Agreed that probability is the real issue, but to the extent that history is an indicator it would appear that existing safegaurds have been quite effective (there's even an economic motivation for the drillers to prevent spills which grows with the price of the oil that would be lost to those spills), but no system is perfect and there's always an unforseen possibility in any endeavor.

I haven't yet seen any indications of a serious puss for reduced regulation of drilling operations (something whch I wouldn't get behind myself if it did come up), just a push to stop prohibiting new drilling at the federal level and leaving it to the states which control the relevant coastlines (in which case, the west coast would almost certainly remain closed to new drilling for the forseeable future, although the gulf states would likely be more amenable). Allowing regulated drilling has its merits, and could provide significant revenues through the royalties paid by the drillers as they could be set relatively high for new operations given the price of the oil to be produced, as opposed to current drilling leases which were set in 1998 for a multi-decade term with contracts which illegally left out the requirement for royalty increases based on oil prices crossing certain thresholds based on a law passed in 1996 (hopefully these contracts have been brough into compliance since oil prices passed those thresholds years ago, but the issue lost traction in the press a while back and I haven't seen anything about it since).