Ik zeg het toch: waar het kindertal per vrouw in 2010 nog 1,80 bedroeg, was dit in 2024 afgenomen tot 1,43, het laagste cijfer sinds de start van de meting in 1950. De maatschappelijke en economische gevolgen daarvan mogen we niet onderschatten. Een woning met gezinsvriendelijke kenmerken blijft een belangrijke voorwaarde waar jongvolwassenen aan willen voldoen voordat ze kinderen krijgen. https://t.co/FPrrY309Jn
Nederland is rijk geworden dankzij de rol van de overheid als scheidsrechter, niet als herverdeler. Later verschoof dat naar herverdeling, en dat kost ons allemaal welvaart. Ook de armsten in de samenleving. Lees het onderzoek via de link in de reply.
There has been lots of talk about the current situation in Venezuela and what it could mean for global oil markets, so I just wanted to provide some nuance on this 🇻🇪 ⤵️
When people say “Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves,” as you undoubtedly have seen being thrown around a lot on here, they are technically referring to a specific accounting definition, not to a stock of easy, cheap barrels ready to flood the market. To unpack that, you need to get into what those reserves are, how they behave in the subsurface, what it costs to turn them into marketable liquids, and how price, technology, and above-ground risk interact.
That's a lot to cover, but let’s give it my best shot. On paper, Venezuela has roughly 300–303 billion barrels of proved reserves, about 17 % of the global total and slightly more than Saudi Arabia. The critical detail is that around three quarters of that booked volume is extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt in eastern Venezuela. These are bitumen-like oils with API gravity typically in the 8–14° range, extremely viscous at reservoir conditions and with high sulfur and metals content. So the statement “largest reserves” is really “largest booked volumes of very challenging heavy and extra-heavy oil.”
Technically recoverable versus economically recoverable is the first big distinction. The USGS has long estimated that the Orinoco Belt contains on the order of 900–1,400 billion barrels of heavy crude in place, with perhaps 380–650 billion barrels technically recoverable using existing technology.
Venezuela and OPEC only book a subset of that as “proved,” but even those proved numbers are sensitive to the assumed oil price and development concept. When prices were strong in the 2005–2014 window, a large portion of Orinoco volumes became economic on paper and were reclassified as proved, driving the headline reserves from ~80 to ~300 billion barrels.
Geology and fluid properties are the second big differentiator. Orinoco crudes are extra-heavy, with densities up around 934–1,050 kg/m³, high asphaltene content and sulfur on the order of 3–4 wt% or more, depending on the block. This is a completely different animal from a 33–40° API, low-sulfur Arab Light-style crude. In plain English, that means it's much harder to handle at various stages and each step adds capex, opex and energy use.
In other words, the “barrel in the ground” in Venezuela is inherently worth less and depends on a narrower set of buyers.
Surface systems and institutional capacity are another constraint. Before the 2000s, PDVSA had a reputation as a technically capable NOC. Since then, you have had a combination of mass layoffs and politicization, under-investment, sanctions, corruption and brain drain. The result is decayed gathering systems, chronic power shortages, refinery fires and upgrader downtime.
Finally, integration with global refining and logistics matters for strategic value. Venezuela’s crude slate is optimized for complex “coking” refineries in the US Gulf Coast, parts of Asia and a few European plants. That's a story for another time though, because the length of this analysis is getting out of hand.
So when you hear that Venezuela has “the world’s largest oil reserves,” the technically accurate part is that the country has extremely large volumes of extra-heavy oil in place, and a big subset of that was once judged economically recoverable at high price assumptions and booked as proved. The more relevant questions for energy strategy are how many of those barrels are genuinely economic under realistic long-term prices, how quickly they can be brought onstream given infrastructure and institutional constraints, what netback they deliver at the refinery gate, and how exposed they are to being left in the ground if demand peaks. On those metrics, Venezuelan barrels sit much further out on the cost and risk curve than the headline “largest reserves” soundbite suggests. I hope this provided some good context.
The insane @DHLGlobal import tax process has caused my package costs to almost double, approximately from €100 to €180!
Below an overview of the outrageous administration costs charged by DHL:
@KPNwebcare Bij XS4ALL ging het om internet + tv en bij het KPN account was een mobiel abonnement afgesloten. Aangezien alles over is gegaan van XS4ALL naar KPN zouden wij het internet + tv abonnement moeten kunnen zien in MijnKPN, echter is hier alleen het mobiel abonnement zichtbaar.
@KPNwebcare Goedemorgen, inmiddels hebben wij besloten over te stappen.
Het ging om een abonnement dat origineel was afgesloten bij XS4ALL waarvoor nu bij MijnKPN moest worden ingelogd. Alleen was er (voor deze verandering) al een account bij KPN op hetzelfde mailadres.
@NS_online Klopt het dat er een storing is met de informatie in de treinen? Zojuist van Maastricht naar Utrecht werd de verkeerde informatie weergegeven, en nu weer van Utrecht naar Amersfoort.
Hi @benwebcare! Is er toevallig bekend of/wanneer jullie ondersteuning krijgen voor eSim? Het bestaat nu al jaren maar jullie bieden helaas nog steeds niks aan 😅
In een inflatieproces stijgen alle prijzen nooit in dezelfde mate. Er zijn ook altijd mensen, bedrijven en overheden die profiteren van inflatie. Wie precies profiteren hangt van de specifieke omstandigheden af en kan ook in de loop van een inflatieproces wijzigen.1
Ben met een ICE-trein (die 100% groene stroom gebruikt) op weg naar Straatsburg ivm Raad van Europa (daarover later meer)
We worden voorbij gereden door een kolentrein nu. Iets gaat er niet helemaal goed hier.