would punish companies that contribute to global warming. But that didn’t prevent him from plowing money into Petrobras.

The cozy Soros-Obama alliance goes beyond favorable oil deals. It’s also playing a role in the health care debate. Huge demonstrations dedicated to enacting Obama’s universal health care are largely a Soros-financed operation. When tens of thousands of people rallied in the nation’s capital in support of Obama’s health care plan, the demonstrations were organized by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), a new national grassroots movement of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states encompassing 30 million people dedicated to winning health reform now.

The “grassroots” organization appears to be more like a gang of interconnected ultra-liberal pressure groups. Among the 21 members of its steering committee are such Soros-funded groups as ACORN, MoveOn.org, and the Center for American Progress (CAP), headed by Clinton former chief of staff John Podesta, who also has been a key adviser to Obama. Soros’s charity, the Open Society Institute, in 2007 gave CAP $1.75 million and approved added grants of $1.25 million.

Obama’s collusion with Soros and his agenda-driven squadrons is an unfortunate turn from an administration that entered office promising unprecedented transparency in the White House. Soros certainly did his share for Obama. Now, with his backing for a billion-dollar oil loan to a Brazilian company, the president has proven more generous to Soros than to the American voters who put him in office.

 There is that Old Saying, Payback's a bitch. Obama's ten billion dollar gift to Petrobras along with the drilling moratorium designed to give the Brazil-based company partially owned by his good friend George Soros, proves that sometimes payback is not a bitch, its a wallet fatten-er.