Where is it safer to have a blow out--on land or 5,000 ft under water

Who pushed BP off shore into deep water (5,000 ft depth) and gave them the permit to drill after reviewing their plan? Who benefits from their taxes? Who are their employees? Who uses their oil? What pension funds (outside Britain) are paying dividends to investors and retirees? And couldn't they do the same, much safer and cheaper on land? Yes.

"Whether more exploration on federal lands would make the U.S. energy independent is debatable, but more onshore development would certainly be safer. In early June there was a blowout in western Pennsylvania. Did you see it on the nightly news? No, because it was capped in 16 hours. The Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates oil and gas production there, recorded 102 blowouts of oil and gas wells since the start of 2006, resulting in 10 fires, 12 injuries, and two deaths. None of those made the nightly news either. The largest oil spill on Alaska's North Slope in 2006 was from a pipeline leak. It dumped only 6,357 barrels and had no disastrous impacts."

Terry Anderson: Why it's safer to drill in the backyard

And by the way, just how do you feel about windmills off your coast or on your prairie vista in your line of vision, or a nuclear plant next to your river? How long before "alternative" energy sources will be able to handle this summer's heat?

BP plans reads like fiction? Who approved the plan? The government.

Wrong addresses, phone numbers, species names, officials' names. I encounter that it seems with every report I read on-line whether government, private or non-profit. Who was suppose to check the figures? We must have thousands of employees making big bucks at the EPA, FEMA and MMS. Are there no fact checkers?

“BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig, are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one.”

The federal government's clutch of regulatory agencies are the sister agencies of those which manage education, epidemics, national parks, homeless shelters, food purity, etc. The bigger the agency like EPA or HHS the more likely the failure. And yet, we're moving to bigger and bigger, more and more government. Why do we think that people who can't handle a huge job, could do better if we just gave them a humongous job?

Columbus Dispatch story