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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (80573)	9/29/2011 10:33:28 AM
From: Cogito Ergo Sum	Respond to of 220317

So what about the campaign controversy issue in the US.. 45% by corporations.. Elections are sadly not like Soylent Green .,.. sure they vote.. votes are bought... OK I agree it is free thought but based upon human weakness and flaws... so folks do not think about what is proper and sustainable.. they do not use VVV ;O)

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (80573)	9/30/2011 12:34:54 PM
From: elmatador	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 220317

Investors and wild adventurers from Jacques Custeau to Sir Richard Branson have all said that deep sea exploration is really Earth’s next big mission. We can explore bottom of the ocean before man can explore Mars. And what we will find at the bottom of the ocean is likely to be something everyone wants: oil Petrobras As Brazil's Moon Landing Kenneth Rapoza Contributor The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. The Rio de Janeiro deep ocean oil discoveries of 2007 have been Brazil’s one giant leap forward. Between 1959 and 1969, the U.S. government’s budget for the space program was over $225 billion (2007 dollars) and the beloved Apollo program was $136 billion. Walking on the moon was America’s outdoing the Russian cosmonauts. It was also a testament to what has become known as American exceptionalism. Some country’s have it. Some do not. Brazil has it. Investors and wild adventurers from Jacques Custeau to Sir Richard Branson have all said that deep sea exploration is really Earth’s next big mission. We can explore bottom of the ocean before man can explore Mars. And what we will find at the bottom of the ocean is likely to be something everyone wants: oil. Brazilian oil company Petrobras found it; about four years ago now, deep off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, miles below sea level, and just as further beneath the salty bedrock of the Atlantic Ocean. The Santos Basin is estimated to hold up to 40 billion barrels of oil. Petrobras found it. It was Brazil’s lunar landing. Within the next 10 years, the oil and gas industry around the world will invest an estimated $3 trillion exploring and drilling for oil. Of that, around a third will be invested in Brazil. Over the next five years, Petrobras will invest more on deep sea oil — $224.7 billion total, according to the company – than NASA spent in 10 years on the Apollo mission. Deep water drilling is expensive. Pre-salt drilling requires advanced technologies. It is next to impossible to see beneath all that salt. “It’s essentially going out where no driller has gone before,” Jose Valera, a lawyer at Mayer Brown, told the Financial Times this week. “In deep water, it’s a true exploration effort. Now we’re discovering these tremendous resources. That truly is a new frontier.” Around 40% of the Santos Basin has been auctioned off with another 60% yet to go. Some wells have been dry. But based on what Petrobras has confirmed so far, Brazil is likely to go from the 19th largest oil producer on earth to the fifth. That will put it close to Venezuela, one of the top five oil producers for the U.S. Petrobras’ oil discovery will do as much for Brazil economically as the Apollo mission did for American science. Petrobras’ oil wells in the Atlantic aren’t a temporary national buzz like the FIFA World Cup coming to Brazil in 2014, or even the Summer Olympic Games in 2016. This is permament, long term good news for Brazil. “Brazil’s entire economy will benefit greatly from what Petrobras discovered in the ocean,” says Pedro Cordeiro, an oil and gas sector analyst at Bain & Company in Rio. “Brazil is what Norway was 34 years ago just before the North Sea discoveries. Prior to that, Norway’s biggest export was cod fish. Now they produce about 2.2 million barrels of oil a day. Brazil will produce around 2.5 million barrels a day. Norway’s entire deep sea oil technology know-how expanded and they export more of that now than they do oil. They built their oil industry up from scratch and it is now one of the oil centers of the world.” Brent crude oil pricing is based primarily on Norwegian oil. “That’s where Rio is heading. It’s going to become the new Houston.” Petrobras is majority owned by the government, but outside of the U.S. and Europe it is one of the only foreign oil markets that allows foreign investors to come in and drill baby drill. Every oil major is in Brazil because of the Santos Basin despite having to partner with Petrobras and ceding 30% of that partnership to the Brazilian oil giant. Every major drilling service firm is there even if they are up against government incentives that favor growing out the local players. They are there because they have to be. The oil rich Middle East is mostly closed to private companies. Brazil in the 2000s is as good as it gets. The sector is so hot, that when OGX Petroleo, run by Forbes billionaire Eike Batista, did an initial public offering for his company in 2008, it brought in nearly $5 billion from investors and it had not even discovered a drop of oil “Petrobras’s discovery will be a boon to the Brazilian economy,” says Cordeiro from his office in Cinelândia, a Rio neighborhood visited by President Barack Obama in March. “You’re looking at about a trillion reals ($555 billion) in infrastructure needed and I estimate that a good 40% of that money will be just for the oil and gas industry,” he says. “Oil and gas is important, but there will be a lot of value added investment because of this discovery in areas like biofuels or even biofuels technology.” Brazil might not always get it right. They’re constantly proposing new oil royalty changes that can irk foreign oil companies, even Petrobras, which also has to pay them. The government’s National Petroleum Agency wants to auction off more oil fields by the second half of 2012, it’s first auction since 2007. The current royalty dispute between the states clamoring for their share of the bounty is slowing things down as much as the BP oil spill slowed production in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s ordinary Brazilian politics. Petrobras is facing extraordinary challenges. But this is one program, and one big multinational, that politics in Brazil won’t ever undermine.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (80573)	10/2/2011 12:54:54 PM
From: elmatador	1 Recommendation Respond to of 220317

Alibaba CEO 'Interested' in Buying Yahoo By AMIR EFRATI Jack Ma, chief executive of Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., told an audience at an event at Stanford University on Friday that he was "interested" in buying Yahoo Inc., according to a spokesman for Mr. Ma. At the event, Mr. Ma said he was interested in buying Yahoo and added that private-equity firms and others had approached him as well, said the spokesman. When asked about his friendship with Yahoo director and co-founder Jerry Yang, Mr. Ma said it was business, not personal, according to the spokesman. A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment. Mr. Ma's comments follow the firing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz earlier this month after she was unable to jumpstart growth at the onetime highflying web company. Yahoo's board of directors has since begun to engage with executive-search firms as it continues to look for a new CEO while entertaining buyout offers for the Internet company, people familiar with the matter said. Yahoo's board is putting a higher priority on evaluating a potential sale of all or parts of the Internet company over its search for a new CEO, people familiar with the matter have said Yahoo owns significant stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan that are worth one-third to one-half of Yahoo's overall market value, which stands at roughly $17 billion. Mr. Ma has previously sought to buy back Yahoo's 40% stake in his Chinese Internet empire and has engaged in a war of words with Yahoo in recent years over a variety of matters. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that private equity firms such as Silver Lake and media executive Peter Chernin—who has talked to Providence Equity Partners about teaming up—have approached Yahoo on possible deals. It's unclear what those parties have proposed. Read more: online.wsj.com