Armageddon: final showdown between government and oil.

      Recently, The University of Houston hosted an oil spill symposium whereby specialists in the oil industry came together to give their opinions on preventing oil spills (especially) in the USA. What I found interesting after reading the article was that the number of offshore drilling rigs have more than doubled over the decades, while the number of regulators have reduced by a quarter. This is largely because of the increased distance and depths oil companies face when looking for oil. Also, the number of specialists in the regulatory field have reduced over the years because of increased retirements. Another interesting factor to which the regulation of drilling sites have decreased is that there is actually some confusion over an authoritarian figure, i.e. the oil companies believe that it is mostly the duty of the government to impose regulatory policies on companies in their countries, while the government, to some extent, believes and almost trusts in a sense, that the oil companies are be drilling as safely as possible and with the 'right' equipment.
      As a result of this confusion of authority between the government and the oil companies, a partial state of nihilism erupts which in turn increases the probability of oil spills. In my opinion, this disorderliness is the main reason for the occurrence of oil spills everywhere. At least there is some form of governance in USA, but in countries like Nigeria and Ecuador where the exportation of oil is the main source of GNP, the government is less likely to impose regulations that benefit the environment. As a result, major oil spills tend to occur annually in these countries compared to the occurrence of major spills in the U.S, which is 1 every 20 years.
      The likelihood of oil spills will drastically fall, if governments everywhere take control of regulating the actions of oil companies, because they (oil companies) won't do it (properly) as it's unprofitable for them. If governments everywhere enforce similar regulatory policies, then oil companies wouldn't make profits no matter where they relocated. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, governments should make sure that these regulation continue to be updated and reinforced, because as the specialists in the symposium noted, once major oil spills occur, restrictions tend to be enforced, but for another decade or so, they aren't followed as strictly and thus a spill occurs again and the cycle just repeats itself.