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OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, recently released its annual statistical bulletin showing Venezuela as the world’s largest oil reserve holder. Venezuela’s reserves reached 296.5 billion barrels in 2010, easily surpassing Saudi Arabia with 264.5 billion barrels the previous year.

This discovery has led to investments in the Venezuelan reserves. Italian oil giant, ENI, plans to invest $7 billion in a project in the Orinoco Belt to increase output to 240,000 barrels a day by 2018. This investment includes plans to build a refinery to process the extra-heavy crude extracted by the upstream division into diesel fuel for the European market.

However, there are doubts on how economically viable it is to recover the extra heavy oil in the Orinoco Belt. Many are skeptical of the viability of the Venezuelan reserves. “I doubt the recovery factor could go much higher than 25% and much of that oil would not be economic to produce,” Venezuelan oil geologist and former Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) member, Gustavo Coronel, told the Associated Press earlier this year. Iraq and Iran, whose combined reserves equaled 294.3 billion barrels in 2010, joined Venezuela at a recent OPEC meeting, declining to back a Saudi-led push to increase production.

In the future, the boost in the reserves may empower members of OPEC who are in favor of maintaining high prices for crude. In 2010 alone, OPEC members’ overall gross domestic product (GDP) climbed 11% to $2.3 trillion, and total value of their petroleum exports rose to $745.1 billion. Only time will determine if Venezuela will be able to support the potential of their abundant natural resource.

Resources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303795304576454251217542830.html
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/07/18/venezuela-oil-reserves-surpassed-saudi-arabia-in-2010-opec/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8476395.stm
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=407227&CategoryId=10717
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-15/eni-to-loan-pdvsa-2-billion-venezuela-s-ramirez-says-1-.html

A satellite was launched into orbit Friday morning on a mission to observe and record salt levels on ocean surfaces worldwide. The satellite’s observations will be used by scientists to observe oceanic behavior and hypothesize a relationship between changes in salinity and future climate change.

A Delta 2 rocket carrying the Argentine-built satellite, known as Aquarius, lifted off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, the only military installation in the US from which unmanned government and commercial satellites are launched into polar orbit.

Aquarius was developed to map the entire open ocean every seven days from its position 408 miles (657 kilometers) above Earth, producing monthly estimates that show how and where salt levels change over time. The $400 million mission is a down payment on what scientists hope will be a big payout – help with predicting short-term climate phenomena, like El Nino and La Nina, as well as long-term climate change.

Other, previous methods for measuring salinity included lowering instruments from ships or using robotic floats. Measuring salinity from space is a more recent technological development.

“In the Earth science division of NASA, we have 13 missions in orbit right now and about half of them measure ocean quantities – we get sea-surface temperature, ocean winds, sea level, ocean color, and the changing mass of the oceans,” said Eric Lindstrom, Aquarius scientist, NASA. “A key missing piece that’s really in demand by the ocean science community is ocean salinity.”

The mission is a collaborative effort between NASA and Argentina’s space agency CONAE. Other countries participating in the project include Brazil, Canada, France and Italy.

Resources:
http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/ocean-watch-satellite-due-for-launch-1.1082216?ot=inmsa.ArticlePrintPageLayout.ot
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/06/10/science-us-sci-ocean-mapping-mission_8509949.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13688829