@Chasteen

True. It's complicated.

"How much oil does Venezuela have? And is it high or low quality?" are questions whose answer changes greatly depending on what the global price of oil is. 🤷🏿‍♂️

For other folks: Crude oil can be light or heavy (viscosity) and sweet or sour (sulphur content). The good stuff is light and sweet (not too thick, and low sulphur content). That's the easiest to refine and sell.

Venezuela has a small amount of light sweet crude. It has a huge amount of heavy sour crude. Together, it has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. More than Saudi Arabia.

But if the global price of oil is low, then you can't even process the thick stuff for a profit and sell it. We say "Venezuela has a little oil, but at least it's light and sweet!"

If the global price of oil is high enough, then you can process and sell the thick stuff. We say, "Venezuela has the most oil on the world! Even more than Saudi Arabia! But most of it is heavy and sour!"

Venezuela used to mix their light and heavy oils together for export, to sell medium crude. Some of their light refineries have fallen into disrepair. They now import more light sweet crude, to mix with their heavy sour crude, to export the medium stuff. US oil companies want to get back to Venezuela to fix those refineries.

The US is the world's top producer of light sweet crude. Nigeria is also near the top.

At this point, astute readers might be wondering why Nigeria is not a fabulously wealthy country like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait? The answer is: for similar reasons that Russia is not a fabulously wealthy country. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Other readers might be wondering what happens to the climate if the price of crude oil gets low enough that we can get at all the Venezuela's oil? The bad news is that it's not just Venezuela. There are proven oil reserves all over the world that aren't being mined only because they are not affordable. Solar cells and EVs reduce demand for diesel and gasoline, which lowers the demand for a barrel of oil, which lowers the price, which keeps more of this stuff in the ground. Best form of carbon capture.

Solar cells and batteries also reduce the cost to generate a gigawatt of electricity, and makes more coal mines unaffordable to operate.