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Venezuelan government-owned oil company
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...
Yes — Venezuela has a documented history of seizing foreign oil assets that included U.S. companies, most notably during the Chávez-era nationalizations and subsequent expropriations in the 2000s, tho...
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...
China is now the dominant buyer of Venezuelan oil, taking roughly 80% of exports in recent months (about 746,000 bpd in November) and absorbing large volumes of fuel oil and methanol as well (136,000 ...
Venezuelan oil is not “dirty” in the moral sense but is characteristically heavy, sour and technically challenging: much of it is extra‑heavy crude that requires special upgrading or configured refine...
There is substantial reporting linking Venezuelan officials and businessmen to multi‑million and billion‑dollar bribery and money‑laundering schemes — including a U.S. case that traced more than $1 bi...
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...
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...
Venezuelan oil is simultaneously "good" and "problematic": the country sits on some of the world's largest crude reserves, but most of that resource is extra‑heavy, technically demanding to produce an...
Venezuela was ordered by international tribunals to pay at least two major awards tied to 2007 expropriations: roughly $8.7 billion to ConocoPhillips (ICSID/ICC rulings and later enforcement actions) ...
The Venezuelan state first nationalized its oil industry in the 1970s — commonly dated to 1976 — an action that shifted control of large foreign (including U.S.) oil operations to the state oil compan...
Yes — Venezuela has nationalized its oil industry in multiple waves and directly expropriated assets operated by U.S. firms, from the wholesale state takeover in the 1970s to targeted seizures under H...
Hugo Chávez led large, formal nationalizations across oil, banking, steel, cement, fertilizer and large tracts of agricultural and urban land—culminating in state operational control of the Orinoco oi...
U.S. sanctions have materially worsened Venezuela’s economic contraction and constrained imports of food, medicine and spare parts, but they did not originate the country’s crisis—years of mismanageme...
Hugo Chávez’s mid-2000s nationalizations transferred operational control of many foreign-run oil projects to PDVSA and the Venezuelan state, producing a patchwork of outcomes: some firms took negotiat...
Venezuela’s wave of oil-sector nationalizations (notably under Hugo Chávez and later actions) produced multiple international arbitration claims and some awards: ExxonMobil won an ICSID ruling requiri...
Venezuela is widely reported as holding the world’s largest proven oil reserves—commonly cited around 303 billion barrels in 2025—placing it ahead of Saudi Arabia and Iran in several recent compilatio...
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...
Arbitral and court rulings stemming from Venezuela’s 2007 re-assertion of state control over oil projects have produced a mixed legal picture: international tribunals and settlements have found that V...
Venezuela has faced multiple arbitration claims by foreign oil firms after nationalizations and contract changes; two widely reported awards are ExxonMobil’s ~$1.6 billion ICSID award and ConocoPhilli...