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Venezuela to battle Exxon in Dutch court
ROME
Petroleumworld.com, April 22, 2008
Venezuela will go to court this month in the Netherlands to challenge a freeze imposed on the assets of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA at the request of ExxonMobil Corp., the Venezuelan energy minister said here Monday.Rafael Ramirez, who is also president of PDVSA, said during the International Energy Forum in Rome that Exxon abused the bilateral investment protection treaty between Venezuela and the Netherlands when it asked the Dutch courts to intervene in the giant U.S. firm's dispute with Caracas over nationalized oilfields.
"A lot of companies register in the Netherlands like Dutch companies and they are not," the Venezuelan said, mentioning China National Petroleum Corp. and Italy's Eni SpA oil. "Exxon now appears to be Dutch also and that is obviously an abuse and will be denounced."
Earlier this year, ExxonMobil persuaded courts in Britain, the United States and elsewhere to freeze some $12 billion in PDVSA assets to ensure payment of the compensation the world's biggest oil company demands from Caracas for nationalization of oilfields in the Orinoco Belt.
That case is now before an international arbitration board.
The British court ruling authorizing the freeze was overturned last month by a judge in London.
The dispute goes back to 1997, when Mobil, since acquired by Exxon, and PDVSA forged a joint venture to operate in Cerro Negro, an area withing Venezuela's Orinoco Belt, one of the richest oil deposits in the world.
Last year, leftist President Hugo Chavez decided that PDVSA would have a controlling interest in every operation in the Orinoco Belt.
While four firms pumping oil in the Orinoco - Chevron, BP, France's Total and Norway's Statoil - agreed to Caracas' terms, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips declined.
Conoco reached an accord with Venezuela on compensation, but ExxonMobil chose to resort to arbitration.
ExxonMobil has offered no explanation for why it sought to freeze $12 billion in PDVSA assets when the Texas-based company is demanding compensation of no more than $5 billion.
Ramirez said Monday that after last month's verdict in London, it is now Exxon which "has to pay."
PDVSA is studying "the costs associated with the damage that they have done to us," with an eye toward filing claims, the Venezuelan official said. EFE
wr/bp
Story from EFE
EFE 21 1948 GMT 04 08
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