U.S. geologists say Venezuela has over 500 bil barrels. Saudi Arabia 260 bil. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8476395.stm Guess there won't be an oil shortage anytime soon.
Son, if you ever made love, you should know it is not the size but the speed and technic that counts. You can fuck your big di... I mean reserve if you can't get it out with a good speed from the hole, if you know what I mean. (well, you probably don't)
In OPEC, your production quota is a function of your reserves. Venezuela is being bankrupted by Chavez. 2+2=4.
6 things that you have to realize: 1) This has been known for a while, and is not news. Here's why: 2) Most of those reserves are from the Orinoco heavy tar belt. Which basically means that a big chunk of that oil is only economically recoverable under very high price conditions. 3) The world doesn't currently have the installed heavy oil tar refining capacity to take advantage of this oil even if it was recoverable. 4) The cancer that the Chavez regime is almost guarantees that that oil will be harder to get to than a 10 mile deep sea reserve in the middle of the north pole. 5) The rest of OPEC will do everything in its power to keep those reserve numbers unofficial so that Venezuela won't get a higher production quota. 6) Under the Chavez regime, oil production has declined due to corruption and negligence. The state oil company, run by the military, couldn't increase production even if that oil was light and raining straight down from the heavens into empty tankers ready to leave port. To wrap up, for that oil to ever be recoverable (and therefore have any kind of real impact in the world/market) you need 3 things to happen: 1) Chavez and his revolutionaries end up either in jail or kicked out of the country and succeeded by a democratic unity government. 2) This unity government has to be strong enough (both in will and public support) to get Venezuela out of OPEC, or have the bravado and know how to negotiate itself into a top dog position at OPEC; and simultaneously open up the country's oil sector to foreign investment (either through privatizing the national oil company or adopting a more "Colombia" model where the national oil company remains, but does so as a partner to the foreign private ventures). This is critical, you see, since after the wrecking and pillaging left by the Chavez regime, there just isn't enough capital, infrastructure, or people left for PDVSA (the national oil company) to survive never mind grow. 3) Oil prices need to go higher and stay there. This, my friend, is what some people would call an impossible trinity; but I am going to be just a hair more optimistic and call it a highly improbable trinity. By the way, note that the already ridiculously high improbability of these events is increased ad infinitum by the simple fact that those events have to happen exactly in the order posted above. For example: say number 3 were to happen first, then that makes number 1 impossible (since the dictator would be flush in cash that will keep him in power) which in turn makes number 2 impossible (Chavez will never leave OPEC which, to simplify things, pretty much guarantees that number 2 will never happen first). Also, if number 1 were to happen quickly followed by number 3, then that would pulverize what little support there would be for number 2 since the status quo would be enough to get by and then some... So there you have it, in the bizarro world that South America is, a country with more natural resources than the next 4 nations on the list combined is still S.O.L and doomed to be nothing more than the sorry subject of a cynical internet post.
...you didn't even read your own link. At the end of the article it was mentioned that Venezuelans disagree witht he US estimates and the recovery rate is probably not more than 25%...(that means 3/4 of the stuff stays in the ground) So please stop watching Fox News and getting a hard on when you hear about undiscovered oil resources and such.... And get an education on oil shales and tars, because they are NOT crude oil!