Venezuela is best known for its extra-heavy and heavy crude oil, especially from the Orinoco Belt, along with more conventional lighter crudes in older fields like Lake Maracaibo.

Main types of oil

  • Orinoco Belt “extra-heavy” crude, often around 8–10 API gravity, meaning it is denser than water and has very high viscosity (it can “ooze” like tar rather than flow).
  • Other heavy and medium crude oils, which are still relatively dense and sulfur‑rich compared with the light “sweet” crudes many refineries prefer.
  • A smaller share of conventional lighter crude from more mature basins, which historically was easier and cheaper to produce and refine.

Why Venezuelan oil is unusual

  • Much of Venezuela’s crude is “sour” (higher sulfur content), which makes it more expensive to refine and usually worth less per barrel than light, sweet crude.
  • The extra-heavy oil from the Orinoco Belt often needs upgrading or blending with lighter hydrocarbons to create a synthetic crude that refineries can handle.
  • Because it is so heavy, specialized infrastructure and technology are required, which has been a major constraint on how much revenue Venezuela can actually get from having the world’s largest proven reserves.

Where the oil is found

  • Orinoco Belt: A vast belt of extra‑heavy crude and oil sands–type deposits, estimated in the hundreds of billions of technically recoverable barrels.
  • Maracaibo Basin: Older region with more conventional and somewhat lighter crude, central to Venezuela’s 20th‑century oil boom.

Bottom line: when people ask “what kind of oil does Venezuela have,” the key point is that it is dominated by heavy and extra‑heavy crude, especially from the Orinoco Belt, rather than easy‑to‑produce light oil.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.