Mark Stein asks an important question:

“The country” is “dependent” on oil. But the “imported” bit is purely a matter of choice: A decadent elite has decided largely for aesthetic reasons that oil extraction is something foreigners do in distant lands. Hence, the pathetic spectacle of President Obama going to Brazil to praise the Brazilians for serious deepwater extraction that would get him booed off stage by the Sierra Club types if he advocated it here. If it destroys the planet doing it in U.S. waters, doesn’t it also destroy the planet transferring the operation to Brazilian waters?