The Orinoco Belt, situated underneath Venezuela, may hold some 513 billion barrels of crude oil, according to a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
That's twice the size of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves, placing Venezuela firmly atop the list of oil-rich nations. However, the USGS did not make an estimate of how much oil is actually recoverable. The Orinoco Belt's reserves are typically thick and tar-like, with some patches difficult to reach with current drilling technology.
"Knowing the potential for extractable resources from this tremendous oil accumulation, and others like it, is critical to our understanding of the global petroleum potential and informing policy and decision makers," said USGS Energy Resources Program Coordinator Brenda Pierce, in an advisory. "Accumulations like this one were previously very difficult to produce, but advances in technology and new understandings in geology allow us to assess how much is now technically recoverable.
Could this development have anything to do with possible U.S. efforts to destabilize the regime of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez?
*And* Venezuelans are still super poor and super repressed.
ReplyDeleteNo need for the U.S. to try and destabilize the Chavez regime. He can do it very well himself.
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