America Takes Hold of the ‘Land of Oil’

Watch America Takes Hold of the ‘Land of Oil’ - AlArabiya English on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Venezuela is not an ordinary oil producing country.

00:05It is often described as the land of oil,

00:08a nation built on top of the world's largest proven oil reserves,

00:12estimated at 303.8 billion barrels,

00:16roughly 17% of global reserves.

00:21Yet despite this enormous wealth, the paradox lies in production.

00:26While Venezuela was pumping about 3.5 million barrels per day in the 1970s,

00:33output has now fallen to around 1 million barrels per day,

00:37less than 1% of global supply.

00:41The bulk of this wealth is concentrated in the Orinoco Belt,

00:45the region stretching south of the Orinoco River Basin,

00:49where extra-heavy crude oil is found,

00:52a resource that requires costly and complex technologies for extraction and refining.

00:59Historically, the United States was the main buyer of Venezuelan oil,

01:04but that equation changed with the imposition of U.S. sanctions,

01:08making China the primary destination for exports over the past decade.

01:13To circumvent those sanctions, Venezuela has relied heavily on what is known as a shadow fleet,

01:19tankers operating outside traditional frameworks to ship oil to Asia

01:24in an effort to bypass restrictions imposed by Washington.

01:28.

01:29.