Obama is letting any hope of energy independence get away from us.

The is a business story out by Reuters this morning which states that the off shore drilling industry is expecting a marked upturn this year as a result of a major increase in drilling off of Brazil. The Brazilian oil giant Petrobras is expected to hire 6-8 rigs for its new fields off the Brazilian coast. For most people, this is a minor story that affects a few companies that do drilling and, of course, Petrobras. The truth is, however, that this is a major story.

There is quite a limited number of drill rigs in the world capable of drilling wells in the sea floor below a mile of water. As of a year ago, many of these rigs were at work in the Gulf of Mexico bringing in hundreds of millions of barrels of US oil that provided a significant portion of the annual output of the US oil industry. When Obama declared his illegal moratorium on off shore drilling, these rigs were put out of work. Oh, Obama structured his moratorium so that the rigs could finish the wells that they were in the process of drilling, but then all came to a top. Many of these rigs cost over 100 million dollars, so they cannot stand idle without the owners suffering catastrophic losses. As a result, once it became clear that obama was not going to let drilling in the Gulf resume at any time soon, the rig owners began looking for new locations at which to drill. That is why this Brazil story is so important. If eight of the rigs are towed to Brazil so that they can be used for drilling, the move is a permanent one. The oil field off of Brazil is large enough to support these rigs for the foreseeable future. That means that even if Obama obeys the order of the federal court and begins to issue drilling permits again, the rigs needed for the drilling will be few and far between. Obama's refusal to obey the court order will have effectively destroyed the drilling industry. That means that it will also have destroyed about 40,000 jobs in the USA, and there will be no way to get them back. In short, rather than moving us toward economic development and away from reliance on imported oil, Obama will have done the exact reverse. And all this will be in order to make people forget about the incompetent way in which Obama handled the BP well blow out. Politics will triumph over the needs of the USA. Don't we deserve a president who puts the needs of the country first?