You would think there would be a definite answer to the question, but there is not. That is partially due to how the term "proven oil reserves" is computed. Wikipedia says "Proved reserves are those quantities of petroleum which, by analysis of geological and engineering data, can be estimated with a high degree of confidence to be commercially recoverable from a given date forward, from known reservoirs and under current economic conditions." That final clause is all important. Say one country has lots of oil but it costs 150 USD per barrel to recover whereas a second country has much less oil but it only costs 75 USD per barrel to recover. If the current market price of oil is 200 USD per barrel then the first country will have higher proven reserves. If the current market price of oil is 100 USD per barrel then the second country has higher proven reserves - because you cannot extract any of the first countries 150 USD oil profitably at the present market price of 100 USD. So proven oil reserves depends on the current market price of a barrel of oil. As the price moves around the rankings may change. Also as countries make new discoveries or revise previous estimates the numbers can change.
So what are the actual rankings? From the US EIA International Energy Outlook 2011.
| World Oil Reserves As Of 1/1/2011 | |||||||||||
| rank | country | billion bbls | |||||||||
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | 260.1 | |||||||||
| 2 | Venezuela | 211.2 | |||||||||
| 3 | Canada | 175.2 | |||||||||
| 4 | Iran | 137.0 | |||||||||
| 5 | Iraq | 115.0 | |||||||||
| 6 | Kuwait | 101.5 | |||||||||
| 7 | UAE | 97.8 | |||||||||
| 13 | USA | 20.7 | |||||||||
| 14 | China | 20.4 | |||||||||
| Source: Oil & Gas Journal | |||||||||||
The other surprise on this list is obviously Canada. Their high ranking is due to inclusion of Alberta oil sands being counted as recoverable. OPEC rankings are a bit different. They have Venezuela first with 297 billion bbls, and Saudi Arabia second with 265 billion bls. Also they only count conventional sources of oil - which means we do not count Canada's Alberta oil sands - and they fall down to the level of the US or China.
Why am I bringing this up? USA today ran a story about Venezuela's upcoming election and I was surprised to see that they claimed that Venezuela had the world's largest proven oil reserves "This nation of 29 million people is suffering from high unemployment, food shortages and rising crime despite having the largest oil reserves in the world." I was very surprised to see the claim that they were anywhere near Saudi Arabia.
However consulting EIA's Venezuela page. "According to Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Venezuela had 211 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in 2011, the second largest the world. This number constitutes a major upward revision – last year the same publication listed the country’s reserves at 99.4 billion barrels. The update results from the inclusion of massive reserves of extra-heavy oil in Venezuela’s Orinoco belt...Venezuela contains billions of barrels in extra-heavy crude oil and bitumen deposits, most of which are situated in the Orinoco Belt in central Venezuela. According to a study released by the U.S. Geological Survey, the mean estimate of recoverable oil resources from the Orinoco Belt is 513 billion barrels of crude oil. PdVSA began the ‘Magna Reserva’ project in 2005, which involved dividing the Orinoco region into 27 blocks and quantifying the reserves in place. This initiative resulted in the upgrading of Venezuelan reserve estimates by more than 100 billion barrels."
Also interesting - although Hugo Chavez likes to paint the USA as the devil (recall his burning sulfur speech) apparently the devil you know is worth doing business with. Venezuela's largest oil export market is...the USA. 43% of their petroleum exports go to the United States. And Venezuela is the USA's fourth largest supplier of petroleum products after Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. Just thought it was interesting.
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