Since the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro last month, the United States government has taken direct control of selling millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil.
Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, estimated at 303 billion barrels, more than five times larger than those of the US.
But what does that amount of oil represent in physical terms?
To make sense of it, Al Jazeera uses scale, volume and consumption to translate Venezuela’s vast oil reserves into more relatable terms.
Venezuela’s oil in three dimensions
If all of Venezuela’s oil were stored in a single cylindrical tank, the structure would rise 1.6km (1 mile) into the sky and have a diameter of 6.2km (nearly 4 miles).
One mile is roughly equal to the height of three One World Trade Centers stacked on top of each other. It is the tallest building in New York City at 541m (1,776ft)
To place that scale in context, the tank would cover roughly half of Manhattan.
Global proven oil reserves, which measure the quantities of crude oil that are economically recoverable with current technology, total about 1.73 trillion barrels, which means Venezuela has roughly one-fifth of these reserves.
