Venezuela to Compensate US Oil Companies for Nationalization

[Judi Lynn]

Venezuela to Compensate US Oil Companies for Nationalization
Monday, 8 August 2011, 5:30 pm
Column: Oilprice.com

Venezuela to Compensate American Oil Companies for Nationalization?
By John C.K. Daly
July 29, 2011

If Cuba's Fidel Castro is America's favorite Latin American bête noire, then Venezuela's Hugo Chavez qualifies as Washington's reigning Prince of Darkness.

In 1960, Fidel Castro nationalized US business interests without compensation, bringing down on impoverished benighted country 51 years of sanctions that continue to the present day.

Similarly, four years ago Chavez completed the nationalization of foreign oil interests, transferring their shares to the state-owned petroleum company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., more commonly referred to by its acronym PDVSA.

The screaming was heard echoing through the boardrooms and canyons of Wall Street.
Now the picture appears to be shifting, as Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters this week, "We've never said we wouldn't pay" the two U.S. multinational corporations Exxon-Mobil and Conoco-Phillips, "the only two that didn't accept our laws and didn't accept (the terms of a compensation deal for confiscated assets) and took the dispute to the World Bank's International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID."

~snip~
Venezuela's oil industry had been under private control until 1974, when Venezuela nationalized it, setting up PDVSA. Venezuela's oil production is centered in the Orinoco Oil Belt, which analysts believe contains the world's largest reserves of extra-heavy oil, with an estimated 300 billion recoverable barrels.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1108/S00154/venezuela-to-compensate-us-oil-companies-for-nationalization.htm

[bemildred]

1. So the CEO losers finally are going to give up and take the money.

Good.