Oil Drilling Companies: Are They Reliable Enough?

It is encouraging to know that there is an organisation (NASA) that has never had a failure or accident.

If we count the number of wells drilled and compare with the number of space flights, what will the statistics tell us about accidents?

In the meantime it might be a good idea to stop the large companies (the ones who can muster 30 000 people, a few thousand ships and billions of dollars) from drilling and leave it to the smaller companies or enlightened individuals who will put their money where their mouth is in the event of a major accident and resolve the problem as soon as it occurs.

I think the Geoffrey Orsak should visit an oil company engineering headquarters and see how much work goes into reliability before commenting on whether or not any redundancy is built in.