Venezuela to pay Exxon Mobil only $255 million

[Judi Lynn]

Venezuela to pay Exxon Mobil only $255 million
The Associated Press
Published: Monday, January 2, 2012 at 12:42 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, January 2, 2012 at 12:42 p.m.

Venezuela said Monday it has successfully defended itself in an international arbitration case brought by Exxon Mobil Corp. and will need to pay only $255 million of the more than $900 million awarded to the company.

State oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, said in a statement that debts and court action reduce what it owes under the more than $907 million ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce.

It said Exxon Mobil had previously used international courts to freeze $300 million in Venezuela's U.S. accounts and that the company also has a debt of $191 million relating to financing of an oil project in the country, as well as $160 million that the arbitration tribunal said was due to PDVSA.

PDVSA called it a "successful defense" and said Exxon Mobil had initially demanded about $12 billion in compensation.

More:
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20120102/APF/1201021051

[dipsydoodle]

1. Good result for Venezuela that

[Peace Patriot]

2. I guess that one could say that this is a "fair" ruling...

...as Venezuelan officials are saying, but, STILL, Exxon Mobil, the richest corporation on earth, is literally taking food out of the mouths of poor children and books out of their hands by extracting this huge "pound of flesh" from Venezuela. The Chavez government has ensured that the oil money goes to social programs. $900 million (or a third to a half of that) will now go into the pockets of fatcat executives and big investors who are among the most malevolent forces on earth. And even this money extraction by Exxon Mobil needn't have been. The Chavez government offered fair terms for extracting oil from Venezuela's huge reserves which many other oil companies accepted. Not Exxon Mobil. They wanted ALL the profits and walked out of those negotiations in a snit and into court, to punish Venezuela for daring to assert its sovereignty and its peoples' right to control their own resource. THEY walked away from 'their' assets in Venezuela in a effort to threaten the Chavez government--a strategy that failed.

Ergo, it is not really all that fair that even one penny of Venezuela's money go to Exxon Mobil.

The Chavez government standing up to Exxon Mobil is one of the most important events of the last hundred years. It is one of the chief reasons that the U.S. government and the Corporate Press--always slaves to these transglobal corporate monsters--hates the Chavez government. I'm glad that the Venezuelans' courage and tenacity have resulted in a greatly reduced 'award' to Exxon Mobil ($900 million as opposed to $12 billion), but my prescription for Exxon Mobil and their ilk is, a) pull their corporate charters and b) dismantle them and seize their assets for the public good. This should have happened--and would have happened in a just world--after the Exxon-Valdez oil disaster. Exxon Mobil should not be permitted to exist.

[Catherina]

3. I love it. They got less than Venezuela had offered them to begin with

(Reuters) - An arbitration panel has awarded U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp $908 million in compensation for Venezuela's 2007 nationalization of its assets, less than 10 percent of what the company sought in a long legal battle with the OPEC nation.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez likely will celebrate the ruling as a vindication of his nationalist confrontation with oil companies aimed at increasing revenue from the industry to boost funding for state-led anti-poverty programs.

...

Exxon had sought as much as $10 billion in compensation for its heavy crude upgrading project in the South American country's vast Orinoco belt, which was nationalized by Chavez along with three others. The award is less than the $1 billion Venezuela offered in compensation in September.

http://www.anonym.to/?http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/01/02/venezuela-exxonmobil-idINDEE80002620120102