Oil Spill, Courtesy of a bunch of sad corporations

I have been keeping tabs on the oil spill on the East coast. It's kind of "deja vu" because I remember as a kid in 1969 when we had this huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara. After awhile, a bunch of people formed a new organization called "GOO" (Get Oil Out). What I remember most are two things: we had to use some kind of cleaning fluid to remove tar from our feet after visiting the beach, even though I never noticed stepping on any tar, and there were birds and mammals all over the place contaminated with tar on their feathers and fur. It was very sad.

So, here's my question. We have the technology to locate places with a great deal of precision using locators such as GPS and altimeters. Why can't we drill from shore underground to where the offshore oil is located and then pump the oil that way? Sure, we probably would still need to explore for oil using ships, but if we could remove part of the hazard to land by siting wells on land, shouldn't we do that?

That's just half my question though. The other half is, why are we even encouraging drilling instead of giving oil companies extra benefits to shift to creating green technologies like biodiesel, bio-methane, algae-based fuels and organic fertilizers? I'm not interested in driving energy corporations out of business because I understand that as stupid as they may be, the desire of their employees to remain gainfully employed is probably one of the biggest reasons why efforts to drive them out of the oil business will fail unless accompanied by incentives.