Does Venezuela really have the biggest oil reserves in the world?

Venezuela’s claim of possessing 300 billion barrels of oil reserves—the largest in the world—is heavily inflated by political posturing and fluctuating market economics. While the country sits on vast deposits, the "proven reserves" metric requires oil to be economically extractable at current prices. Venezuelan oil is essentially a thick, energy-intensive tar that requires expensive chemical injection to liquefy, making much of it unviable unless prices exceed $100 per barrel. Artem Abramov of Rystad Energy and Hal Hodson of The Economist note that at current prices of $60, actual reserves are likely less than half the official figure. Furthermore, restoring production to historical levels of 3.5 million barrels a day would require an estimated $183 billion investment over 15 years. This recovery faces significant hurdles, including a global oversupply of oil, limited specialized refinery capacity in the US, and severely dilapidated infrastructure that hasn't been maintained since the 1970s.