Export-Import Bank to Guarantee $1 Billion in Loans to Mexico

[bonnie]

September 12, 2010

Export-Import Bank to Guarantee $1 Billion in Loans to the Mexican State Oil Company.

Aaron Gee

Another example of Obama supporting foreign competition to US oil and supporting drilling anywhere but in the US.

The Export-Import Bank of the US intends to guarantee $1 billion in loans to the Mexican state oil company. An article on the Fox News website explains;

Despite President Obama's moratorium on U.S. deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Export-Import Bank intends to guarantee $1 billion in loans to PEMEX, the Mexican state oil company, to bolster the company's oil drilling in the region.

The bank, which is the official American export credit agency, loaned more than $1 billion to PEMEX in 2009 -- when the company was the bank's largest borrower -- in support of its drilling activities. That year, the bank also guaranteed two loans totaling $300 million made by a commercial lender.

This comes on the heals of an earlier deal where the Export-Import Bank of the US is going to loan $2 billion to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras. This behavior underscores why Presidential approval ratings are down. Reforms from health care to banking are hurting private businesses. The fact that Obama was openly hostile to domestic energy production as a candidate and the overbearing drilling moratorium has demonstrated to many Americans that he doesn't have their best interest in mind.

Why would the US Government feel the need to support foreign state owned energy companies? The Petrobras deal is almost exclusively for deep water drilling, like the type that Obama administration is trying to halt off from our own coast. The Mexican deal is aimed at expanding PEMEX's gulf oil footprint, in direct competition with US companies. Neither company has a particularly good environmental record. A cynic could say that Obama is merely trying to off shore the dirty work of exploration and production of oil that will come to the US anyway. If so, it would be an egregious example of the Neocolonialism that his father so vehemently opposed.

What is clear from Obama's rhetoric is that he thinks the US doesn't deserve the oil she uses. He is fond of telling us that we use 20% of the worlds oil while we have less than 2% of the worlds oil reserve. The implication is that this is somehow unfair. That sentiment echo's the far left's rhetoric about the "fairness" of the US consuming 25% of the worlds oil while only having 4% of the worlds population. What the left has never understood is that the US produces 25% of the worlds GDP with ONLY 4% of it's population (2005). That made the US economic engine the most efficient creator of world's wealth. To hamstring our ability to produce our own energy mutes our economy's dynamism.

I don't think either of these loans would concern Americans if it weren't for the rhetoric that comes out of the White House. Most American's wonder why the US would support the exploration and production of oil on the shores of another country, but we refuse to do it here. Everyone knows that domestic energy production puts people to work here in the US. They also know that the more we produce here, the less we are held hostage to foreign events by energy producers that, quite frankly, don't like us very much. Instead of encouraging US energy companies, the Obama administration wants to double tax them.

No matter how you look at it, the current Obama energy policy keeps jobs away from our shores and slows any economic recovery. In November the voters can tell the President what they think of his policies.