To: tejek who wrote (388345 ) 6/4/2008 7:29:25 AM From: Brumar89 Read Replies (1) | Respond to The quotes are accurate. Your interpretation of them (as I can tell it) is whats inaccurate. Venezuela had 80 billion barrels (13×109 m3) of conventional oil reserves as of 2007, the largest oil reserves of any country in South America. In 2006, it had net oil exports of 2.2 million barrels per day (350×103 m3/d), the sixth-largest in the world and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. In recent years, crude oil production has been falling, mostly due to depletion of existing oil fields and, since many of its oil fields suffer production decline rates of at least 25 percent per year, industry analysts estimate that Venezuela must spend some $3 billion each year just to maintain production levels. In addition to conventional oil, Venezuela has oil sands deposits similar in size to those of Canada (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 deeper – meaning they cannot be extracted by surface mining. Estimates of the recoverable reserves of the Orinoco Belt range from 100 billion barrels (16×109 m3) to 270 billion barrels (43×109 m3). However, they are not generally considered proven reserves since Venezuela lacks enough technological expertise and capital to develop them on a sufficiently large scale. While there may be more oil fields elsewhere in Mexico, the constitution of Mexico gives the state oil company, PEMEX, a monopoly over oil production, and the Mexican government treats Pemex as a major source of revenue. As a result, Pemex has insufficient capital to develop the resources on its own, and cannot take on foreign partners to supply money and technology it lacks. In June, 2007 former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that declining oil production in Mexico could cause a major fiscal crisis there, and that Mexico needed to increase investment in its energy sector to prevent it.[50]
