On Aug. 30, the Venezuelan government decided not to compensate Texas-based oil giants Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips. Both companies lost control over their highly profitable oil field projects in the Orinoco basin last June when they refused to accept terms for the government to take over a majority stake.
Venezuela’s energy minister, Rafael Ramirez said, “We have been very clear since last year: quite simply, it does not interest us to work with companies that do not accept our laws.”
The Orinoco oil fields—formerly controlled exclusively by U.S. companies Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, Britains’s British Petroleum, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total— were nationalized by the government on May 1, International Worker’s Day. This was a major step in Hugo Chávez’s government’s fight to wrestle control of the economy away from the hands of foreign corporations.
Ramirez said that the era of “oil openness is over,” adding that no compensation would be given to the U.S. companies.
