I admit a lot of ignorance on this, but I was under the impression that Venezuela’s problem was not the lack of oil, but the lack of domestic capability to maintain the extraction apparatus they nationalized. Does the region they are claiming have merely more resources, or do they have extraction infrastructure in place too?
A few things I recall:
1. Venezuelan oil is high in sulfur.
2. There were refineries to clean it up and process it. All the foreigners who were there left. I don't know how much local expertise there was.
3. The greedy fools with Govt connections who were put in charge of the refineries sold off all the spare parts for personal profit. I imagine that behavior was echoed by lower ranked people.
4. With no spare parts and cut off from foreign sources, I don't know how long any of that could remain running.
I don't know about the actual oil wells. With no where to go with the oil, they probably shut down. I also don't know if the Guyanan crude oil is different.
An engineer I know used to work down there long before all this and is married to a Venezuelan lady. Many of her relatives have gotten out of that country since all that started.