You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.
But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.
The Bush Administration’s five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.
This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn’t allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won’t allow at home.
Well, it’s not like drilling here would bring any benefit to the country in jobs or oil. It’s much better to invest our billions helping some other county become an oil exporter.
You fucks. First of all it’s a loan, we will make money off of it. Secondly, Brazil is sitting on an oil field that could render the middle east obsolete, which would do wonders for our economy and our national security. We don’t have any signs of that kind of a natural resource here so of course it is in our own best interest to help an ally develop theirs.
As evidence of this, I worked on a proposal this spring for the nitrogen plants that I build for Petrobras enhanced oil recovery R&D. I would then spend spend my raise here at home. What I mean is, this loan could come straight back home, right into our own community.
Not only does Tupi have the potential of a 50% increase of the country’s oil and gas reserves of 14 billion BOE, but it has also opened up a new horizon for exploration in Brazil: it is a pre-salt discovery – held in rocks beneath a salt layer that, in places, reaches thicknesses of over 2,000 metres. Until now, Brazil’s reserves have been found in post-salt formations – above the salt layer.
Venezuela has always been a hard ass country to deal with.
They also don’t want any foreign workers on the rigs stationed there which sucks.
If you need a specialized engineer on the rig for 3 weeks they want you to hire one from their country…which won’t exist…so you’re really suck between a rock and a hard place. Luckily there is a group of younger (green) more liberal workforce there which are slowly changing things. They are starting to allow specialized workers temporary permits and what not, making it almost possible to operate over there.
It’s probably a great idea, it just pisses me off that he can say it’s a great idea to drill offshore there but at the same time hold up drilling offshore here.
