Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Crude Oil Hogs the Spotlight, But Venezuela Has Major Gas Reserves Too

Nearly all of the recent analysis of Venezuela has centered on crude oil and refined products, which makes sense since the country boasts about 300 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, roughly 17% of the global total, although there’s skepticism about that estimate. But its extensive natural gas reserves shouldn’t be overlooked, especially at a time when many oil and gas firms are evaluating their plans for future investment there. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at where Venezuela’s gas reserves stand today, compare domestic production and consumption trends, and explain why LNG exports from Trinidad & Tobago’s Atlantic LNG terminal could play a role in boosting activity.

Venezuela has been a frequent topic in the RBN blogosphere since the start of the year, when U.S. forces deposed and arrested President Nicolás Maduro. In Take Me Money and Run Venezuela, we recapped how the country went from a major global supplier to producing less than 1 MMb/d today — roughly one-quarter of its former output. We then dug into Venezuela’s crude slate in Orinoco Flow, noting that most reserves lie in the 21,000-square-mile Orinoco Belt and are extra-heavy, making the oil difficult and costly to transport and refine. In When Love Comes to Town, we compared Venezuelan and Canadian heavy crudes and why they’re attractive to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners. In Round and Round (which previewed our first Drill Down Report of 2026 — available here), we laid out the practical steps Venezuela would need to take to boost crude production. In The Show Goes On, we turned our attention to the country’s refining sector, while in Upgrade U we looked at the important role Venezuela’s crude upgraders figure to play in any plan to boost domestic production and increase exports.

As we’ve noted previously, U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, along with chronic underinvestment and mismanagement by state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), are largely responsible for the sharp drop in crude oil production and refinery utilization, especially over the last decade. Those same factors have also impacted the country’s natural gas sector, where a poor investment climate, insufficient infrastructure, a lack of domestic demand, and an inability to develop gas projects for export have contributed to its prolonged underdevelopment. Venezuela has an estimated 200 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of conventional (non-associated) natural gas reserves, the seventh largest in the world and representing about 70% of South American reserves, according to a February report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). In addition, if Venezuelan oil production is reestablished to historical levels, that could represent another 160-200 Tcf of associated gas resources. For comparison, the U.S. had proved reserves of 583.9 Tcf at the end of 2024, according to an Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimate published in April. 

Although Venezuela’s conventional gas reserves are estimated to be about one-third of the U.S. total, actual production (about 80% of it associated gas, according to the EIA) pales in comparison at around 3 Bcf/d. Venezuelan gas production (blue line in Figure 1 below) was fairly steady between 1998 and 2018, holding between 2.93 Bcf/d (2011) and 3.74 Bcf/d (2017) in every year except 2003, when output dipped to 2.7 Bcf/d. Output dropped to 2.08 Bcf/d in the pandemic year of 2020 before rebounding back to more-normal levels by 2024. By comparison, production in the U.S. Lower 48 is approaching 110 Bcf/d, with Appalachia alone at about 36 Bcf/d.