Hosting Obama during his visit to San Francisco last week was Tom Steyer, the former head of Farallon Capital Management. Steyer, who is a billionaire (probably the 344th wealthiest person in America if you trust the Forbes rankings), has been a liberal bankroller of the Democratic Party for many years now. More recently Steyer has been positioning himself to be policy maker for team Obama; Steyer recently was rumored to have been included on the short list for Energy Secretary. Various press clippings from the past couple years state that Steyer’s fundraising for Obama and the Democrats is now driven by his newly invigorated concern for environmental issues. Steyer is said to be very concerned with climate change, and the ecological impact of oil and gas.

Three years ago, while still head of Farallon Capital, Steyer jumped into politics in a big way by funding a campaign against California Proposition 23. Had it passed, that ballot initiative would have gutted the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, California’s greenhouse gas reduction plan. Prop 23 was supported by Valero, Tesoro, and Koch Industries, among other oil and gas interests. Steyer told a Forbes reporter he “got pissed” that no one was “stepping up” to fight back, so he dropped a couple million to advertise against the out of state oil lobby. In the end Steyer’s money helped. Prop 23 was defeated. Steyer retired from Farallon last year, and in a letter to his investors (mostly wealthy individuals, pension funds, and endowments) he said he would “focus on giving back,” through philanthropy and the Democratic Party. Steyer’s primary source of power through philanthropy and the Democrats is his money. His enormous personal fortune enables him to fund state or even national-level political campaigns, all by himself if need be.

Steyer’s money is an interesting subject. Farallon Capital, which Steyer founded back in 1986, and closely managed for several decades, minted a lot of money off oil and gas investments, among other environmentally destructive business ventures. Among the oil and gas companies that Steyer and Farallon financed and got rich from were Energy Partners, Ltd., Link Energy LLC, Halcon Resources Corporation, Devx Energy, Inc., and a gold mining company named Global Gold Corporation. In each case, Steyer’s team bought up large, or even controlling interests in the companies, or acquired corporate debt. Most of the companies were in financial straits when Farallon bought them. Farallon’s partners then used their position as the new owners of equity or debt extract value from the corporation as it restructured itself through asset sales and reorganization. In several cases the bankrupted company was turned around and rebuilt into a profitable oil and gas firm. In the process Steyer and Farallon ironically helped save and rebuild a few major oil and gas drillers, or helped sell-off oil and pipeline assets to bigger players in the energy industry.

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