They are essentially giving our oil deposits to the Chinese and others.
That's how I see it too. At the same time we are being ripped off by hyper inflation in the supermarkets, which is largely caused by government subsidized ethanol production from corn. Corn prices have doubled in the last year because of the demand for corn to be made into ethanol. Almost every grocery store item that we eat nowadays contains a corn derivative such as corn syrup sweeteners and corn flour, so when corn prices go up our grocery bills go up. The US government helps that inflationary process along by granting huge tax credits to ethanol producers, and by paying auto builders a subsidy for each vehicle they build that will run on the 85% ethanol blended fuel.
All the while we quite possibly have a decade or more worth of oil reserves in AK and the Gulf of Mexico that Congress won't allow us to touch. It's OK for China to slant drill into our reserves from Cuban waters, but not OK for our companies to do it. Sometimes I think that considering the people we elect to rule over us we deserve everything we get.