Overview
- Venezuela reports about 303 billion barrels of proved crude reserves, but the figure is self-reported to OPEC and lacks an independent audit.
- Energy scholar Francisco Monaldi estimates conservative proved reserves closer to 100–110 billion barrels, citing lower recovery rates than official claims.
- Oil output has plunged from more than 3 million barrels per day in the 1990s and early 2000s to below 1 million in recent years, shrinking Venezuela’s share of global supply to under 1%.
- Recent U.S. actions, including the reported capture of Nicolás Maduro and a Coast Guard tanker seizure, have renewed geopolitical focus on Venezuela’s oil sector.
- Heavy, hard-to-produce crude in the Orinoco Belt, decayed infrastructure, power constraints, corruption, and post-2019 sanctions leave production recovery slow, costly and technically challenging.