Venezuela currently has the largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world, with a bit over 300 billion barrels of oil.

Top country and key figures

  • Venezuela’s proven oil reserves are commonly estimated at about 303 billion barrels, putting it clearly in first place globally.
  • This represents roughly around one‑fifth of the world’s total proven oil reserves, depending on the specific dataset and year.

How other major countries rank

  • Saudi Arabia is usually in second place with around 267–297 billion barrels of reserves, depending on the source and year.
  • Countries such as Iran, Canada, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Russia, the United States, and Libya also appear in most recent “top 10” lists for largest national oil reserves.

Why Venezuela leads

  • Venezuela’s leading position is largely due to its vast heavy and extra‑heavy crude deposits in the Orinoco Belt, which significantly expanded its counted reserves once extraction became technically and economically viable.
  • Despite these huge reserves, actual production has lagged because of factors like underinvestment, infrastructure issues, and political and economic challenges.

TL;DR: For the question “which country has the largest oil reserves in the world,” the answer is Venezuela, with over 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

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