McClatchy has a good analysis of how well we were doing on oil spill prevention and containment until the Deepwater Horizon accident:
The Coast Guard data indicate that the volume of small and large spills has declined steadily across the decades. For instance, the number of spills between 1 and 100 gallons decreased by almost 77 percent from 1973 to 2004. Spills larger than 100,000 gallons dropped by 89 percent during the same period.
I don’t buy the “culture of complacency” explanation being peddled by some of the experts quoted in the piece. Hookers and whiskey at the MMS had a lot to do with it, too.