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Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro oversaw waves of state takeovers and tighter state control over oil and mining assets, notably asserting majority or full state stakes in Orinoco heavy-oil...
Hugo Chávez’s mid-2000s reassertion of state control over Venezuela’s oil sector and Nicolás Maduro’s continuation of that policy led to the effective loss or forced reduction of foreign companies’ op...
Since 2019 the universe of refineries actually taking Venezuelan heavy and extra‑heavy crudes has narrowed and rerouted: U.S. Gulf Coast facilities built or retrofitted for heavy, sour Venezuelan grad...
The United States seized a sanctioned oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast in early December 2025, an action Washington says targeted a vessel used to move sanctioned Venezuelan and Iranian crude; Venezue...
U.S. oil companies have repeatedly filed claims and won international arbitration awards against Venezuela for past expropriations and lost investments, but those legal victories have not translated i...
Venezuela under Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) and Nicolás Maduro (2013–present) expropriated or seized foreign oil assets including major stakes held by US-based ConocoPhillips in Petrozuata, Hamaca and Cor...
The 2007 Venezuelan oil expropriations were a state campaign under President Hugo Chávez to convert foreign-operated oil projects into majority state-controlled ventures — a demand that led Caracas to...
The core legal disputes between the United States and Venezuela over oil and other resources center on historical nationalizations and investor arbitration, U.S. sanctions and maritime interdictions o...
Hugo Chávez’s government seized or nationalized foreign oil assets in multiple waves, most prominently in 2007 when it reasserted state control over Orinoco heavy‑oil projects operated by major intern...
ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil were the principal U.S. oil companies that pursued international compensation after Venezuela’s 2007 nationalizations; both secured arbitration awards but with markedly d...
A definitive, source-backed roster of every Gulf Coast refinery that can process Venezuela’s heavy Merey and Hamaca blends does not exist in the provided reporting, but the evidence points to a core g...
Foreign state actors most visibly tied to Venezuela’s oil sector now are China and Russia, while limited Western involvement — notably Chevron — has fluctuated with U.S. licensing and sanctions . U.S....
Hugo Chávez moved Venezuela away from the 1990s “apertura” model toward state-dominated control by forcefully renegotiating contracts and legally requiring PDVSA-majority stakes in oil projects, effec...
Chevron currently stands out as the largest active foreign oil operator in Venezuela through licensed joint ventures with state oil company PDVSA, while a handful of other foreign firms — notably Russ...
Hugo Chávez’s government began a series of high-profile expropriations of foreign oil operations in 2007, stripping major international firms of operational control over Orinoco Belt projects and othe...
Hugo Chávez’s drive to assert state control over Venezuela’s oil translated, by the mid-2000s, into the takeover or forced relinquishment of foreign-operated projects — most prominently assets run by ...
Sanctions and maritime restrictions on naphtha and other diluents strike at the practical heart of Venezuela’s heavy‑oil export model: without adequate diluent, extra‑heavy Orinoco crude cannot be ble...
Venezuela’s 2007 hydrocarbon nationalizations led to high-profile seizures of assets from several foreign oil firms — most notably ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil — triggering multiple international arb...
Available analyses show that key recent profiles assert María Corina Machado supports privatizing state-run entities including PDVSA, Venezuela’s oil company, while several other pieces in the provide...
ConocoPhillips won a multibillion-dollar arbitration that culminated in an ICSID/World Bank award requiring Venezuela to pay roughly $8.7 billion for 2007 expropriations — a decision the state unsucce...