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Top Oil Reserve Countries

Name the countries which have the most proven oil reserves.
For the year 2021. Source.
Reserves that could be profitably extracted under current conditions
Quiz by relessness
Rate:
Last updated: December 6, 2021
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First submittedJanuary 8, 2013
Times taken58,431
Average score71.4%
Rating4.91
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Barrels
Country
304 bil
Venezuela
259 bil
Saudi Arabia
209 bil
Iran
170 bil
Canada
145 bil
Iraq
102 bil
Kuwait
97.8 bil
United Arab Emirates
Barrels
Country
80.0 bil
Russia
48.4 bil
Libya
47.1 bil
United States
36.9 bil
Nigeria
30.0 bil
Kazakhstan
26.0 bil
China
25.2 bil
Qatar
Barrels
Country
12.7 bil
Brazil
12.2 bil
Algeria
8.27 bil
Ecuador
8.12 bil
Norway
7.78 bil
Angola
7.00 bil
Azerbaijan
5.79 bil
Mexico
+33
Level 87
Jan 30, 2018
I'm a bit surprised not to see Indonesia.
+33
Level 77
Jan 31, 2018
I was expecting Norway.
+25
Level 85
Feb 3, 2018
I was expecting both.
+4
Level 39
Feb 12, 2018
Me too. Both.
+2
Level 45
May 18, 2018
Possibly depends on reserves being offshore? Isn't a lot of Norway's oil production in the North Sea?
+6
Level 56
May 18, 2018
Norway is actually #21, this list only having the top 20. Should have added Norway to make the table symmetric.
+3
Level 54
Jul 7, 2019
Norway has actually a ton of Oil left in North sea. Were looking for Oil in barnets sea and norwegian sea but the People there is protesting. They want to keep the wildlife. Fish. Based ON small tests there is probably 100 000 barrels. One third of venezuela
+5
Level 75
Mar 5, 2020
Norway is now on, but I was expecting Mexico and Indonesia.
+2
Level 85
Dec 6, 2021
Mexico is now on.
+2
Level 71
Feb 6, 2018
YAY level 65!
+2
Level 52
May 18, 2018
Speaking about levels, I can't find a users ranking. Is there anywhere in the site?
+1
Level 74
May 18, 2018
Check the blog.
+13
Level 82
Mar 19, 2018
Ecuador? Who knew? Well, obviously a third of the people taking this quiz.
+5
Level 82
May 18, 2018
Missed Ecuador again. Really expected to see Indonesia and Norway.
+36
Level 66
Mar 8, 2020
huh? are you a time traveler? you replied your own comment a day before it was made :)

Nvm.. mar may .... haha

+2
Level 78
Mar 5, 2020
Plus presumably Ecuador's government, many in its oil industry, the World Bank, OPEC, restless, Quizmaster, the CIA and many of its counterparts in other nations, the UN...
+1
Level 75
Mar 5, 2020
The courts know too.
+1
Level 81
Mar 18, 2022
I just knew that Ecuador was an OPEC member. So that made it kind of easy. It was admittedly still the last one I got, though. If that makes you feel any better... ^_^
+1
Level 71
Mar 18, 2022
That was just an educated guess for me. I thought, "If Venezuela has huge oil reserves, why not other South American countries?" so I guess South American countries until I got Ecuador.
+9
Level 88
May 18, 2018
If you add up all these numbers you get 1.579.149 Million barrels. The average consumption of oil in the world is about 95 million barrels per day (of which 20M by US, 15M by EU and 12M by China). This means that we have oil left for about 16.622 days or about 45 more years. This is when we take in account that the need for oil will not rise over time, which it will. On the other hand, the oilprice will rise when it becomes less accessable. At the moment we obtain oil which is easy to reach but over time we have to move to difficult to reach places and dig really deep to get to those last millions of barrels. That will mean that at that point it's cheaper to use alternatives than that last bit of oil available in the world.
+14
Level 58
May 18, 2018
exactly what happened with coal...

lots of people in the 1920s predicted a global breakdown due to coal shortage, but then oil was discovered and there's plenty of coal left

+13
Level 66
May 18, 2018
Yeah let's all buy SUVs, everything is fine
+14
Level 82
May 18, 2018
We have the technology to get off of oil now. Through some combination of solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, hydroelectric, and biofuels power, along with efforts to reduce or make more efficient our present energy consumption, we could get off fossil fuels 100% within a generation.

But... we won't. Because there is still trillions of dollars in profit to be made from selling fossil fuels.

+2
Level 75
May 15, 2020
I think there are still some serious problems with most of the alternatives you mentioned. Solar requires lots of sunlight and to produce the type of power needed to run cities and industry, it would take massive amounts of land for solar farms, batteries, service roads, etc. And what to do with all those old panels when they wear out in twenty years?. Nuclear is proven, but what to do with the spent fuel? Windmills are dangerous to maintain and there is an argument as to whether they kill an appreciable number of birds, especially when built in the middle of a flyway. They can also ice up and fling ice into surrounding areas in winter months. Hydroelectric is dependent on an area of flowing water and can result in ecological issues when damming a river. I'm not saying we shouldn't move away from fossil fuels, but I do think we tend to have rose-colored glasses when looking at alternative energies. It wasn't so long ago that petroleum was touted as a clean alternative to burning coal.
+11
Level 82
May 16, 2020
oh come on.. birds, really? Global warming is going to do a bit more damage than birds striking windmills. No one approach will be a total solution. I said through a combination of these things. Solar is an excellent solution in some areas; not a great solution in others. Nuclear, while it does have downsides, is still orders of magnitude safer in terms of lives lost and less impactful on the environment than burning fossil fuels. The real key is probably reduction in energy expenditures and an increase in energy efficiency and there are tons of ways to do this, but as long as oil is relatively cheap and readily available people don't care to take the initiative and innovate. That's why OPEC increases oil production when prices get too high. You would think that they would like this, as it makes them more money. But actually they are against it because when oil gets too expensive people start buying electric cars and investing in energy efficient windows.
+1
Level 67
Jan 23, 2024
It seems logical, to me, that windmills would harm birds.
+1
Level 82
May 16, 2020
They are pushers trying to keep us hooked.

And gas burning power plants are a lot cleaner than coal burning ones. It's not like they were wrong about that. That doesn't mean we should stop innovating there or that we can't do better. We've also come to appreciate that burning fossil fuels, including petroleum, has much more of an impact on the environment than simply affecting air quality, which was the first immediate and obvious impact of coal burning industry.

+3
Level 45
May 18, 2020
@ander methods for storing nuclear waste have improved considerably in the past decades. The plants themselves are much safer now too. However, Solar and wind just aren't reliable enough to use solely.
+14
Level 82
May 18, 2018
There are other factors. New reserves are always being discovered. Existing discoveries are proven to be larger. And extraction and refining technology continues to improve and get cheaper making some reserves more economically viable to exploit, lowering prices.

Also, if we put that much carbon into the atmosphere we're all going to be die.

+11
Level 75
May 18, 2018
Well, to be fair, we're all going to die whether or not we put that much carbon into the atmosphere. The real question is if future generations get the chance to live and die.
+1
Level 47
May 22, 2018
Wow, you took time to write all that.
+2
Level 34
Aug 19, 2018
This is current oil reserves.

They keep finding new ones and technology advances so we can extract reserves that weren't previously accessible.

+4
Level 50
Mar 5, 2020
What we really ought to do is leave it in the ground and switch to renewables, but some people continue to make massive profits off oil, so I guess the continued wealth of a small handful of people comes before the lives and well being of the entire human (and many animals) population.
+1
Level 53
May 18, 2018
Great quiz!
+24
Level 82
May 18, 2018
This quiz really reveals the staggering depths of the Chavez-Maduro government's incompetence. World's largest oil reserves, moderate population and a well-developed country as a starting point. Yet now Venezuela is poor and getting poorer. Its people are desperate and hungry. Even the kleptocratic monarchies of the Gulf can convert oil into a decent standard of living.
+5
Level 70
Mar 4, 2020
Venezuela has (and had for decades) the Dutch disease. Everything "was fine" until the oil price decreased in 2008 (and never reached previous levels and growth rates). I agree that the government was apparently incompetent when not curing the Dutch disease in decades. However, the Gulf states have the Dutch disease as well but the privilege that they can still sell oil on the market due to much lower production costs.
+3
Level 88
Mar 4, 2020
Major deja vu. I swear I've taken this quiz on the font page several times recently, but it says I haven't and no comments newer than 2018.
+1
Level 78
Mar 5, 2020
Probably reset to accommodate Norway
+9
Level 75
Mar 6, 2020
Suddenly the USA's interest in Venezuela's democracy makes much more sense
+6
Level 84
Mar 6, 2020
And here we go...

Edit: You should check who was the biggest oil client of the Chavez-Maduro regime... You might get a big surprise...

+10
Level 75
Mar 10, 2020
You don't have to know a lot of Latin American history to understand that its relationship with the USA has always been marked by its imperialistic tendencies, just read about operación condor
+2
Level 61
Mar 7, 2020
Didn't they recently just discover a ton of oil reserves in Guyana?
+2
Level 67
Mar 17, 2020
+1
Level 30
May 15, 2020
VENEZUELA, WHAT!

ECUADOR, WHAT!

where is norway

+3
Level 55
Jun 13, 2021
Everyone knows Venezuela has a ton of oil, that's why it was once so rich and that's why the US is so interested in its politics ;)
+1
Level 63
Jul 21, 2021
*tons
+2
Level 44
May 15, 2020
Surprised not to see Tatooine...
+9
Level 82
May 16, 2020
Tatooine's economy depends mostly on moisture farming, pod racing, cantina tourism, and the black market trading of 2nd-hand droids. From what I've seen.
+2
Level 89
Mar 18, 2022
Don't forget slavery.
+1
Level 67
May 17, 2020
I sense that the comment" Reserves that could be profitably extracted under current conditions" is key here.
+3
Level 42
Oct 27, 2020
Fun fact: The Canadian government has a maple syrup reserve In Quebec with over a million barrels of maple syrup.

If the end of the world happens we will have everything that we need to survive.

+1
Level 25
Feb 18, 2021
australia had made 172 million barrels in 2019 and has made over 300 million in a year a while ago it is like 2nd...
+4
Level 47
Apr 8, 2021
Why isn't Bahrain included? It discovered around ~80 billion barrels of usable offshore oil in 2018
+6
Level ∞
Dec 6, 2021
Fun fact: The U.S. produces oil equivalent to about 25% of its reserves each year, but despite this, proven reserves have more than doubled since 1997.
+1
Level 74
Dec 8, 2021
I guess this quiz was just updated, because I think I took it like a week ago and it was since reset.
+1
Level 48
Mar 18, 2022
why do you not accept US for united states?
+3
Level 89
Mar 18, 2022
They accept USA
+1
Level 68
May 24, 2023
Expected Ghana, Bahrain, Oman, the UK, the Netherlands and especially Ukraine.

Absolutely huge deposits of oil and gas have been discovered near and in the Black Sea.