American Thinker: Despite having the world’s largest oil deposits at about 1.3 trillion barrels, Venezuela has taken socialism’s path downward from the 4th to the 82nd wealthiest nation on Earth.
Venezuela in 1950 had the fourth largest domestic GDP per capita at $7,424 per capita versus $9,573 for the United States as the world’s leader. The United States is still the world’s leader 2019 at $65,061, but Venezuela has collapsed to just $3,100.
Oil was discovered in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt at the beginning of the twentieth century. A 44-mile-wide deposit zone stretching for 375 miles along the Orinoco River toward the Atlantic Ocean has the world’s largest proven reserves at 302 billion barrels.
The shallow depth deposits can be open-pit mined with steam shovels. By adopting the superheated “Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage” (SAGD) that has been employed in Alberta, Canada could double reserves to about 652 billion barrels.
With world oil consumption at 35 billion barrels a year and a price of $60 a barrel, Venezuela’s “proven reserves” would be worth $18 trillion and satisfy world demand for almost nine years. With SAGD investment, Venezuela oil would be worth $39 trillion and satisfy world demand for two decades. But annual production peaked in 1997 at 1.2 billion barrels, and last year was down to 500 million barrels, $30.7 billion revenue.
The sad decline began with the election of Colonel Hugo Chávez in 1997 as Venezuela’s president. Winning with 56 percent of the vote, he blamed exploitation by the rich to push through a constitutional restructuring to create a true socialist state. more here
A chicken sandwich is worth 2 barrels of oil now?
Venezuela. It’s like Zimbabwe, only with fewer tortillas.
A Socialist and her and his money are so soon parted
Has anyone brought this to the attention of
OBSTINATE KOTEX ?
“”There’s a sucker born every, minute, second or more likely every nanosecond””. Someone said something like that once and it was most likely a retired politician who had been selling empty promises and dreams in speeches over his/hers/other years. Voters seem to be easy picking victims for politicians who have wild ideas about great directions a country should go in. And voters never seem to catch on, here and elsewhere. Venezuela voters hopefully have learned a hard lesson of learning from the mistakes of others.
Why are You all looking at Me?
Need any more proof that Socialism is just legalized, flat-out robbery?
“But it will work this time, we just need more money to spend”
Bernie Sanders