Venezuela has 17.5% of the world crude oil reserves. That equates to 298.3 Thousand Million Barrels of Oil.

That means, with this level of natural resource wealth, Venezuela should be a very rich and prosperous country, like Oman or Norway.

What is the value of 298.3 Thousand Million Barrels of Oil ?

That is: 298.3 x 1000 x 1,000,000 = 298,300,000,000

What is the “crude value” of this ?

Crude Oil trades today at $47.54 a barrel.

Thus:-

298,300,000,000 x $47.54 = $14,181,182,000,000

That is £9,192,560,000 = £9.192 Trillion

That is about 6 times the UK’s Annual GDP. Yet Venezuela does not seem to the prosperity that the oil wealth should bring.