Drill, Comrade, Drill!

President Obama unleashed his goons and thugs on Americans to stifle dissent. Good thinking, create a big distraction so nobody notices what else is going on.

Russian ships have been lurking the seas off the US east coast while Russian leaders cut a deal with Cuba for oil drilling off the coast of Florida. This is complete insanity. We won’t drill our own oil, but the commies can. Liberals prevent us from securing our own vital resources while giving those resources to our enemies.

Drilling will be done off America’s coast soon enough. But thanks to a treaty signed by President Carter, the new oil and gas resources that will be discovered in the region will be discovered by Russia and Cuba to their economic benefit.

Normally, economic zones extend 200 miles off a country’s coastline. In some cases, conflicts can arise based on resources and geography. In 1977, Carter signed a treaty with Cuba that essentially split the difference and created for the communist country an “exclusive economic zone” extending from the western tip of Cuba north virtually to Key West. Cuba has divided its side of the Florida Straits into 59 parcels and put them up for lease.

Foreign countries, including China and India, had acquired the rights to develop 16 of them.

“This is the irony of ironies,” complained Charles Drevna, executive vice president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association. “We have chosen to lock up our resources and stand by to be spectators while these two come in and benefit from things right in our own backyard.”

Repsol-YPF, the Spanish oil company, has been active in Cuba for more than five years. It drilled a test well off the coast in 2004 and was set to start a second well when it postponed it early last month. Now the Russians are coming.

The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated the North Cuban Basin contains as much as 9 billion barrels of oil and 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Pools of oil and natural gas tend not to obey lines drawn on a map.

It is certain that at least some of Cuba’s wells will tap oil pools that straddle the boundary separating our zone from Cuba’s. In other words, Havana will get oil that should be ours.

Thanks, Carter. More proof that the policies of liberal presidents can haunt us for decades.