US oil groups warn they will need guarantees to invest in Venezuela
Donald Trump to hold more talks with industry bosses as president flexes power over energy markets
“No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country,” said one private equity investor who specialises in energy.
After bombing Iran and Nigeria, “Venezuela is the third OPEC oil producer to be attacked by the US in the last year,” said Bill Farren-Price at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
“This is a global agenda that will increasingly refashion global energy trade to US terms and conditions,” he said.
Financial Times
According to figures widely cited throughout the media and the oil industry itself, Venezuela is sitting on around 300 billion barrels' worth of "proved" oil, meaning barrels that have, in theory, been confirmed as commercially viable by conclusive testing or actual production.
This compares with Saudi Arabia's proved reserve estimates of around 260 billion to 270 billion barrels and the much more meager 45 billion barrels in the US.
This is a self-reported figure, however, and is published — but not verified — by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, of which Venezuela is a founding member. Holistic and conclusive evaluations by independent experts have never been conducted.
And up until 2007, Venezuela's self-reported proved reserves sat at around 100 billion barrels, according to data reported by OPEC. By 2013, that figure was updated after a reclassification of fields controlled by the country's state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Venezuelan production was roughly flat during the same period.
Venezuela says it has the world's largest reserves of crude oil. Making it viable is a whole other problem. [Video]
Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states doubled their reserve estimates at the same time in 1988 after the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Chavez did the same in 2007 by inflating Venezual's reserves 3- or 4-fold. The US figure is closer to 65 billion barrels as I recall. |
