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Peak oil now? If so, oil prices not likely to decline--ever.

Article Excerpt
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about "peak oil"--defined as the point where the maximum amount of oil that can be recovered is being pumped. After that, oil becomes increasingly scarce and expensive.

If sticker shock at the gas pumps hasn't convinced you, talk to Dr. Darrel Schmitz, head of the Department of Geosciences, Mississippi State University.

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"World oil reserves have probably peaked yesterday, today or tomorrow--literally right about now," Schmitz said. "Production worldwide will start declining relatively soon. We are right at that point."

As an oil industry expert told Schmitz a few years ago, unless some other super giant oil fields are discovered, most everything else currently in production or planned isn't enough and can't be put online soon enough to prevent increasingly world demand from eclipsing supplies.

"Rest assured that for nearly 100 years people have been looking for super large oil finds, so it is not too likely there will be more of those,"...

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