Oh Bob, you are young, naive, and idealistic I think. They may be irritated but when push comes to shove they will still be grateful for the gasoline they need and recognize it comes with a price, oh well.
And punishing BP would just be a petty gesture -- presumably this would strengthen (eg) Shell, who have spilled EVEN MORE oil in the Niger Delta than BP have in the Gulf, and made no effort to clean up -- nor does anyone care:
Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it | Environment | The Observer
That's more like it.they're "too big to fail."
Fortunately I think that is an exaggeration. Even if it kept spewing upward of a half million barrels a day for the summer, if that were evenly dispersed through-out the gulf it I think it would amount to less than one part per billion in the water (at least I heard some physicist claim this about relative volume, and no one contradicted his math) However, it's unlikely to do that, so it certainly will destroy some large regional ecosystems.