Answer: Venezuela

When you think of vast oil reserves, you might think of countries in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait. To be sure, those countries have vast proven oil reserves–quantities of petroleum that are believed to exist with a high degree of confidence as a result of extensive geologic and engineering data–but they don’t have the largest individual reserve.

While the Middle East might collectively have more oil than the top ranked country, none of the oil giants there can compete with Venezuela. The South American country has a proven oil reserve of 298,350 millions of barrels (or, to change that from an industry term to a more common measurement, 298.35 billion barrels). By comparison, Saudi Arabia has more than twice the land area of Venezuela, but has a proven reserve of roughly 30 millions of barrels less than Venezuela. Further, Venezuela makes up approximately 25 percent of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) total oil reserve and approximately 18 percent of the world’s total oil reserves.