Yeah, but very hard to extract, much like Canadian natural gas/oil or Polish coal. Makes great propaganda claim for politicians, but economically unfeasable.
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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Did you know that countries self report their "proven reserves" and this influence the quota they could produce with the OPEC ?
The CIA also has them as the country with largest reserves in their World Factbook
As a matter of fact, according to the looking at the Wikipedia article OP posted I just did, BP, the CIA, the EIA and OPEC all agree it's above 300 billion barrels, with less than 1% variation between them.
Am I crazy or did they forget to label Nigeria in the black and white map?
The reality is that it's difficult to extract and not terribly cost effective. There's actually a surprisingly good dive into the whole thing from CNN of all places https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/03/business/venezuela-oil-russia-india-trump-tariffs
Funny how the US just happens to be targeting most of the biggest chunks. Venezuela, Canada, Iran,...
Not all oil is created equal. While all oil is useful, our current oil dependent economy is highly dependent on easily (cheaply) refined and pumped oil.
Though the guardian claims that Venzuela oil is "ideal" for America's gulf-coast refineries. I don't really know one way or another the efficacy of that claim. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/05/venezuelan-crude-oil-appeals-to-us-refineries
But it's bad no good oil, which is why the US isn't at all interested in it and has done no actions to obtain it in the last 50 years.
But now that it's 'owned' by the US, doesn't it go to boost their petrodollar?
It was more to cut off alternate supply imo.
"We got the largest vein of gold in the world! It's 10 karats in purity and only a mile underground."
And it costs 90 dollars to make 100 dollars worth of gold