""Many of us hope that BP will be bought out by companies that pay more attention to government regulations and to honest business practices.""

American companies of course!

And what you'll get is companies who are better at hiding their disregard for regulations which interfere with making profit. Only next time, those companies (Transocean, Halliburton, etc.) won't be able to hide behind a foreign competitor, and avoid taking any responsibility for their own actions.

I hold no brief for BP in all this, but they weren't alone, and only they are taking the flak for what happened. And you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you believe that US companies are any more likely to be trustworthy. Next time, and there will be a next time, you'll have nobody to blame but your own guys.

Still, as I said earlier, it looks as though you all are going to be rid of the biggest competitor of US big oil.

Don T.