Does Venezuela really have the biggest oil reserves in the world?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When people think of oil rich nations their mind generally goes to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the US.
But according to international statistics, the country with the largest oil reserves is Venezuela, with 300 billion barrels worth.
At their peak they produced over 3.5 million barrels of the stuff per day. However, due to lack of investment, sanctions and mismanagement that peak is long gone.
Following their military intervention, the US administration claims they can get Venezuela's oil production up and running at full capacity within 18 months.
But can they, and why is it that estimates for other countries oil reserves have fluctuated but Venezuela’s has stayed at 300 billion barrels for over two decades?
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Production Co-Ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Dave O’Neill
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast, |
| 0:10.0 | with a programme that looks at the numbers in the news, in life, |
| 0:13.2 | and in the Orinoco Belt of Venezuela, and I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:17.9 | Unless you've been living under some sort of idyllic, soundproofed rock, you will have heard |
| 0:23.4 | that on the 3rd of January, US Special Forces stormed the Venezuelan capital Caracas |
| 0:29.0 | and arrested President Maduro on drugs charges. |
| 0:32.8 | A popular theory online is that this was all about oil, which is not surprising because people have been |
| 0:39.1 | saying that American foreign policy is all about oil for longer than I've been alive. So is it? |
| 0:44.9 | President Trump is here to clarify. The oil companies are going to go in, they're going to spend |
| 0:49.6 | money. We're going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago. |
| 0:54.9 | Now, if I asked you to name an oil-rich nation, you might mention Saudi Arabia. |
| 1:00.1 | Russia and the U.S. itself also spring to mind. |
| 1:03.9 | But allegedly, the country with the largest oil reserves is Venezuela, with 300 billion barrels worth. So today, we're going |
| 1:14.5 | to look at oil numbers. Many years ago, no one really remembers it anymore. Venezuela was |
| 1:20.4 | actually one. Sometimes it's actually the largest crude oil exporters in the world. |
| 1:24.9 | That's Artem Abramov, the lead of oil and gas research at Ristad Energy, an energy research |
| 1:31.7 | and business intelligence firm based in Oslo, Norway. |
| 1:35.8 | Venezuela, in the 1970s, was a country that lived off its oil. |
| 1:41.0 | And given that Venezuela could simply import everything it wanted using oil money, other |
| 1:45.6 | industries faltered or never got started. Production rose and fell over the years, but about a decade |
| 1:51.6 | ago, it collapsed. And basically, the country which was one producing 3.5 million barocale |
... |
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