How Much Oil Does Saudi Arabia Really Have?

The energy world is beset with opacity. Especially companies like Saudi Aramco and Gazprom (to name but a very few) are as transparent as one meter of reinforced concrete. I will quickly believe that there is still an awful lot of oil under Arabian sands, I question how economic this would be. And I don’t believe that it costs no more than USD 12 per barrel to lift it for even a second. If things were still that great, Saudis would allow any inspection that is interested as they would want to show off with the goods. Something is amiss in the Kingdom …

Officially, Venezuela has the world’s largest crude oil reserves with 303 billion barrels of proved reserves. But, a lot of this oil is extra-heavy crude oil, and may not be economical to produce at prevailing prices. Thus, some portion of Venezuela’s barrels may in reality no longer be in the “proved reserves” category.

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