Oil Reserves by Country 2026: Proven Crude Oil Reserves at End-2025
Venezuela Leads the End-2025 Proven Crude Oil Reserve Ranking
Venezuela ranks first in the OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2026 country table, followed by Saudi Arabia and IR Iran. The metric is proven crude oil reserves held at the end of 2025, measured as a stock in billion barrels. It is not crude oil production, output capacity or barrels per day.
This is a single-source official dataset based on OPEC Table 3.1. It covers 41 named countries with separately reported values. Aggregate rows labelled “Others” and the combined “Sudans” entry are excluded because they are not individual-country observations.
Direction: higher reserves rank higher. Unit: billion barrels. All 41 entries are published end-2025 values; no forecasts or modeled projections are used. Canada’s figure excludes oil sands under the source footnote.
Reference date: December 31, 2025 · Publication date: July 26, 2026 · Data checked: July 26, 2026
Venezuela leads the country ranking at year-end 2025.
Chile is the lowest separately named country in the source table.
All entries are published end-2025 values; source aggregates are excluded.
Official OPEC world total for proven crude oil reserves at end-2025.
What the reserve ranking measures
OPEC defines proven crude oil reserves as quantities of liquids statistically defined as crude oil that geoscience and engineering analysis can estimate with reasonable certainty to be commercially recoverable from known reservoirs under defined economic conditions, operating methods and government regulations.
Stock versus flow: reserves are an underground resource stock measured at a point in time. Production is a flow measured over time, commonly in barrels per day. A country can hold very large reserves while producing much less oil than another country.
The source definition includes crude oil and certain small liquid volumes associated with oil wells, plus very heavy and extra-heavy crude oils below the stated viscosity threshold. It does not make this ranking interchangeable with broader “total oil” reserve datasets that may include non-conventional oil, natural gas liquids or oil sands under different rules.
The 41 named-country rows sum to 1,540.017 billion barrels, equal to 97.9% of the OPEC world total. The 97.9% coverage share is calculated from the published country values and the official world total. The remaining volume appears in source aggregate rows and cannot be attributed to individual countries from the published table.
Top 10 countries by proven crude oil reserves
The first ten named countries account for 85.7% of the official world total. The ranking uses the published million-barrel values and displays them in billion barrels by dividing each value by 1,000.
Top 10 countries, year-end 2025
| Rank | Country | Bn barrels | Region / note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Venezuela | 303.701 | Latin America; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 2 | Saudi Arabia | 267.200 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 3 | IR Iran | 208.600 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 4 | Iraq | 140.000 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 5 | United Arab Emirates | 120.000 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 6 | Kuwait | 101.500 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 7 | Russia | 80.000 | Russia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 8 | Libya | 48.363 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 9 | United States | 41.909 | OECD Americas; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 10 | Nigeria | 37.010 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
Values are official year-end 2025 observations, not forecasts. Display precision is three decimal places in billion barrels.
Chart: Top 20 proven crude oil reserve holders
The bars use a linear scale relative to Venezuela, the largest named-country value. The steep decline after the first six positions shows how concentrated the reported reserve stock is.
Unit: billion barrels at year-end 2025.
Methodology
Metric and unit
Metric: proven crude oil reserves. Source unit: million barrels. Page unit: billion barrels, calculated as million barrels divided by 1,000.
Reference date
Target year: 2025. OPEC states that Table 3.1 figures are as at year-end. This is therefore an end-2025 stock snapshot published in 2026.
Ranking rule
Descending order: larger reserve stock ranks higher. Rank is calculated from the numeric value before display formatting.
Source hierarchy
One official international-organization source is used for every row: OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2026, Table 3.1.
Inclusion and exclusion
Included: 41 separately named countries. Excluded: regional totals, “Others” aggregates, “Other Europe” and the combined “Sudans” line.
Status treatment
All 41 entries are published end-2025 values. The ranking contains no forecasts or modeled projections.
Canada note: OPEC explicitly states that Canada’s country value excludes oil sands. This ranking therefore should not be compared directly with broader reserve lists that include Canadian oil sands.
Conflicts and missing values: no cross-source averaging is used. Aggregate values are not allocated to countries. Tied values retain consecutive display ranks based on the source order, with Brunei listed before Equatorial Guinea at 1.100 billion barrels.
Rounding: source values are converted from million to billion barrels and displayed to three decimals. OPEC notes that totals may not add because of independent rounding. Page-calculated shares use the displayed source values and may differ by a tenth of a percentage point after rounding.
What the metric does not measure: current production, sustainable production capacity, extraction cost, reserve quality, accessibility, ownership, export availability, remaining reserve life or future discoveries.
Main ranking: 41 countries by proven crude oil reserves
Use the controls to search by country, filter by the source grouping, change the sorting rule or display the Top 10, Top 20 or all 41 entries.
Proven crude oil reserves by named country, end-2025, billion barrels
| Rank | Country | Bn barrels | Region / note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Venezuela | 303.701 | Latin America; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 2 | Saudi Arabia | 267.200 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 3 | IR Iran | 208.600 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 4 | Iraq | 140.000 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 5 | United Arab Emirates | 120.000 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 6 | Kuwait | 101.500 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 7 | Russia | 80.000 | Russia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 8 | Libya | 48.363 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 9 | United States | 41.909 | OECD Americas; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 10 | Nigeria | 37.010 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 11 | China | 34.472 | China; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 12 | Kazakhstan | 30.000 | Other Eurasia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 13 | Qatar | 25.244 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 14 | Brazil | 16.841 | Latin America; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 15 | Algeria | 12.200 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 16 | Ecuador | 8.273 | Latin America; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 17 | Azerbaijan | 7.000 | Other Eurasia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 18 | Norway | 5.919 | OECD Europe; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 19 | Mexico | 5.136 | OECD Americas; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 20 | Canada | 5.080 | OECD Americas; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025; excludes oil sands. |
| 21 | India | 4.995 | India; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 22 | Oman | 4.825 | Middle East; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 23 | Vietnam | 4.400 | Other Asia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 24 | Egypt | 3.300 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 25 | Argentina | 3.093 | Latin America; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 26 | Malaysia | 2.700 | Other Asia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 27 | Angola | 2.550 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 28 | Indonesia | 2.287 | Other Asia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 29 | Colombia | 2.035 | Latin America; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 30 | Gabon | 2.000 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 31 | Congo | 1.811 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 32 | Australia | 1.803 | OECD Asia Pacific; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 33 | United Kingdom | 1.300 | OECD Europe; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 34 | Brunei | 1.100 | Other Asia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 35 | Equatorial Guinea | 1.100 | Africa; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 36 | Turkmenistan | 0.600 | Other Eurasia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 37 | Uzbekistan | 0.594 | Other Eurasia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 38 | Ukraine | 0.395 | Other Eurasia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 39 | Denmark | 0.333 | OECD Europe; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 40 | Belarus | 0.198 | Other Eurasia; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
| 41 | Chile | 0.150 | OECD Americas; official OPEC ASB 2026 value; year-end 2025. |
Source snapshot: OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2026, Table 3.1. Values refer to year-end 2025. Canada excludes oil sands. Source aggregates are omitted from the country ranking.
Insights from the end-2025 reserve table
Key insight
Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and IR Iran together hold 779.501 billion barrels, equal to 49.6% of the official world total.
Notable pattern
The first six positions are Venezuela plus five Middle Eastern countries. Those six named-country values total 1,141.001 billion barrels.
Regional concentration
The seven individually named Middle Eastern countries in the table sum to 867.369 billion barrels, or 55.2% of the official world total.
Outlier
Venezuela alone reports 303.701 billion barrels, more than the combined 277.447 billion barrels held by ranks 8 through 20 in this country table.
How to interpret the ranking
A high reserve rank indicates a large estimated commercially recoverable crude oil stock under the conditions used in the source assessment. It does not mean that the country currently produces the most oil, can raise production quickly or has low extraction costs.
Reserve estimates can change when new fields are discovered, reservoir knowledge improves, projects become commercially viable or unviable, operating methods change, regulations change, or countries revise official assessments. A year-to-year reserve change is therefore not simply production subtracted from the previous year.
This ranking measures an end-of-year reserve stock in barrels. Global oil production measures an output flow, commonly expressed in barrels per day, so the two rankings answer different questions and should not be interpreted as the same indicator.
Readers comparing other publications should first check whether those datasets include oil sands, condensates, natural gas liquids, non-conventional oil or broader “proved oil reserves.” Differences in scope can materially change Canada and other country positions.
FAQ
Which country has the largest proven crude oil reserves at end-2025?
Venezuela ranks first with 303.701 billion barrels in OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2026, Table 3.1.
Are these 2026 reserve estimates?
The ranking is published as a 2026 snapshot, but the reference date is year-end 2025. All included rows are official end-2025 values.
Is oil reserves the same metric as oil production?
No. Reserves are a stock measured in barrels at a point in time. Production is a flow measured over a period, often in barrels per day.
Does Canada’s value include oil sands?
No. OPEC’s footnote for Table 3.1 states that the Canadian figure excludes oil sands, so broader datasets may report a much larger Canadian total.
Why are only 41 countries ranked?
OPEC publishes 41 separately named country values in this table after excluding the combined “Sudans” line. Remaining reserves appear in regional “Others” aggregates that cannot be assigned to individual countries without unsupported assumptions.
Are any rows forecasts or modeled projections?
No. All 41 rows are official values. The page contains no forecast formula, extrapolation or modeled 2026 reserve estimate.
Why can proven reserves change without a major discovery?
Commercial recoverability depends on geoscience, engineering, economic conditions, operating methods and government regulations. Revisions to any of these inputs can change the proved reserve estimate.
Sources
OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2026
Primary numeric source. Table 3.1 provides world proven crude oil reserves by country for 2021–2025 and states that figures are at year-end.
OPEC online world crude reserves table
Official online confirmation of the 2025 world total, OPEC share and regional reserve series.
OPEC definitions
Official definitions of crude oil, non-conventional oil and proven crude oil reserves used to define the ranking scope.
OPEC abbreviations and rounding note
Confirms that “m b” means million barrels and records OPEC’s independent-rounding note.
