Although the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has been reduced to a trickle based on successful attempts to finally cap the well, the permanent solution to the crisis will only arrive upon completion of the relief wells that BP is currently drilling. The company expects the relief well to permanently end the flow of oil by mid-August. Given the fact that relief wells represent the most certain way to kill a troubled well, should oil exploration firms be required to preemptively drill relief wells along with exploration wells?

Making preemptive relief wells a required part of deep sea oil exploration was the subject of an opinion article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York, makes the following recommendation:

There are times when the talking heads in the financial media are myopic. Naturally, everyone wants to know if tech bellwethers like IBM (IBM), Yahoo (YHOO), TI (TXI) and Apple (AAPL) will beat top-line revenue estimates. Undoubtedly, Goldman Sachs and BP are headline-grabbers due to the recent SEC settlement and the never-ending “spill.”

Yet, I’m startled by the fact that you couldn’t find a decent feature on Halliburton’s earnings triumph. This is one of the world’s leading service providers to the energy industry… from development to drilling to production. How did the ultra-profitable quarter go largely unnoticed?

Energy stocks of all sorts have faced a double blow: The Big Spill and concerns about the global economy.

There is a fast-changing pattern of possible limitations on oil exploration. Meanwhile, oil prices have fallen to recent lows. The exploration stocks always seem to overreact to oil prices. My impression, admittedly based upon anecdotal information, is that many investors do not have futures accounts and use energy ETFs as a proxy.