BP Announces that Venezuela Now Have the Largest Oil Reserves in the World
Source: Oil Price.com
BP Announces that Venezuela Now Have the Largest Oil Reserves in the World
By Charles Kennedy | Thu, 14 June 2012 22:31
BP has just released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy in which it claims that Venezuela now holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world, overtaking the original leader Saudi Arabia.
The South American nations oil deposits were increased from last years figure to an estimated at 296.5 billion barrels, more than Saudi Arabias 265.4 billion barrels.
Global reserves have been increased by 1.9 percent from last years 1.62 trillion barrels to 1.65 trillion. Robert Wine, a spokesman from BP, explained that the reason for the revisions is that BPs review is published in June, before most countries issue their annual reserve figures.
Last years average oil price was also at record levels which meant that lots of hard-to-reach oil deposits became commercially viable. North Sea Brent crude oil, a general benchmark for most of the worlds oil, averaged $107.38 a barrel in 2011.
Read more: http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/BP-Announces-that-Venezuela-Now-Have-the-Largest-Oil-Reserves-in-the-World.html
nanabugg
(2,198 posts)boppers
(16,588 posts)er....
Hugabear
(10,340 posts)Saudi Arabia and the US have been kissing each others ass for a long time. We want their oil, they want our military toys.
Now if Saudi Arabia were to develop an overtly anti-American attitude, then it would be time for them to start being worried.
Ash_F
(5,861 posts)Er...read some history. Saudi Arabia got the Iraq/Afghanistan/Egypt/Libya/Vietnam/Somalia/Cuba treatment 90 years ago, the moment post industrial countries found out about the oil. Yeah, the UK was the swinging dick at the start but the US helped and after they got wrecked by the Germans and lost their force projection abilities, our government took over the role of big bad and has been ever since; AKA the age of the US(and USSR) superpower. This is why most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
Your posts never fail to disappoint, I could set my watch by them.
PS - In short the Government the Saudi Arabians have is the government the US leadership/ruling class want for them, which happens to be the opposite of a good one. And the US has helped maintain it through violence, not democracy.
Exultant Democracy
(6,594 posts)And they have yet to get back on their feet again.
boppers
(16,588 posts)Did we ever?
hack89
(39,171 posts)onehandle
(51,122 posts)When Saudi Arabia financed and manned 9/11, we gave them a pass and bombed their neighbor.
Are we going to bomb Columbia, Brazil, or Guyana?
We gotta bomb somebody.
boppers
(16,588 posts)We call it "drug interdiction".
onehandle
(51,122 posts)boppers
(16,588 posts)He hasn't demonstrated a need to flaunt his junk, AFAICT. Maybe he's not insecure about it.
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)s
flamingdem
(39,320 posts)it's harder to set up some kind of CIA executed event, though we can assume they have all kinds of plans!
truth2power
(8,219 posts)Can't have any oil on the planet not under the control of multi-national oil corporations.
TheDebbieDee
(11,119 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Last edited Wed Jun 20, 2012, 01:58 AM - Edit history (1)
This has great possibilities, almost as good as annexing Canada.
Come on, you know you want to!!!
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)who is probably dying before long may he rip
pmorlan1
(2,096 posts)I wonder how long before we go to war in Venezuela?
BadGimp
(4,018 posts)If Romney wins...
BillyJack
(819 posts)OIL
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)or Saudi.
Baitball Blogger
(46,757 posts)EFerrari
(163,986 posts)boppers
(16,588 posts)That's not really a helpful graphic without such a context, we have bases in an *insane* number of locations.
Judi Lynn
(160,606 posts)Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)and it continues to operate as an Ecuadorian base which it always was.
http://www.brazzil.com/p128may03.htm
There is no US base in Iquitos. there is a Peruvian naval base.
There is no base in Bolivia
there is no base in the Triple frontera
the bases in Colombia listed are all Colombian bases.
ther e is no US base in Tierra de Fuego
thanks Miss Information.
you did miss the bases in Puerto Rico, a US territory.
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)This is the most current one I could find. Maybe you can do better.
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)EFerrari
(163,986 posts)Pentagon Building Bases in Central America and Colombia
http://forusa.org/blogs/john-lindsay-poland/pentagon-building-bases-central-america-colombia/8445
And one from this week. (Thanks for the push, I almost missed this.)
U.S. Military Wants More Drones In Latin America
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/us-military-wants-more-dr_n_1593128.html
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)Wiki article on one of the bases in your article. the very first sentence, "Tolemaida Air Base (ICAO: SKTI) is an Colombian military air base located in Melgar."
its a Colombian base. we already know that the US gives military aid to Colombia and other nations for defense which includes construction activities on host country military bases but there are those who always seem to interpret that as "US building bases in Latin America".
there was just an article yesterday on Chavez and drones too.
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1915825,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/colombia-us-bases-unconstitutional
http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/07/colombia-uribe-agrees-us-access-to-military-bases/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/world/americas/23colombia.html
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)Last edited Fri Jun 15, 2012, 01:45 PM - Edit history (2)
in fact as US operations, or leased like the one in Honduras or previously at the Ecuadorian base in Manta. However, as you posted those Colombian bases were never approved or constructed.
the majority of the "US" bases on that map you posted are existing host country military bases (including those in Colombia), nothing was constructed, or simply rumours.
Remember, you said the US is surrounding Venezuela with bases.
Judi Lynn
(160,606 posts)US establishes new military bases in South America
(Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato of São Paulo for May 15. See original here.)
by Indira Carpio Olivo and Ernesto J. Navarro
On March 24, 2012, the web site aporrea.org published a story from four days earlier, taken from matrizur.org, stating that the governor of the province of El Chaco was granting permission for installation by the [United States] Southern Command of a military base in that Argentine territory.
The story reads, The building, which will be inaugurated this month, is located on the grounds of the airport in Resistencia, the capital of the northern province of El Chaco, is in the final stage of construction and will be the first such operations center in Argentina. All that is lacking is to equip it with information technology and then to turn over the facility and to finish with the training of personnel, says Colonel Edwin Passmore of the Southern Command, who had met weeks earlier with Governor Jorge Capitanich.
Days later, on April 5, the Chile of Sebastián Piñera opened the doors to the same Southern Command. A military complex located at Fuerte Aguayo in the community of Concón, in Valparaíso Region, some 130 kilometers northeast of the capital, Santiago, was opened ceremoniously. In the midst of protests, United States Defense Secretary Leon Panetta appeared, declaring that it is not a military base operated by his country but a Chilean base for training United Nations peace forces.
The Southern Command currently operates military bases in Paraguay, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Colombia and Peru. In an interview on the radio program La Brújula del Sur, Walter Goobar, writer and editor for the Sunday weekly Miradas al Sur and columnist for the daily Tiempo Argentino, commented that the government of the United States no longer calls these installations, financed by the Southern Command, military bases, but in the current terminology they are now referred to as Cooperative Security Locations (CSL) or Forward Operating Locations (FOL).
More:
http://lo-de-alla.org/2012/05/us-establishes-new-military-bases-in-south-america/
Of course we know that doesn't include all the bases in Central America, and places like Curacao, etc., with THREE bases in Honduras, the others added AFTER the military coup. Sad, by all means.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)joshcryer
(62,276 posts)Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)how much of that is recoverable is highly questionable, and considering that heavy oil recovery is a very environmentally damaging process (we're talking about oil sands and tar sands, like Canada) that's not economically viable with an oil price under c. $80-90 a barrel, and probably not viable at all in the long run given the attendant costs...this is probably pretty meaningless (and it's yet another sign that the peak of conventional oil production has passed).
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)So it will be extracted, eventually, we're not moving off of fossil fuels any time soon. By the time we're pumping their heavy crude we'll start working on our oil shale and we'll then become the country with the "largest oil reserves." The capitalists have no desire for energy independence, they just believe the almighty market will work to their ends. So far they've been fairly on the mark about that, but that's only because we've found newer and newer techniques to get at fossil fuels.
ChangoLoa
(2,010 posts)It's almost pure heavy/ extra-heavy oil, no sand is mixed with it. So there's no energy cost for separating the oil from the sand, just from some chemical elements. All in all, the average cost of production in the Orinoco belt is around 20$. The Alberta oil sands produce for around 50$ a barrel.
IamK
(956 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)harun
(11,348 posts)Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Javaman
(62,534 posts)rayofreason
(2,259 posts)...and plenty of rumors that their reserves are much less.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/08/saudi-oil-reserves-overstated-wikileaks
jade3000
(238 posts)Look, I care about the environment. But peak oil folks are tackling the issue of the environment and social impac oil within an ineffective paradigm. You'll notice that the article says oil reserves increased by 1.9% and will likely continue to increase if the price of oil stays high. Everybody knows there's a finite amount of oil, but running out of it is neither imminent or particularly galvanizing. More important are the wars, politics, oppression, pollution, spills, climate change, etc. that are tied to our use of oil. Saudi Arabia's anti-democratic monarchy, Nigeria's oil violence an so on, and so on need to be addressed head on.
Sometimes I notice that the peak oil threat is promoted by the same groups that exploit the oil and by the car industry oligopoly. Firstly, they can hijack the issue of intensive oil dependence and point out the least important problem that affects us/ will affect us during this century, the depletion, in order to cover the political and the environmental problems, which are way more urgent. Secondly, they create an issue which will be easy to overcome thanks to... themselves and their discovery of new reserves. It's interesting to note that Venezuela's proven reserves have been multiplied by 40 in the last 30 years .
NickB79
(19,258 posts)Peak Oil doesn't say that we're going to run out of oil. Peak Oil proponents have been saying for a LONG time that we're going to run out of the easy to get, cheap oil. The fact that we're now including reserves like this and the US oil shales in total extractable oil reserves vindicates what Peak Oil theory has stated over and over in the past, that we're past Peak and oil will only continue to increase in price as time goes on.
jade3000
(238 posts)Generally speaking, I don't think oil is "easy to get" or "cheap." Basically, to get oil, in today's economy, you need the backing of a major industrial company or a national government. You're likely to need police or military protection in some part of your operation. Sure, some oil can be gotten out of the ground with simpler and less expensive technology than the others, but it's just technology. The other factors -- pollution, politics, war, militarization, etc. -- make oil not easy.
It's not that peak oil folks don't have a point. They do. I just think it's an ineffective way of framing the issue. Let's put the pollution or humanitarian impacts first. Reaching a peak followed by declining production is not something that should worry us.
Also, harping on the peak confuses and misdirects environmentally minded students. They get caught up in the issue of conserving the resource rather than addressing it's problems.
Btw, I know a little something about this. I have a master's degree in Energy and Resources and another in mechanical engineering, and I work in the energy industry. I've seen students and professionals waste years worrying about an issue that should be much farther down on our priority list.
ChangoLoa
(2,010 posts)Hubbert's theory talks about depletion and decrease in world production (so basically, yes, slowly running out of oil sensu stricto, not running out of cheap oil).
So we'll be "past Peak" when world production decreases.... that's why Hubbert uses the word "peak", it describes the long run behavior of the produced volume.
ChangoLoa
(2,010 posts)Even in the Latin American forum, we've been discussing this for a couple of years.
But it's breaking news in the rest of the site, some even still doubt it...
It's not! a small world.
bananas
(27,509 posts)So what's going on here? This is where Hubbert brings in Canadian tar sands and heavy oils, which he correctly predicts could more than replace the cheap, easily obtainable "liquid crude" (as he calls the light stuff). And he doesn't fail to note the location of the giant supplies of the heavy oil: "Mesopotamia" (as Iraq was then known), Brazil and Venezuela.
http://www.gregpalast.com/why-palast-is-wrong-and-why-the-oil-companies-dont-want-you-to-know-it/
raging_moderate
(147 posts)including in locations hard/dangerous to reach is 1.65 trillion barrels. Estimated usage in the near future aprox 100 million barrels per day (yes per DAY - that's 70 barrels per person per year world wide on average), works out to 45 years until it's all gone. I'll be 94 years old, my kids in their 60's. Well, we did have a nice run while it lasted I guess..... cheap plentiful food, easy cheap and fast world-wide transportation, and PLASTICS, don't forget the plastics.
I wonder why the wealthy elite (either corporate, political, or pseudo-religious) are trying to grab all that they can as quickly as they can from the rest of us????
Alamuti Lotus
(3,093 posts)Yep, it'$ a total my$tery. I mean, I am $o confu$ed by it. I can't $urmi$e why they tried to a$$a$$inate him, $ponsor a pliant oppo$ition that will bow before U$ bu$ine$$ intere$t$, and the re$t of it. Yep, it'$ a total my$tery.
PS: $$$
Oh well. At least there haven't been any exploding cigars...yet.
Prometheus Bound
(3,489 posts)That oil rightly belongs to Exxon-Mobil and Conoco-Phillips, not the people of Venezuela.
KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)Don't panic Venezuela -- we'll be right there!