Venezuela's proven oil reserves climb to more than 211 bn barrels

[Judi Lynn]

volume 15, issue #7 - Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Venezuela's proven oil reserves climb to more than 211 bn barrels

22-03-10 Venezuela maintained its status as the world's No. 2 holder of proven oil reserves, with a total of 211.2 bn barrels at the close of 2009. That figure includes the 39.9 bn barrels classified as proven reserves during the month of December, the Communications Ministry said in a bulletin.

Worldwide, Venezuela ranked behind only Saudi Arabia (266 bn barrels) and ahead of Iraq (113 bn barrels) and Kuwait (94 bn barrels) in terms of proven reserves at the end of last year. The country's total proven reserves, however, amount to less than half of the at least 500 bn barrels that are believed to lie within Venezuelan territory.

On January 22, the US Geological Survey released a study indicating that the Orinoco Belt in eastern Venezuela holds 513 bn barrels of technically recoverable crude. The USGS, whose estimate for that 50,000-sq-km (19,300-sq-mile) area was nearly double the 280 bn barrels of recoverable crude that had been calculated by state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA), said the Orinoco Belt was the largest oil accumulation it had ever evaluated.

The USGS study, the first to precisely evaluate how much oil can be extracted from the subsoil using current technology, also confirmed that the Orinoco oil is tar-like, heavy crude.

The Chavez government has recently begun the process of developing the Orinoco reserves by signing a series of agreements with a score of foreign oil companies, which must form joint ventures with PdVSA in which the Venezuelan government has a majority stake.
Chavez said in late January that the USGS also "is recognizing for the first time the large quantity of gas associated with that petroleum... and are estimating it at 130 tcf. We estimate that (the country's gas reserves can increase) by another 150 tn."

He recalled that one of the world's largest gas deposits -- a 33-sq-km (12.7-sq-mile) area containing 8 tcf of gas -- was discovered last September off Venezuela's Caribbean coast.

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntl102280.htm

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thanks for this info! It helps clarify what the USGS said, that Venezuela has the biggest oil

reserve on earth, twice Saudi Arabia's. That's total estimated oil. On proven reserves (oil that is extractable with current technology), Venezuela is second. There is huge peril in possessing something that U.S.-based multinationals and the U.S. war machine desperately need to support the filthy rich. That war machine might just come down on a country with such a resource, slaughtering a million innocent people and creating vast chaos and suffering. It might plot against such a country for decades (Iraq) or for half a century (Iran, beginning with destroying Iran's first democracy in 1954), or support the filthy rich "sheiks of araby" who parade as monarchs (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait), or relentlessly demonize governments that are actually beneficial and democratic, that implement social justice, that share out the oil wealth (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia) and surround them with U.S. war assets (Venezuela), bomb them (Ecuador), and fund and support murderous, racist secessionists (Bolivia). And there is every other kind of U.S. meddling as well, such as installing Calderon in Mexico to privatize Mexico's constitutionally protected oil and use of the U.S. "war on drugs" to militarize and brutalize countries that possess oil (Colombia, Mexico) and to create pawns for regional strategies of U.S. domination (Honduras). Then there are the inherent perils of development of the resource, as we see today in the Gulf of Mexico. Venezuela has a good safety record, with no major spills. Will that continue? Ecuador, on the other hand, has been ravaged by Chevron-Texaco, with a long term oil spill over an area of the Amazon the size of Rhode Island, with toxic goo still oozing out of the ground, poisoning people and fisheries. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia all now have good democracies, inclined toward safety and the common good--but oil (like gold) tends to make people crazy. Will these democracies survive oil development, especially with the U.S. plotting against them and fervently designing strategies of conquest and the installation of U.S. puppets and tyrants?

Oil is a two-edged sword. We are the prime example of what oil and oil corps do to a country and to democracy. Loot, pollute and tyrannize. That is oil's legacy. Will Latin America be able to avoid this fate? We are seeing that drama play out before our very eyes.