What was Obama doing in Brazil?

This past week, during the height of the disaster in Japan and the US coalition effort to set up a no-fly zone in Libya, President Obama packs his bags and head for Brazil.

For what?

To seal a deal for George Soros, the multi-billionaire socialist, maybe?

  

Back in June of 2010, towards the end of the Gulf oil spill disaster, President Obama issued a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling and within 48 hours, the George Soros-backed Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, contacted a large New Orleans company, Laborde Marine, which services the deep-water drilling market. The company was seeking to lease all its vessels. “If the moratorium on deep-water drilling is not lifted, 33 semi-submersible rigs and/or drill ships affected will simply go to other countries where they will be well received, such as Brazil,” Cliffe F. Laborde and J. Peter Laborde, Jr. wrote in a June 4 letter to their Louisiana Senators.

Prior to that, in August of 2009 the US government prepared up to $10 billion in loans to finance the development of massive hydrocarbon reserves off Brazil’s coast.

President Barack Obama’s then national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, discussed the matter with officials, back then, during a visit to the South American country, Brazilian Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo da Silva told reporters.

He said the U.S. Export-Import Bank already has signed a letter of intent in that regard with Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.

The loan is equal in value to a similar credit line agreed to with the China Development Bank, also for exploiting Brazil’s "pre-salt" area, so-named because the estimated 80 billion barrels of high-quality crude in that new oil frontier lie far beneath the ocean floor under layers of rock and an unstable salt formation.

Under the agreement with the Chinese state bank, finalized during Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s visit to Beijing in May, Brazil can repay the loan facility with oil as opposed to cash…

This has been going on now for some time, as you will see.

Now we step back in time a bit, there is this, from Bloomberg:

Soros hedge fund invests $811m to buy Petrobras stake

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.

As of June 30, the stake in Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based oil producer is known, made up 22 per cent of the $3.68 billion of stocks and American depositary receipts held by Soros Fund Management, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Petrobras has since slumped 28 per cent…

In November, Petrobras announced the discovery of Tupi, a field with as much as 8 billion barrels of reserves, making it the largest find in the Americas since 1976.

“Petrobras has something that other oil companies don’t have: oil – lots of it and they’re going to find more,” said Ricardo Kob-ayashi, equity fund manager with UBS Pactual in Rio de Janeiro…

Tupi is part of a new deepwater offshore region known as the pre-salt that may contain as much as 50 billion barrels, according to Peter Wells, oil analyst with the UK’s Neftex Petroleum Consultants.

The drop in Petrobras’ US-traded common shares since June 30 would have reduced the value of Soros’s disclosed stake by $235 million.

Soros Fund Management didn’t report holding any Petrobras shares at the end of the first quarter. It did disclose much smaller stakes in the Brazilian oil company during 2007, including 150,000 depositary shares, with a market value of about $17.3 million at December 31.

The hedge fund company also had calls on another 35,000 shares at December 31…

But as of today, lookie here, Soros’s top 5 holdings are:

1.Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.Petrobras (PBR) – 9,818,323 shares, 15.42% of the total portfolio 
2.Hess Corp. (HES) – 5,123,198 shares, 10.56% of the total portfolio 
3.Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.Petrobras (PBR-A) – 5,884,700 shares, 7.53% of the total portfolio 
4.Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. (POT) – 1,978,053 shares, 7.06% of the total portfolio 
5.Plains Exploration & Production Company (PXP) – 6,526,400 shares, 6.84% of the total portfolio

And Reuters is reporting:

WASHINGTON/HOUSTON, March 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior

Department said on Thursday it gave final approval for

Petrobras (PETR4.SA) to use the first ever deep-water floating

production storage facility in the Gulf of Mexico.

And Obama, well he is right in the thick of things with Brazil and Petrobras as he attends the Brazil US Business Summit.

3/21/2011

Petrobras’ president and CEO, José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, participated in the “Creating a Secure and Sustainable Future for the Energy Sector” panel, held during the Brazil-United States Business Summit, sponsored by the Industry Confederation (CNI), in Brasilia, today (03/19).

In the event, Gabrielli said the global demand for oil is likely to increase with the resumption of economic growth in the United States.

Gabrielli highlighted the U.S. government’s approval of Petrobras’ oil and gas production project at the Cascade and Chinook fields, in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

“We are taking the first FPSO production system to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. regulatory body acknowledged the project’s technology and safety.” All approvals have been given, and production should begin soon.

So here we have it.

While OUR attention has been focused on Japan and Libya, Obama has rewarded his main campaign contributor, Soros, with a good looking stock portfolio that includes deep water oil exploration and extraction and, at the same time, turned his back on American companies, that provide millions of jobs, while harming prosperity in America by handing the Gulf and American energy independence over to a Socialist and a foreign country.