With the recent announcement that the Obama administration has committed to financing $2 billion dollars worth of drilling for oil off the coast of Brazil, a few questions come to mind. It’s interesting that in last year’s campaign, when McCain was proposing a multi-faceted energy program that included nuclear, clean coal, and increased domestic oil production, Obama was vehemently opposed.  In June 2008 he blasted McCain’s energy plans as “gimmicks,” saying his policies “will only increase our oil addiction for another four years.”  Speaking to a Florida audience on the campaign trail, Obama pointed out that offshore drilling will not produce a single drop of oil until 2017, and full production capabilities won’t exist until 2030.  This timeframe proved too long to the candidate who wanted immediate relief for Americans who were paying upwards of $4 a gallon for gas; he said that if offshore drilling looked like it would lower gas prices in the near future, or even within five years, it would be something he would consider – but it wouldn’t.  Obama’s stated energy policy was “meant to reduce our dependence on oil” in general, so offshore drilling in Florida and other places in the United States were off the table.  Obama’s solution to the “American addiction” to oil was to replace it with energy gleaned from renewable sources.  So if he really wants to reduce the American dependence on oil in general, and more specifically foreign oil, why the new investments in Brazilian oil fields?  Maybe drilling in Brazil is simply a way for him to keep his pledge to a crowd in Lansing, Michigan:

“If I am president, I will immediately direct the full resources of the federal government and the full energy of the private sector to a single, overarching goal — in 10 years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela.”

Whatever the case may be, it certainly seems to be a change of direction for the president to invest billions of dollars in a program in a foreign country that he was so opposed to implementing in the US less than a year ago.

As an aside, some other interesting comments that Obama made in the aforementioned campaign video:

• He promised a stimulus package that would “mail another round of rebate checks to the American people”

No checks came out of Obama’s stimulus package…

• “My job is not to go with the polls, my job is to tell the American people what’s going to work”

Obama’s administration has been all about the polls, which is visible most recently in their handling of the health care debate – but that’s a story for another day…

Current Events, Politics