Venezuela Set to Prove Oil Reserves Claim

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela has the largest proven oil deposits outside the Middle East, but President Hugo Chavez believes his country has the largest reserves in the world and he plans to prove it. In recent months, Chavez has repeatedly boasted that Venezuela's estimated 78 billion barrels in conventional reserves, coupled with an estimated 238 billion barrels of tar oil in the nation's so-called Orinoco Belt, "are the largest petroleum reserves in the world."

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