Yes, I am the one who has 'abandoned all hope' and hence was the target of your frustrated outburst. I don't mind ad-hominem attacks myself since I'm pretty confident about what I am going to do about the situation and help my friends. However I would like to try to correct you on your notions of TOD's in general.

You quite clearly place great hope in finding new oil. And new oil we keep finding, so you must be right.

You seem to imply that since every square inch of earth at every depth hasn't been 'explored', there is still great hope of finding substantial amounts of oil. And this feel of hope is easy to maintain as long as one doesn't actually look up what oil exploration means.

Geologist have been using modern methods of geomorphology and structural geology for over a hundred years now. Even before extensive core sample drilling had begun, we had mapped the structures and morphology we see on the surface and had a pretty good map of how different structures and morphologies behaved in relation to each other. Hence you can start to form some basic rules on what is 'down there'. You don't have to drill right next to where you drilled before since you can know from past drilling statistics that the formation continues at a certain angle that way, or that certain rock types are associated with it.

I friend of mine is an oil geologist by the way and she gave us a good presentation of the work she's been doing in Algeria. They had no modern 3D-seismic surveying equipment, just simple survey holes drilled for core samples. From them you could see back in time millions of years, with each layer carefully studied under the microscope for biologic markers, small fossils, which indicated the age of the layer, and more importantly, the 'order' of the layer. Then you drilled another hole and found the same layers, maybe in slightly different angles or in different order. You drilled a few more and you could draw a 3D-map of the area and compare that to all the knowledge geologist have gathered for the past 100 years - and with that you could tell exactly where to drill for the potential pockets of oil.

Today all that drilling data has been consolidated into computer databases and with seismic survey data. We know that certain formations have certain seismic signatures. We can truly 'see' what's 'down there'. And we can confirm and keep checking the seismic surveys by doing the occasional core drill. And they keep refining the database. This by the way has been going on for 30 years.

So now you hopefully know a little bit more about oil geology. However you could've, like many others here, not consulted an oil geologist, and instead trusted the cold statistic data. Discoveries peaked many many decades ago, and have been going down ever since. We can now retrospectively look at the discovery peaking dynamics of single countries or even continents and conclude that, YES, we can keep finding new oil, BUT NOT in any substantial significant qualities. That is what we TOD's are saying. Nothing more.

And to add a bit about hopelessness and hopefulness: I think denial is a strong form of hopelessness. Most TOD's are actually very lively and happy people, doing great things for their friends and communities, preparing for the now inevitable consequences of PO. Some of us myself included might trip on doom'n'gloom occasionally, but you have to see that people like us are useful since we look into the worst-case scenarios and then find ways to live with them. This is useful unless of course you don't believe in worst-case scenarios...