Sure, this blog is all about Alaska. But when stories with headlines like this – “U.S. Ready to Finance Oil Drilling in Brazil” – pop into our inboxes, it’s hard not to scratch your head and wonder aloud what the hell is going on these days in Washington, D.C.

According to a dispatch from Spanish’s newswire EFE – and up until now, only picked up by an online news outfit called “RigZone” – President Obama’s national security advisor is quietly negotiating with Brazilian ministers on a plan that will see $10 billion of taxpayer money sent to Brazil to help fund that country’s offshore energy exploration efforts. Read it and weep:

The U.S. government is prepared to provide up to $10 billion in loans to finance the development of massive hydrocarbon reserves off Brazil’s coast, a Brazilian official said Wednesday.

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, discussed the matter with officials this week during a visit to the South American country, Brazilian Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo da Silva told reporters.

He said the U.S. Export-Import Bank already has signed a letter of intent in that regard with Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.

Now, this story is worth noting for a couple of reasons. Set aside the obvious ones – everyone should understand the absolute insanity involved in promoting ANOTHER COUNTRY’S offshore energy resources over the ones you have ready, willing and able to be produced back home.

But that $10 billion figure is especially nettlesome to us, since that’s the same amount of money that the Interior Department will be forced to cough up if it doesn’t get its act straight on the existing five-year plan. From an April column on the subject on HumanEvents.com:

This puts the secretary on the hot seat, because the government has already cashed over $10 billion dollars of checks from oil companies who paid for the right to look for oil and gas in the U.S. instead of overseas …

Let’s unpack that a bit.

You see, every five years or so, the Interior Department releases a roadmap related to future offshore energy exploration. Find your way into that roadmap, and Interior has deemed you (in this scenario, you’re an energy-rich parcel of submerged land) worthy of being analyzed, studied and eventually bid on by an energy producer looking to, well, produce some American energy on you. The current plan – covering years 2007-2012 – has already spawned a number of important lease sales. Some of those sales even took place up here in Alaska.

Two years have elapsed since the 2007 plan took effect, and in that time more than $10 billion in cold hard cash has been sent to the federal treasury by bid-winning energy producers. Bureaucratic red tape has prevented these producers from harvesting a drop of oil or wisp of natural gas. But none of that matters: The federal government, at least in the short term, doesn’t care whether you produce on that land or not. It’s still going to take that bonus bid money. And it’s still going to spend it.

Fast forward to April 2009. A federal court in DC throws out the existing ’07-’12 five year plan on a (embarrassing) technicality. It tells Interior to send it another coastal management analysis – this time, using data from Government Agency A instead of Government Agency B. Experts say – and Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell confirms – that this can be done in a matter of hours. Meaning that the five-year plan can be juiced back up again in days. But nothing happens. And here we sit.

Why does any of this have to do with that unsettled little matter of the $10 billion? Under law, if the court’s decision is allowed to hold, the Interior Department has to send that $10 billion back from whence it came. It’s as simple as that – energy producers bid on the right to explore for energy in Alaska, energy producers paid the government handsomely to secure the lease, and now government must return that money in the case the lease is no longer valid.

How this whole thing eventually gets resolved is anyone’s guess. But one thing’s for sure: If the U.S. government thinks it has an extra $10 billion lying around to fund offshore energy activities IN BRAZIL (!), maybe it should think again. Because thanks to Interior’s institutional ennui on this issue, it just might find itself having to ship that $10 billion right back out the door.

UPDATE: One slight error in the preceding post worth pointing out — the $10 billion figure, the amount of money MMS may have to give back to oil producers if the agency doesn’t get its act straight on the five-year plan, is a bit off.

You see, that sum factored in the bonus bid cash generated by all lease sales areas during the 2007-2012 plan, including the Gulf Coast. The recent DC Court clarification that only Alaska leases would continue to be caught in a judicial tangle — not leases in the Gulf — means that MMS won’t need to return that loot, only the cold hard cash related to Alaska.

Still talking about an awful lot of money here — just not the $10 billion cited in the original piece.