Venezuela says it won't be 'intimidated' by ExxonMobil

[Judi Lynn]

Source: The Age (Australia)

Venezuela says it won't be 'intimidated' by ExxonMobil
February 9, 2008 - 8:09AM


Venezuelan energy minister Rafael Ramirez said Friday that the South American state would not be "intimidated" by US energy giant ExxonMobil in a legal spat tied to the nationalization of key oil fields.

Ramirez spoke a day after ExxonMobil said it had won international court orders freezing 12 billion US dollars in the worldwide assets of Venezuela's state oil firm, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), as it seeks compensation related to the nationalization push.

"We will not be harassed in this way, it's an aggressive strategy, but we won't be intimidated," Ramirez told reporters at a press conference.
(snip)

While ExxonMobil opted to launch a legal battle, other foreign energy companies, including France's Total, Norway's Statoil and British energy firm BP, accepted the Venezuelan government's terms for maintaining their operations in the country.



Read more: http://news.theage.com.au/venezuela-says-it-wont-be-intimidated-by-exxonmobil/20080209-1r6u.html

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Venezuela to Fight Exxon's $12 Billion Asset Freeze (Update5)

By Steven Bodzin and Matthew Walter


Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez vowed to fight Exxon Mobil Corp.'s effort to freeze $12 billion of the state oil company's foreign assets, calling the move ``judicial terrorism.''

Exxon won court orders in the U.S., U.K., the Netherlands and the Caribbean freezing assets of Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, after Venezuela seized Exxon oil projects in the country. Ramirez, who is also the head of PDVSA, said the company is ready to fight what could be a five-year battle.

``If they think that with this they will get us to backtrack on our nationalization policies, well, gentleman from Exxon Mobil, you are dead wrong again,'' Ramirez told reporters today in Caracas.

Exxon is trying to ``scratch a figure into the negotiating table'' to affect talks about compensation for assets that Venezuela took in 2007, he said. Venezuela took over four operations that pump heavy oil and convert it to lighter oil for export, including Cerro Negro, which Exxon owned

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aaQC65vDTBGk&refer=home

[nightrider767]

1. Fu$k Exxon!!!

Let the Venezuelan Democracy do what it has to do.

Exxon is a virus on the planet.

[Pastiche423]

2. K&R

[DemSigns]

3. Overthrow time again. n/t

[IsItJustMe]

4. Exxon sure intimidates us with the price of gas going up every other week.

[Pavulon]

5. Exxon's revenue this year

is 4 times the gdp of that country. The guy in the red shirt may want to carefully pick his fights with a company that can bend the world economy and legal systems against him. Lets see how far that wealth carries them in this fight.

The fact that the US it the SOLE consumer of the tar they pump is relevant to the market in that petro state.

[Flanker]

18. Only a fool would look at revenues.

PDVSA has more profits than Exxon and more reserves by a longshot, Exxon made a desperate attempt at looking tough but this little stunt shut them out forever from the Ven market one with sufficient reserves to outlast Exxon's inevitable transition from an energy company to technology one (with big revenue but little in the way of profits). You see this is not really about Venezuela (Exxon wants a paltry sum of $750 million) this is about other places that may seem emboldened to kick them out, this is about prolonging their fall. It is only downhill from here.

[Pavulon]

19. Lets see how much outside revenue (btw you are wrong)

goes into a country that has a policy of taking it when the terms do not meet their current interests. Exxon assets and revenue far out pace pdvsa. We are the only consumer of their only export..

[Flanker]

20. What is the point in having assets when said assets are declining

and expensive to produce? Venezuela may be producing "tar" as you put it, but it is cheap tar, even Exxon would love the profit margins on each barrel. Heck it is only big due to the mega mergers, new Exxon is probably envious of old Exxon as well.

Now what smart people notice about the long term viability of an energy company:

Proven oil reserves
Exxon 12 billion barrels
PDVSA 80 billion barrels

Extra Heavy oil

Exxon none
Venezuela 230 billion barrels

It was the latter that they will miss out on, Chevron will get a slice, so will Total, Repsol, BP, Statoil, Shell etc. if Connoco Phillips wishes to return as well (if they settle soon as expected) But Exxon is now barred from ever returning and their little bluff will not prevent other nations in taking back what is theirs from Exxon. The seven sisters are all dying though it will take decades for it to show. But they can at least remain profitable if they cooperate.

[Pavulon]

21. Animal farm on US dime

the tar is sold and refined here. And only here. Venezuela is a petro state. Ever is a long time. Senior Chavez will not live forever, exxon will.

The entire economy and social agenda of chavez is built around american consumption of a fungible commodity.

No matter who gets a slice it sells and refines here. Exxon has much less to loose.

[Flanker]

23. Wrong "tar" can be refined everywhere, just that some US refineries are more efficient at it

All it takes are modest modifications and presto.

If the US really did have so much power they would have never bothered with a coup in 01-02 just ask SA to pump the difference and there Chavez would be over. I cannot believe you thought it was THAT easy...

[Pavulon]

25. I work with refineries

they are my customers. Big ones. They do not just do presto. To set up to refine different product cost massive amounts of money. A refinery can not refine both at the same time.

No other country is CURRENTLY refining Venezuelan crude. Also it would cost billions for other consumer nations to physically deal with the product. Iran for example can not even refine its own internal capacity.

If we had bothered with a coup he would be dead. We have a long history of that.

[NickB79]

27. India and China are both heavily developing their heavy oil refining abilities

And are expanding their operations to process more of the stuff imported from Venezuela.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/apr/20oil.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN2427878220070325

Googling "Venezuela China heavy oil" or "Venezuela India heavy oil" will get dozens more news stories.

Seriously, this has been pointed out to you in at least 2 previous threads that I have read. Saying that the US is the ONLY country capable of refining Venezuela's heavy oils is simply not true anymore.

[unkachuck]

6. let exxon....

....have their 'oil projects' back....then put a trillion dollar a year tax on everything related to those 'projects'....

....it would be interesting to watch a national government display more power than a corporation....is that still possible?

[nightrider767]

7. WHy?

When we allow them to take oil out of public lands, our lands, in Alaska for free!

Strange but true. The program was started under CLinton.

[Judi Lynn]

8. You'd be doing DU'ers a big favor to post a link or more to information on Clinton's giving away

the rights to take oil from national resources to oil companies for free.

We need to know more about how a Democrat did this, and why. Democrats have never been involved with big oil, has always seemed to be commonly believed. Since you've introduced this assertion, it'd be useful if you posted your source(s).

[nightrider767]

9. You be the judge

""" In the summer of 1996 the President played host to a coven of oil company executives during his preconvention vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The executives were incandescent in the flush of a victory they had schemed for over the previous decade. Bennett Johnston and the Alaskans had scored one of the most significant victories for the oil industry in the twentieth century. The fruits of their triumph was called the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Simplification and Fairness Act. Beyond this demure title were a series of provisions waiving all royalties due the American Treasury from the oil companies. """"

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060327/cockburn

I'll share this article I found. Obviously, don't believe me or an article. Do your own research. Took me at least 20 minutes to find this. The internet is way over-rated.

My ideas on this were shaped by info I got on DU. As far as I can remember. It sounds incredulous, to me too. But at the time, the sources seemed solid. But you have me still thinking. I'll look for more sources and prove it one way or the other.

But right now I'd say it's true. Clinton signed off on it, for "whatever" reason, but the PR is that the measure would increase the flow of oil into the markets, there by, lowering prices.

I'll keep digging. Let me know if you find anything counter.

Cheers.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Ohhhhhh, jeez! Well, I'd certainly rather know the truth about this. The author has never misfired,

in anything I've ever seen from him. Really admire his efforts.

I found the article at another link for anyone who doesn't have a subscription to The Nation:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03112006.html

Most of us have surely been in the dark about this, all this time! From the article, starting immediately after your excerpt:

Finally approved by Congress on the last day of the 1996 session, the law did four things: it placed a seven-year limitation on the auditing of oil company books recording income from drilling on public lands; it turned over many of the auditing responsibilities concerning drilling on federal lands to the states; it permitted the oil companies to sue the federal government to collect interest on "overpayments", and it allowed those very same companies to set the "market price" of the crude oil upon which the royalty payments to the federal government are based.

In reality, the bill legalized a scam the big oil companies had been running for decades, underpaying royalties on crude oil extracted from federal lands, including the Alaskan fields.

Typically, Clinton cast the measure as simply a way of cutting government red tape and streamlining needless bureaucracy. "Many Americans don't know it, but a significant percentage of the oil and gas reserves in the United States are on federal lands," Clinton proclaimed. "Until today, regulatory red tape and conflicting court rulings had discouraged many companies from taking full advantage of these resources." This bill, Clinton remarked, was part of an overall strategy that "included lifting the 23-year old ban on Alaskan oil exports and efforts to increase production in the Gulf of Mexico." All this was to be done, needless to say, while protecting the environment.

Amid the cheers, the oil company executives laid out to the obedient president the next stages of their agenda. They wanted to open up the national reserve in Alaska, to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and to overturn the 30-year ban on the export of Alaska crude oil, a provision deemed necessary in the early 1970s to win passage of the original pipeline bill.

The quid pro quo was a tidal wave of political contributions , Arco's in the lead, into the Domocratic Party treasury. The chairman of Arco, Lodwrick Cook, celebrated his birthday in the White House Rose Garden , with Clinton carrying in the cake.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03112006.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Going to have to study this: it's very unpleasant, but I'd rather be uncomfortable than ignorant of the facts, for SURE!

Thanks for taking the time to follow through with this article by Alexander Cockburn, a very serious, intelligent writer.

Hope a good number of people will see the article and think about it.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Attaching another article by Alexander Cockburn concerning Hugo Chavez:

June 26/27, 2004
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Replay of Chile and Nicaragua?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

You can set your watch by it. The minute some halfway decent government in Latin America begins to reverse the order of things and give the have-nots a break from the grind of poverty and wretchedness, the usual suspects in El Norte rouse themselves from the slumber of indifference and start barking furiously about democratic norms. It happened in 1973 in Chile; we saw it again in Nicaragua in the 1980s; and here’s the same show on summer rerun in Venezuela, pending the August 15 recall referendum of President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez is the best thing that has happened to Venezuela’s poor in a very long time. His government has actually delivered on some of its promises, with improved literacy rates and more students getting school meals. Public spending has quadrupled on education and tripled on healthcare, and infant mortality has declined. The government is promoting one of the most ambitious land-reform programs seen in Latin America in decades.

Most of this has been done under conditions of economic sabotage. Oil strikes, a coup attempt and capital flight have resulted in about a 4 percent decline in GDP for the five years that Chávez has been in office. But the economy is growing at close to 12 percent this year, and with world oil prices near $40 a barrel, the government has extra billions that it’s using for social programs. So naturally the United States wants him out, just as the rich in Venezuela do. Chávez was re-elected in 2000 for a six-year term. A US-backed coup against him was badly botched in 2002.

The imperial script calls for a human rights organization to start braying about irregularities by their intended victim. And yes, here’s José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. We last met him in this column helping to ease a $1.7 billion US aid package for Colombia’s military apparatus. This time he’s holding a press conference in Caracas, hollering about the brazen way Chávez is trying to expand membership of Venezuela’s Supreme Court, the same way FDR did, and for the same reason: that the Venezuelan court has been effectively packed the other way for decades, with judicial flunkies of the rich. I don’t recall Vivanco holding too many press conferences to protest that perennial iniquity.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06262004.html

[nightrider767]

13. I used to be highly suspect of Chavez,,,

I've learned a lot on this forum about the realities and with my own research.

[StClone]

17. Thanks Judi Lynn

Always with the good stuff!

[Judi Lynn]

22. Hi, St Clone! Thank you for reading it.We need something to combat disinformation. Great avatar. n/t

[nightrider767]

12. I'd still like more info

One area I'm looking into, with little success, is that Alaska has way more oil and natural gas than anyone suspected. The idea is that the Alaskan pipeline was made to accommodate 20 years or so of oil. But in that time, the oil and natural gas is still abundant.

I don't have the facts and it may be a waste of time, but I'd like more info on that.

Take care.

[thunder rising]

14. Then go look for them. Fucking trolls

[Judi Lynn]

15. It seems there's a troll highway which runs right through DU at times!

You can never be sure when another one's coming in, but you always can recognize them when they get here.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Kick!

[mdmc]

24. DOWN with mobil/exxon!

r

[Agony]

26. Hypocrisy of the powerful..,

It is sickening how the rich and powerful run to the international courts when it is in their interest, while on the other hand denying the less well connected access to international justice.
VIs-a-vis the US (among others) blocking the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Go EFF yourself Exxon!