Move brings charges that BP oil spill was a staged event to push “energy agenda.”
Firm’s stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investment
The brokerage firm that’s faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.
According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman’s sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP’s stock during the quarter.
If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman’s holdings — meaning that Goldman’s remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value.
CNN News reported that Obama is using the crisis to push his “energy initiative,” aka Global Warming Carbon Tax.
The president also used the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico to advance his alternative energy agenda Wednesday, calling it a warning that America needs to transition away from dependence on fossil fuels.
“The catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf right now may prove to be a result of human error — or corporations taking dangerous shortcuts that compromised safety,” he said.
“But we have to acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth — risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes. Just like we have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and grandchildren.”
There is no mention of tapping vast oil reserves on land. We could not locate a story on the BP Stock sale on their web site.
The sale of stock just prior to the spill has led some to allege that Goldman Sacs knew of the pending “accident” that caused the oil spill. The “accident” would give added public opinion for the cap-and-trade bill proposed by Kerry and others.
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