Some Help For George Soros

On his trip to Brazil last week, President Barack Obama promised the Brazilians our help in developing Brazil’s oil resources. Then he promised to buy the oil.  The statement seemed puzzling, given that Mr. Obama shut down drilling off the Gulf Coast, and now, having reinstated it, is permitting his Interior Department to drag its feet on issuing new permits to explore the Gulf for oil. But explaining this curious position is hardly difficult. Mr. Obama, you see, will also fund oil development in New Guinea, Fuel Fix.com revealed last week.That’s right. New Guinea. And what do Brazil and New Guinea have in common? George Soros, billionaire Master of the Universe, who has invested his billions in both places. Here are the facts: “Despite this economically disruptive backlog,” Fuelfix.com reports, “the Bureau of Ocean Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) has assigned only six drilling engineers to process all permit applications pending in the Gulf of Mexico. While Michael Bromwich bemoans a lack of the staff necessary to speed up the process, he’s sending his staffers to Papua New Guinea to advise its officials on ways to develop the country’s offshore drilling infrastructure. A significant portion of the agency’s budget is covered by fees, royalties, taxes, and rents from energy production, so curtailing drilling closes off cash flow too.” As well, American Thinker’s Ed Lasky explains that Soros “has a huge ownership interest in a company called InterOil (stock symbol IOC), whose one major asset is reportedly a huge reservoir of natural gas in New Guinea. He has been increasing his ownership stake in recent months and, as of last November, showed an 11.9% ownership stake. His InterOil holding is the third-largest stock holding in his hedge fund.” So for a second time Mr. Obama is helping Soros, who showered candidate Obama with millions through various fronts and has created a constellation of anti-Christian leftist organizations to wreak havoc upon the Republic. He is now using Media Matters, the leftist media watchdog, to wage war against Fox News and conservatives he does not like. That operation may well violate the group’s tax-exempt status. Anyway, remember what Mr. Obama said in Brazil: “We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.” How much is that? While American companies file 3,000-page applications and workers remain unemployed, Obama gave Petrobas permission to launch a floating production storage facility 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Recall that in 2009, the Obama Adminstration committed $2 billion from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to drill for oil off Brazil’s coast. Coincidentally, just a few days before that announcement, Soros sold 22 million shares of Petrobas stock, Bloomberg News reported, and bought 5.8 million of its shares traded in the United States. Asked Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com, “Is it a coincidence that Obama backer George Soros repositioned himself in Petrobras to get dividends just a few days before Obama committed $2 billion in loans and guarantees for Petrobras’ offshore operations?” Good question. Much more can be said of the Obama-Soros connection. It suffices to say that Mr. Obama doesn’t mind drilling for oil. He simply seems averse to doing so where it does more good for his countrymen than it does for a contributor to his cause.

( Original Aritcle )

The Daily News Record: Editorial Opinion.

Soros Wins Under Obama’s Energy Policies

By Ed Lasky

Are Barack Obama’s energy policies influenced by hedge fund billionaire and political patron, George Soros?

Abby Wisse Schacter, in the New York Post, notes that the Obama administration is clamping down on oil and gas development in America (both onshore and offshore) but is hell-bent on helping other nation’s tap their resources and points out that such help is being showered specifically in New Guinea, of all places.

It is starting to look obvious that the administration doesn’t want oil exploration and extraction at home while it is promoting the same exploration and extraction elsewhere — specifically Brazil and New Guinea. “The Bureau of Ocean Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) has assigned only six drilling engineers to process all permit applications pending in the Gulf of Mexico. While Michael Bromwich bemoans a lack of the staff necessary to speed up the process, he’s sending his staffers to Papua New Guinea to advise its officials on ways to develop the country’s offshore drilling infrastructure. A significant portion of the agency’s budget is covered by fees, royalties, taxes, and rents from energy production, so curtailing drilling closes off cash flow too.

Others have commented on Obama’s generosity regarding Brazil’s oil wealth and how those actions might help George Soros.

But focus should now turn towards the exotic land of New Guinea.

New Guinea? Why there? Why is he using our taxpayer dollars to help energy development in New Guinea? Hasn’t Secretary of the Interior Salazar bemoaned that his budget is just not large enough to process all the drilling permits submitted for tapping America’s oil and gas wealth? Why are he and the President devoting staff and money to help that undeveloped island nation?

Perhaps, he just wants to pay back George Soros, who was so instrumental in helping his election and the election of fellow Democrats across America. George Soros is the Patron Saint of the Democratic Party and was a very early and generous supporter of Barack Obama’s.  Soros even used a loophole in Federal campaign laws that allowed him and his family to give outsized donations to Barack Obama; he also fielded his army of so-called 527 groups (such as MoveOn.Org) to help Obama win the Oval Office.

Soros also stands to massively benefit if New Guinea becomes an energy power, especially if the American taxpayer subsidizes this development.

As I have written before (see Cheap Natural Gas and Its Enemies; Cheap Natural Gas and its Democratic Enemies) George Soros, through his hedge fund, has a huge ownership interest in a company called InterOil (stock symbol IOC), whose one major asset is reportedly a huge reservoir of natural gas in New Guinea. He has been increasing his ownership stake in recent months and, as of last November, showed an 11.9% ownership stake.  His InterOil holding is the third-largest stock holding in his hedge fund.

InterOil has been subject to some controversy — there are some investors who are shorting the stock, thinking that the reserves may not be as large as claimed and that it will be very difficult to develop them given the problems with developing energy resources in such an undeveloped nation and the heavy expenses overcoming those problems entail.

The stock has been soaring upward, along with the rise in energy prices. The move may also be related to the prospect that Japan will rely more on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports (from Asian nations such as New Guinea) to power its economy in the wake of its nuclear energy problems.

But there may also be a short squeeze propelling the stock upwards. This occurs when people sell the stock short. Shorting happens when investors think a stock will fall in price. They borrow the stock from others and then sell it. They hope to be able to replace the stock they borrowed by buying it back in the market after the stock price has declined. They profit if the price they pay to buy it back (and return it to the people they borrowed it from is lower than the price they sold it at).

The nightmare for short-sellers is when the price of the stock moves contrary to what they hoped, and it moves up. Then the pain and bloodletting starts. They may face margin calls. They have to see their shorts decline in value as the stock price moves up. They may eventually be forced to buy back the stock at ever high prices. Sometimes, if there is a large short position in terms of the percentage of the stock float, serious pain ensues as the stock shoots upwards when they are compelled to meet margin calls and cut their losses. Being caught on the wrong side of a short squeeze is akin to being subject to the Wall Street equivalent of water-boarding.

Meanwhile, those who own the stock (are “long” the stock) are happily counting their riches as the value of their stock soars. They laugh all the way to the bank, as the shorts lie bloodied, bruised, and defeated, all but begging for mercy.

How can one help engineer a short squeeze? One proven way is to foster a positive news flow that boosts the prospects for the stock and send its shares upwards. Sometimes, public relations firms are involved as they spin out a series of “news” items that promise untold riches to come from a company and its shareholders (a new product, new customers and contracts, the possible sale of the company).

However, the hype can go into overdrive if you partner up with a more powerful and richer partner — say, the United States of America.

In the case of InterOil, one big positive development has been Barack Obama’s decision to invest taxpayer dollars in stoking the development of energy resources in New Guinea. InterOil disproportionally benefits from the steps Barack Obama has taken in New Guinea since InterOil’s assets are dominated by its New Guinea operations. InterOil will not have to spend its own money to develop (basically, build from the ground up) the infrastructure that is needed to fully tap the wealth that lies under the leases that InterOil has in New Guinea.

Instead, the American taxpayer picks up the tab. Sweet deal. We pay the costs and InterOil (along with its major shareholder, George Soros) picks up the profits.

The market sees what is going on, even if the American taxpayers do not. The American government is picking favorites and InterOil is one of them.

Has Barack Obama  made American taxpayers complicit in engineering a short squeeze in InterOil stock by deciding to help build up the nascent energy industry in, of all places, New Guinea?

This is far from the first time that political patrons of Barack Obama have minted money from his energy policies (for a partial list of the members of Barack Obama’s “Friends and Family Program” who have benefited from his waste of taxpayer dollars on green schemes see Obama’s Edifice Complex).

To compound the insult to American taxpayers, much of government spending comes from borrowing money from other nations, such as China. That nation is a huge energy importer. The Chinese would be among the first beneficiaries of the development of New Guinea energy resources. Why aren’t the Chinese paying to develop New Guinea’s energy wealth?

We won’t be the beneficiaries from the spending of tax dollars in New Guinea? We may actually be the losers from all that spending.

We have an abundance of natural gas (due to the tapping of our own shale gas reserves); we don’t need LNG. We have such vast amounts of natural gas that ports that were built to import LNG are being reconfigured to export LNG. Why is Obama spending our tax dollars to help a foreign competitor while increasing taxes exponentially on  American oil and gas companies? Why encourage New Guinea to develop its LNG capability to export to China, Japan, and other nations when we can and should export our own LNG to them?

But helping America’s oil and gas industry (and helping lower the energy bills for Americans) is not and never has been on the agenda of Barack Obama.

Obama’s rewarding his friends and donors, who no doubt will reciprocate by supporting him in 2012, is Cook County Politics writ large. That modus operandi has always guided him.

Does his agenda include helping further enrich George Soros, sugar daddy of the Democratic Party?

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.

( Original Aritcle )

American Thinker: Soros Wins Under Obama’s Energy Policies.

Soros Posts ‘Obama Doctrine’ on Website

by Tom McGregor

When it comes to Middle East policy, President Barack Obama claims, “I’ve got no doctrine.” Nevertheless, many of the talking points and key issues that he raises in regards to Arab issues are remarkably similar to the statements made by the website of the Center for American Progress, which is a think tank largely funded by billionaire currency and oil speculator and hedge fund trader, George Soros, a financier of global leftist political organizations.

According to Politico, “in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, President Obama brushed aside the suggestion that his approach to Libya could be replicated in other countries, like Syria.”

Obama said, “I think it’s important not to take this particular situation and then try to project some sort of Obama Doctrine that we’re going to apply in a cookie-cutter fashion across the board. Each country in this region is different. Our principles remain the same.”

As reported by Politico, “Obama called Libya a ‘unique situation’ and said that he isn’t ‘going to go around trying to use military force to impose or apply certain forms of government.’ He added, ‘We may not be applying the same tools in each country, in every case.”

Additionally, Obama provided this answer when asked if he’s pondering arming Libyan rebels: “I’m not ruling it out. But I’m also not ruling it in.”

Posted on the website of the Center for American Progress is an article entitled, “The United States Needs to Develop a Broad Middle East Policy.”

To read the entire article from Politico, link here: To learn more details about the Obama Doctrine, link here:

Tommcgregor@cri.com.cn

( Original Article )

dallasblog.com

Countdown to DesertXpress begins

March 28, 2011

States and regions across the country are working tirelessly to realize President Obama’s vision for American high-speed rail.  And on Friday, I had the pleasure of joining Nevada Senator Harry Reid to announce that construction on the DesertXpress corridor between Las Vegas and Southern California will soon get underway.

The DesertXpress project cleared a major hurdle last Friday when the Federal Railroad Administration released its final environmental impact statement.

DesertXpress promises travel times of 85 minutes between Victorville, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada.  This cuts the existing drive–three hours under the best conditions and nearly twice as long in traffic–in half.  Sitting in congestion for four, five and even six hours along I-15 is especially brutal for travelers paying sky high gas prices.

But high-speed rail means much more than a shorter trip from California to Las Vegas.  It means jobs, and it means reinvigorated American manufacturing.

Already, 30 rail companies from around the world have pledged that, if they’re selected for high-speed rail contracts, they will hire American workers and expand their bases of operations in the United States.  And the administration’s 100 percent “Buy America” requirement will generate a powerful ripple effect throughout the supply chain.

Just think about the possibility.  Factory workers building electric-powered trains.  Engineers laying new track.  Conductors, operators and ticket-takers helping passengers speed to their destinations.  Americans of every trade advancing down the track to a better future.

With US Senator Harry Reid and Nevada Department of Transportation Director Susan Martinovich

And those are just the direct ripple-effects.  High-speed rail also means economic development.  As Nevada Senator Harry Reid said:

“This announcement brings us one small step away from tens of thousands of new jobs not only through the project’s construction, but by boosting our tourism.  This line will connect tourists from southern California to our state’s great attractions like the Las Vegas Strip and the Hoover Dam. This announcement is excellent news for our state’s economic recovery.”

With US Senator Harry Reid announcing the DesertXpress EIS release

DesertXpress will give people a safe, convenient transportation alternative to the notoriously congested I-15.   And in a time of enormous economic challenge, it will create quality jobs.

This is the promise high-speed rail offers communities across the country.  This is how America wins the future.

Source

Related articles

• Now Obama Wants To Build A $5 Billion Bullet Train From Las Vegas To Nowhere (businessinsider.com)
• Amanda Carpenter destroys Harry Reid’s “Rail Solyndra” – in 140 character chunks (erickbrockway.com)

The Obamatorium on Offshore Drilling: 301 Days and Counting

March 24, 2011

Statement from Jim Adams, President and CEO,
Offshore Marine Service Association

The Obamatorium on Offshore Drilling: 301 Days and Counting

(New Orleans, Louisiana) – March 24, 2011  “It’s been 301 days since the Obama Administration imposed a 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling, and 163 days since they ‘ended’ it.  And now President Obama wants credit for issuing the first new deep water exploration permit,” Jim Adams, President and CEO Offshore Marine Service Association said today.  “One permit, two or three permits being served crumb by crumb is not enough.”

“We need an Administration that wants to provide the regulatory clarity that enables companies to plan and employees to know they will have work,” said Adams.  “While the Obama administration is busy patting itself on the back for a single permit, businesses are closing, employees are losing their jobs and the price of gasoline continues to rise.”

“It’s time for the Obama Administration to support the American offshore energy industry with the same enthusiasm that it heaps upon Brazilian offshore companies and Brazilian offshore workers.”

OMSA represents the owners and operators of U.S. flag offshore service vessels and the shipyards and other businesses that support that industry.

( Original Article )

The Obamatorium on Offshore Drilling: 301 Days and Counting | OFFSHORE MARINE SERVICE ASSOCIATION.

Drilling Ken Salazar

by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

After two years of practicing unrepentant contempt for science, jobs, law and truth, why should Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s words mean anything anymore? While President Obama promotes offshore drilling overseas thousands of miles away in Brazil, Salazar now promises to revitalize America’s oil and gas industry. It’s like Jack “Dr. Death” Kevorkian promoting himself as a lifesaving CPR specialist.

This week, Salazar announced that the administration has just approved the first deepwater oil and gas exploration plan since last spring’s BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Mind you: This is not a granting of permits, but a green light for Shell Offshore to seek drilling permits for three new exploratory wells off the Louisiana coast. Shell first submitted and received approval for its original exploration plan in 1985 — 26 red tape-wrapped years ago.

Salazar’s make-believe resurrection of American offshore and onshore drilling began a few weeks ago, when the Interior Department Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement issued a deepwater drilling permit to Noble Energy for a well at the Santiago project about 70 miles off the Louisiana coast. But as Louisiana political analyst and blogger Scott McKay pointed out, “This isn’t a permit for a new project. The permit issued to Noble was for a bypass of an obstruction in a well they’d already drilled before the Deepwater Horizon accident. It took 314 days to get that well back online with this administration.”

Nevertheless, Obama oil czar Michael Bromwich claimed credit for the decision and insisted the project be treated as a new well. So this is how Democrats win the future: crushing industries with one hand while patting themselves on the back for saving them.

The measly Noble Energy permit approval came months after the Obama administration purportedly “lifted” its junk science-based drilling moratorium — and only after federal courts repeatedly spanked Salazar and the White House for their “determined disregard” of judicial orders and “increasingly inexcusable” action on stalled deepwater drilling projects.

More than a month ago, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman ordered the Obama administration to decide within a month whether to grant a set of five permits for deepwater drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico. Feldman wrote that the foot-dragging administration’s “time delays at issue here are unreasonable” and told the feds to act in an “expeditious” manner to “restore normalcy to the Gulf region and repair the public’s faith in the administrative process.”

The Obama administration’s response? Last week, just under the wire on the judicial time limit, the White House won a stay from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Delay, baby, delay.

Unsurprisingly, the man who misled the public about scientists’ support for his overreaching moratorium now faces more charges of data doctoring. Louisiana GOP Sen. David Vitter called out Salazar and Bromwich for publicly low-balling drilling application figures. While the pair informed Congress that the administration has received fewer than 50 shallow water permits and that only six to seven deepwater permits are pending, the Obama Justice Department asserted in legal filings that “there are 270 shallow water permit applications pending, and 52 deepwater permit applications pending.” Which is it?

Jim Adams, president and CEO of the Offshore Marine Service Association (OMSA), further skewered Salazar’s book-cooking on the permit-orium: “There were 32 deepwater drilling operations already permitted when the president imposed his moratorium last year. Interior Secretary Salazar is merely allowing existing permit holders to resume their operations.”

OMSA reports that there are more than 100 deepwater development plans that have yet to be cleared to even become eligible for a permit. Salazar is “treating Gulf workers like peasants, tossing us work crumb by crumb and expecting us to be grateful,” Adams said. “We’re tired of fighting for scraps. We want to get back to work — all of us, not just a handful of crews.”

At least 13,000 jobs have been lost, according to Louisiana State University professor Joseph Mason’s latest estimates. Isn’t it high past time to send Salazar and his misery-inducing eco-radicals packing? How about exporting them to Brazil?

( Original Article )

Michelle Malkin » Let’s export Ken Salazar to Brazil.

Pressure on Chávez

Michael Rowan

If Chávez loses access to his oil money the way Qadaffi did he will have an impossible task in the 2012 election and may have to resort to military rule, which would put him in the same place as Qadaffi is in today

Opinion
To prevent a civilian bloodbath in Libya, the United Nations is imposing economic sanctions, a no-fly zone, and direct attacks on Qadaffi’s military. Member states from Africa and the Arab world have joined the UN coalition including Europe and the US. While a few countries abstained the rest of UN Security Council was unanimous on stopping Qadaffi, who is seen worldwide as a war criminal. All this is bad news for Chávez, not only because he has praised Qadaffi to the rafters as a paragon of human rights -a truly surreal assertion- but also because of what this means about Chávez and Iran.

Iran is also being sanctioned for nuclear proliferation activities and Venezuela is disregarding those sanctions by delivering oil and allegedly nuclear weapons materials such as uranium or hidden cash to pay for these illegal items. Iran says it is building a harmless nuclear power plant but UN inspectors believe differently -it’s the Iraq case with Saddam Hussein all over again. Chávez is a staunch defender of Iran who sticks his finger in the eye of the US at every opportunity on this issue. But with peaceful nuclear power plants creating havoc in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, plus the UN acting tough for the first time in decades on a war criminal, Chávez is finding virtually no world support for his pro-Iran, pro-Qadaffi, pro-war position. The US Congress, Treasury Department and State Department are taking a second look at Chávez as a state sponsor of terror and violator of sanctions.

The penalty for sanctions violations could radically reduce income of Citgo and Pdvsa, the only cash cows Venezuela owns, and both of which have already been looted of money and knowledge by the Chávez government. If Chávez loses access to his oil money the way Qadaffi did he will have an impossible task in the 2012 election and may have to resort to military rule, which would put him in the same place as Qadaffi is in today. You’d think that someone who had a trillion dollars pass thru his hands since 1999 and who gave 100 million dollars to buy influence around the world would be less isolated than that.
michaelrowan22@gmail.com

( Original Article )

Michael Rowan / Pressure on Chávez – Daily News – EL UNIVERSAL.

More oil needs to come from North America

By Larry J. Richardson

For U.S. energy security, the best antidote to curtailed oil production in North Africa and the Middle East lies in North America. We have billions of barrels of oil beneath the ground and in deep water off the U.S. coast and in the vast Athabasca oil-sands formations in Canada.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of oil resources in this part of the world, especially the potential for increased imports from our friendly neighbor to the north, what with the conflict in Libya threatening to spread to other oil- producing countries from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

The fact is that the Middle East holds 57 percent of the world’s total oil reserves and 30 percent of global oil production. The United States relies on oil imports for almost two-thirds of its needs, but just 20 percent of the imports come from the Middle East. Nonetheless, because oil is a world commodity, Americans are not immune to shortages or soaring prices.

What is clear is that we urgently need an energy policy to protect us against the possibility that Middle East imports might be curtailed. Until the time comes when the U.S. auto fleet is fueled by electric batteries and homes are heated with geothermal and solar energy, we are going to need oil. If we don’t produce it in the United States, more oil will need to be imported from abroad.

Yet the Obama administration has forbidden drilling in new offshore areas and hasn’t done enough to expedite the issuance of permits for oil production on land. An estimated 116 billion barrels of oil underlie federal areas, on land and offshore. Keeping the oil in the ground is not doing us any good.

Nor is it clear why the U.S. State Department has yet to approve plans for a major pipeline that would carry Canadian oil to refineries in Texas, where it would be turned into petroleum products like gasoline and diesel for use around the United States. You can be sure that if we don’t make use of Canadian oil, China and other Asian countries will.

Without Canadian oil, we would be even more dependent on the Middle East. In fact, Canada is currently our No. 1 source of imported oil, supplying 2.5 million barrels daily. But with the planned Keystone XL pipeline, Canada’s oil shipments to the United States are projected to double by 2020, reaching 5 million barrels a day, 40 percent of U.S. imports.

Canada is home to the Athabasca oil sands in northern Alberta. They hold an estimated 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, more than double Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves, of which 173 billion barrels can be produced with existing technology. Today, crude oil made from oil sands accounts for half of the oil we import from Canada.

So why do we tie ourselves in knots when we have an opportunity to import more Canadian oil to meet our needs? And why pretend we don’t need oil off the Atlantic Coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico? Or that we can do without oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Anyone who questions oil’s position in the global economy, and why it is still the single most important source of energy, should keep in mind that the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency estimate that global energy use will increase about 50 percent by 2030 — with oil still providing 30 percent or more of the energy in the United States and the world.

We’re doing the best we can in Kansas to find more reserves, but we need all the help we can get to mitigate what is becoming a national problem.

Larry J. Richardson of Derby is a petroleum geologist.

( Original Article )

More oil needs to come from North America | Wichita Eagle.