quality:correction
Industry

Lake Maracaibo is rich in oil and gas resources and is known as the "oil lake". The first Spaniards who arrived used tar seeping from the lake to fill ship cracks. The Maracaibo oil field was discovered in 1914, the first oil well was constructed in 1917, and large-scale exploitation began in 1922. The oil fields are concentrated in the northeast and northwest of the lake, and the oil-producing layers are mainly Tertiary sandstone and Cretaceous limestone, with a hydrocarbon-bearing area of 1,300 square kilometers, mainly concentrated in the coastal waters 105 kilometers long and 32 kilometers wide in the east of the lake.

Maracaibo on the northwest coast is the capital of Zulia State, the second largest city in Venezuela and an important oil export port in the world. The lake area is also an important fishing and agricultural production area in Venezuela, supporting more than 20,000 fishermen, many of whom live in colorful traditional stilt houses built with iron sheets on the lake. The main crops on the south bank of the lake are bananas, peanuts, cocoa, coconut, sugar cane and coffee, the western shore of the lake developed dairy industry.

Lake Maracaibo and the Catatumbo River are the main traffic lines for the transportation of commodities in the nearby area, and the city of Maracaibo is the transshipment center of coffee produced in the Andes. The waterway can pass through large sea-going ships and oil tankers, exporting crude oil and agricultural and livestock products from the Andean mountains and lakes. The Lake District is home to a quarter of Venezuela's population, and with the influx of farmers from the nearby Andes, the population of the Lake District increased from about 300,000 in 1936 to over 3.62 million in 2007.