Palast’s book is almost encyclopedic in detail, but I only want to focus here on one part of it that relates to Venezuela. In it Palast provides information showing the country may be of far greater strategic importance to the US than we likely realized. It all relates to a somewhat arcane theory called Hubbert’s peak that many readers may not know about or understand well if they do. Before reading Greg’s book, I knew about it but didn’t understand it as well as I do now…

Palast makes a key point related to the price of crude. At $10 a barrel the supply is low because only the easy to extract and refine kind are economically feasible. But at $70 a barrel it’s a whole new oil market. The heavy stuff and tar sands then become economical to extract and refine, and a new far higher finite supply is realized almost magically…

In previous articles, I reported Venezuela may have reserves of about 350 billion barrels if all their known heavy and light crude are counted. That total is far more than is now officially recognized by OPEC which means unofficially the country has greater reserves than Saudi Arabia by that number alone. Palast reports a US Energy Department expert believes Venezuela holds 90% of the world’s super-heavy tar oil reserves - an estimated total of 1,360,000,000,000 (1.36 trillion) barrels. Let me repeat that - 1.36 trillion barrels. That alone is more oil than Hubbert believed 50 years ago lay under the entire planet.

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