The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are recognized as the largest in the world, totaling as of 1 January 2014. In early 2011, then-president Hugo Chávez and the Venezuelan government announced that the nation's oil reserves had surpassed that of the previous long-term world leader, Saudi Arabia. OPEC said that Saudi Arabia's reserves stood at in 2009. The 2019 edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy reports the total proved reserves of 303.3 billion barrels for Venezuela and 297.7 billion barrels for Saudi Arabia. Venezuela's development of its oil reserves has been affected by political unrest in recent years. In late 2002, nearly half of the workers at the state oil company PDVSA went on strike, after which the company fired 18,000 of them, draining the company of technical knowledge and expertise. Venezuela's crude oil is very heavy by international standards, and as a result much of it must be processed by specialized domestic and international refineries. Venezuela continues to be one of the largest suppliers of oil to the United States, sending about to the U.S. Venezuela is also a major oil refiner and the owner of the Citgo gasoline chain. In October 2007, the Venezuelan government said its proven oil reserves was. The energy and oil ministry said it had certified an additional of proven reserves in the country's Faja del Orinoco region. In February 2008, Venezuelan proven oil reserves were. By 2009, Venezuela reported of conventional oil reserves, the largest of any country in South America. When 2015 ended, Venezuela’s confirmed oil reserves were estimated to be around 300.9 billion barrels in total. In 2008, it had net oil exports of to the United States. As a result of the lack of transparency in the country's accounting, Venezuela's true level of oil production is difficult to determine, but OPEC analysts estimate that it produced around of oil in 2009, which would give it 234 years of remaining production at current rates. In 2010 Venezuela reportedly produced 3.1 millions barrels of oil daily and exporting 2.4 million of those barrels per day. Such oils exports brought in $61 billion for Venezuela. However, Venezuela only owned about $10.5 billion in foreign reserves, meaning that its debt remained at $7.2 billion when 2015 rang out. Venezuela may suffer a severe deterioration of its relative power in international affairs if the global transition to renewable energy is completed and the world no longer demands its oil. It is ranked 151 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition.
In addition to conventional oil, Venezuela has oil sands deposits similar in size to those of Canada, and approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil. Venezuela's Orinoco tar sands are less viscous than Canada's Athabasca oil sands – meaning they can be produced by more conventional means – but they are buried too deep to be extracted by surface mining. Estimates of the recoverable reserves of the Orinoco Belt range from to. In 2009, the USGS updated this value to. According to the USGS, the Orinoco Belt alone is estimated to contain 900– of heavy crude in proven and unproven deposits. Of this, the USGS estimated that 380– could be technically recoverable, which would make Venezuela's total recoverable reserves among the largest in the world. The technology needed to recover ultra-heavy crude oil, such as in most of the Orinoco Belt, may be much more complex and expensive than that of Saudi Arabia's light oil industry. The USGS did not make any attempt to determine how much oil in the Orinoco Belt is economically recoverable. Unless the price of crude rises, it is likely that the proven reserves will have to be adjusted downward.
Comparison to Saudi Arabia
While Venezuela has reported "proven reserves" topping those reported by Saudi Arabia, industry analyst Robert Rapier has suggested that these numbers reflect variables driven by changes in crude oil market prices -- indicating that the percentage of Venezuela's oil that qualifies as Venezuela's "proven" reserves may be driven up or down by the global market price for crude oil. According to Rapier, Venezuela's oil reserves are largely of "extra-heavy crude oil" which might "not be economical to produce" under certain market conditions. Rapier notes that the near-quadrupling of Venezuela's claimed "proven" reserves, between 2005 and 2014 -- from 80 Gbbl to 300 Gbbl -- may have been due to soaring crude oil prices that made Venezuela's normally uneconomical heavier crude suddenly market-viable to produce, and thus elevating it to within Venezula's "proven" reserves. Consequently, Rapier contends, periods of lower crude oil market prices may remove those reserves from the "proven" category -- placing Venezuela's viable "proven reserves" well below Saudi Arabia's. By comparison, Rapier contends, the lighter crude generally associated with Saudi oil fields is cost-effective to produce under most market-price conditions, and thus is more consistently, and uniformly, part of Saudi Arabia's "proven" reserves, compared to the more variable usefulness of the Venezuelan oil.
