Umbra correctly identifies government subsidy as the evil influence it is in the energy industry. However she squanders this insight by hoping aloud that the same strategy used to "go after" Big Tobacco will now be used to go after "Big Oil". This is nuts. Why would you want to cartellize the oil industry even more than it is now, make billionaires of amoral scumbags like Peter Angelos and Bill Lerach, and raise prices and regulation all around, all while shortchanging the actual "victims"? Why is this considered a good thing?
I have an alternate suggestion. Simply cut all subsidies and regulations on the industry, and substitute a real property rights solution, i.e., make them answerable in court for trespassing with their pollution (for this to work, we also have to get rid of opt-out class actions, but that is another issue). Once out from behind the shield of the EPA, the oil industry will have to act more responsibly to keep themselves solvent and out of court. If this increases costs, this will also benefit the environment, because more costly oil will cause consumers to consume less and look for alternatives. The regulatory and litigitory approaches have failed utterly. Pollution continues to increase, while we waste time tinkering with regulations. Why not try free markets?

Umbra is wonderfully enlightening on so many topics. On the subject of domestic petroleum production,Umbra should be assured that"wee oil" (as opposed to "big oil") exists. There are nearly 400,000 small oil wells in the United States, and about 360,000 small natural gas wells in the US. These wells are called "marginal" or "stripper" wells and produce less than 10 barrels of oil a day (a barrel is 42 gallons) and the equivalent of natural gas. These wells are owned by very small producers, often a one-person operation. Large multinational companies and large domestic companies do not operate small wells.These people are just like small family farmers, but don't enjoy nearly the subsidies of farmers. The small wells are in 34 of the 35 states that have production (only Alaska has no small wells because it is just too expensive to produce in that state for a small operation).  The small oil wells average 2.18 barrels of oil a day, and the small gas wells average 15,500 cubic feet of natural gas a day. Fifteen percent of all of the oil produced in the lower 48 states comes from these wells, and 40% of all the oil we use is produced in the US (85% of all of the natural gas we use is produced in the US, with 14% coming from Canada and the rest by ship in the form of LNG).

The continuing problem I have with many people in the environmental movement is an unconscious, or even a studied resistance to simple economic concepts. Those small domestic producers receive almost none of the benefits of the massive subsidy regime (and are especially harmed by the military subsidization of Middle-East crude), yet they would be the ones harmed the most by Umbra's proposed "harrass and sue" policy. Why not cut all subsidies, including phony EPA "standards", and our current massive "World Invasion", and let the chips fall where they may? So what if gasoline prices rise to $10 a gallon - isn't that a good thing for the environment?