Kaplony
Palmetto State Deplorable
Posts: 25,393
Joined: Apr 2013
I Root For: Newberry
Location: SC
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RE: TransCanada Requests Suspension of Keystone XL Pipeline
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazi....html?_r=0
Quote:In August, Tom Steyer and seven campaign advisers sat in a small conference room in Coral Gables, Fla., trying to figure out how to save the world. Steyer, who is 57, has a fortune of roughly $1.5 billion, and his advisers were among the most talented political operatives in the United States. Steyer is especially concerned about climate change, and his immediate goal, the object of discussion that day, was to replace the sitting governor of Florida, Rick Scott, a Republican who has questioned the very existence of anthropogenic climate change, with Charlie Crist, the previous governor, whose environmental views hew more closely to Steyer’s.
http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/tom-...e-20140218
Quote:Tom Steyer is the kind of all-American overachiever who seems to exist only on paper: number one in his graduating class at Phillips Exeter Academy, summa *** laude and captain of the soccer team at Yale, a Stanford MBA who became a superstar at Goldman Sachs and then went on to create the world's fourth-largest hedge fund, turning $8 million into $30 billion in about 20 years. His personal fortune is estimated at $1.5 billion.
So it's a bit startling when the human résumé comes bounding out of a narrow brownstone in San Francisco's Pacific Heights on a cool spring morning, pale legs exposed by knee-length shorts, wearing white socks with black trail-runners. With his flop of copper-blond hair and his shaggy enthusiasm for a 7 am hike, he seems less like a Rockefeller than a golden retriever ready for his run.
"Good morning!" he booms.
As billionaires go, Steyer doesn't conform to type. He drives an outdated hybrid Honda Accord and wears a cheap Ironman watch with a Velcro band. His "briefcase" is a worn-out canvas bag exploding with papers. In front of his house is an exotic eco-sculpture, built by a bohemian stonemason, that filters a fish pond by running the water through an elaborate cascading planter. "We're the only people with hydroponic gardens in the state of California who don't grow dope," Steyer quips. "What a bunch of idiots!"
Quote:Since early last year, the 56-year-old has been using his vast fortune to wage political warfare against climate-change deniers, eco-antagonists, and oil-industry sympathizers. He started a super PAC that goes after candidates who support the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, the joint American-Canadian oil project meant to help funnel millions of gallons of dirty fossil fuel from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico for sale around the world. In Steyer's view, the oil from the pipeline would produce enough carbon to send the world sliding into irreparable disaster.
"We don't have time," he insists. "This is an urgent issue. If we produce this stuff in Canada, it's a 50-year supply, and I guarantee you they'll find more. If we do nothing, we're dead! We're toast!"
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/20...steyer.php
Quote:Billionaire hedge fund operator and “green” energy magnate Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million in the 2014 election cycle to help Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green” energy over fossil fuels. Steyer claims to be a man of principle who has no financial interest in the causes he supports, but acts only for the public good. That is a ridiculous claim: Steyer is the ultimate rent-seeker who depends on government connections to produce subsidies and mandates that make his “green” energy investments profitable. He also is, or was until recently, a major investor in Kinder Morgan, which is building a competitor to the Keystone pipeline.
Quote:But Steyer’s hypocrisy goes still deeper. Today, he is a bitter opponent of fossil fuels, especially coal. That fits with his current economic interests: banning coal-fired power plants will boost the value of his solar projects. But it was not always thus. In fact, Steyer owes his fortune in large part to the fact that he has been one of the world’s largest financers of coal projects. Tom Steyer was for coal before he was against it.
Quote:Tom Steyer founded Farallon Capital Management L.L.C. (“Farallon”) in 1986. Farallon has grown to become one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in the United States with over $20bn in funds under management.1 Mr. Steyer’s net worth is reported to be $1.6bn.2
Mr. Steyer left Farallon in 2012 to focus on political and environmental causes and potentially to position himself for public office. He has been described in the press as the “liberals’ answer to the Koch Brothers”3 due to his wealth and his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and carbon-based energy in general. He has dedicated some $50 million of his personal fortune to back political candidates who support his position on climate change – and punish those who don’t. Mr. Steyer has led recent campaigns with Bill McKibben to encourage university endowments to divest coal equities.
In his recent letter to the Middlebury College and Brown University Boards of Trustees, investment professional Mr. Steyer wrote:
I believe a coal free portfolio is a good investment strategy…4
In a recent interview, Mr. Steyer was quoted referring to “coal-industry baron David Koch”:
[Koch is] taking the most incredible risk that I’ve ever seen someone take, of going down in history as just an evil – just a famously evil – person!5
By their nature, hedge funds are shadowy organizations and Farallon is no exception. Farallon staff do not talk to the press. Their website provides virtually no information and, because it is a private fund, Farallon is not required to report details of its investments.
Essentially all the public knows about Farallon’s investment activities is what the fund is forced to file; for example when their ownership stake in a publicly listed company rises above a disclosable threshold, or when they are compelled to disclose information pursuant to a lawsuit.
While a few bits of information on Farallon’s investments in carbon energy have seeped into the North American press via these disclosures, this information doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. The North American press’s lack of awareness of Mr Steyer’s activities in the coal sector is due to the fact that all of Farallon’s investments in coal have been made outside of North America, and wherever possible through opaque structures which mask their direct involvement.
In order to gain an appreciation of the extent of Farallon’s epic involvement in the coal sector under Mr. Steyer’s tenure one needs to spend time in Jakarta and Sydney, and in the regional financing centers in Hong Kong and Singapore, and speak to professionals (bankers, lawyers, mining consultants and principals) who were directly involved in these Farallon-sponsored coal transactions. With a modicum of effort one discovers that since 2003 Farallon has played the pivotal role in financing the tremendous restructuring and growth in thermal coal production in the region. All of this took place under Mr. Steyer’s tenure as founder and senior partner of Farallon.
Steyer0027
Farallon_Capital_Management,_L.L.C
Buried in his recent missive to the Middlebury College and Brown University trustees on the evils of investing in coal, Mr. Steyer added this statement:
…I have directed my financial team to divest my holdings of coal investments so that I will have a coal free portfolio…
Perhaps he is being disingenuous and wishes people to believe that some low level employee at Farallon bought a few shares in coal companies without his permission. It is possible that he is trying to inoculate himself against the inevitable perceptions of hypocrisy that he knew would arise when the scale of his involvement in the coal sector came to light, as eventually it must.

The facts, summarized below, might lead one to conclude that:
• Mr. Steyer has had a direct, personal involvement in assembling, through Farallon, a portfolio of strategic investments in overseas coal miners and coal fired power plants which is unprecedented in scale. The total quantum of Farallon’s investments in these transactions is not publicly disclosed, but reasonable estimates suggest that it could be between US$1 and $2 billion in total.6 Taken collectively, the coal producers in which his fund has amassed these investment interests represent one of the largest sources of thermal coal in the world;
• The financing provided by Mr. Steyer’s fund enabled these coal producers to restructure and recapitalize thereby freeing them to grow rapidly during a period of rapidly rising coal prices, leading to one of the largest expansions of thermal coal production in modern times7;
• Made during a period of ever rising coal prices, these investments were almost certainly extremely profitable for Mr. Steyer’s fund overall, and my extension Mr. Steyer personally. It stands to reason that few people in American history have made more money from investment in thermal coal than Mr. Steyer.
Quote:Under Mr. Steyer’s tenure as senior partner, Farallon has been responsible for providing acquisition and expansion funding to about a half dozen of the largest coal mine and coal power plant buyouts in Australia and Asia since 2003. In each case the funding provided by Farallon was pivotal to the success of the transaction.
Quote:This data is based on public information and in a few instances information available from professional sources. All of these investments took place during the period of Mr. Steyer’s tenure as senior partner of Farallon.
2003 – PT Kaltim Prima Coal
In October 2003 Indonesia’s Bakrie Group, through listed vehicle PT Bumi Resources, purchased PT Kaltim Prima Coal from Rio and BP in a transaction valued at $500 million. Around $200 mn of the financing was technically underwritten by an investment bank but Farallon is understood to have been the actual provider of funds. At the time of the transaction Kaltim Prima Coal produced 18 mtpa. As a result of the buyout the mine has been able to lift production of to 41 mtpa by 2012.
This transaction initiated a long standing relationship between Farallon and the Bakrie group, one of Indonesia’s leading business groups and largest coal mine owners. This relationship led to a series of refinancings of their coal operations including the PT Arutmin coal mine.

Farallon has also been a substantial lender to other Bakrie Group assets. They have recently been identified in the press as a leading member of a consortium which lent $1.4 billion to Long Haul Holdings12, which owns various Bakrie-linked investments including stakes in listed PT Berau Coal (subsequently sold) and the Bakrie’s stake in PT Bumi Resources (which in turn controls the PT Kaltim Prima Coal and PT Arutmin coal mines).
Quote:2010 – Maules Creek Acquisition
In a transaction initiated personally by Steyer16, Farallon took the lead in providing $455 m of debt and equity linked acquisition financing to back Australian entrepreneur Nathan Tinkler in his A$480 m acquisition from Rio of the Maules Creek coal mine in Australia’s Hunter Valley. Maules Creek was not in production at the time of the acquisition, but with Farallon’s support it was able to complete an initial public offering on the ASX (as Aston Resources) with a completed feasibility study to reach 10 mtpa of annual coal sales.
Quote:In addition to strategic investments in major coal producers, under Mr. Steyer’s direction Farallon became a major investor in coal fired power plants, all made offshore and with barely a ripple of publicity.
In late 2012 Mr. Steyer said: “We immediately get off coal. We move to something …where we are not causing massive destruction.”18 More recently his NexGen Climate Action group was stirring up concern about sinister Chinese investment in Canadian tar sands.19
Shortly before these statements Mr. Steyer’s fund was, in fact, banking the check from the sale of their investment in a major Chinese coal fired power producer, Meiya Power, to China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company. Farallon and another fund had purchased Meiya Power a few years earlier. Meiya Power is one of the leading foreign invested independent power producers in China (founded by PSEG), with ownership stakes in six major coal fired power stations in China which provide more than 2,400 MW of electricity per year.20
In 2008 Farallon purchased an 18% stake in India Bulls Power, one of India’s top power developers, for approximately $158 m.21 At the time of the investment India Bulls Power had 11,400 MW of power developments underway in India – the two most active are 2,700 MW of coal fired power at the Amravati and Nasik projects.
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TransCanada Requests Suspension of Keystone XL Pipeline
![[Image: 2926290-6557862223-grasp.jpg]](http://static1.gamespot.com/uploads/original/248/2482864/2926290-6557862223-grasp.jpg)
