Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world for today, which are estimated at the amount of 300.9 billion barrels of oil. Besides South American country, top 3 includes Saudi Arabia – 266.5 billion barrels and Canada – 169.7 billion barrels.
However, even the record reserves of oil do not always allow realizing the potential benefits as much as possible.
In many countries, the process of oil production is complicated by factors such as the geological complexity of production, or production may be encumbered with tax burden. Thus, the total cost of oil production in different countries varies considerably. Saudi Arabia, according to the total cost of one barrel of oil, is a global leader – the price of production including taxes, administrative and transportation costs is $8.98 per barrel. Countries with the lowest total cost of oil production are Iran and Iraq with $9.09/barrel and $10.57/barrel, respectively. At the same time, Venezuela with the largest reserves of the resource has a total cost of oil of $28.99. For the South American country, the production process is complicated by the fact that the vast majority of Venezuelan oil deposits are represented by extra heavy oil, which production cost is higher.
It should be noted that according to the results of 2018, the whole world consumed 99.3 million barrels of oil on the daily basis and according to forecasts for 2019, this indicator will increase up to 100.8 million barrels of oil per day.
