Venezuela Settles With French, Italian And Norwegian Oil Companies, U.S.-Based Exxon Only Holdout

Caracas, Venezuela (AHN) - Venezuela has made progress in its quest to nationalize oil fields in its nation that were owned by foreign oil companies. Three of four foreign oil companies have agreed to take what Venezuela offered to pay for their oil interests there, leaving Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobile oil company as the lone holdout for more money as compensation for its oil fields.

The Venezuelan government announced on Thursday that it had agreed to pay a total of $1.8 billion in compensation to three oil companies in France, Italy and Norway. Exxon Mobile is asking $12 billion for its oil fields and Venezuela claims the fields are only worth $1.2 billion tops.

And Venezuela's oil minister has further devalued Exxon's heavy oil fields in the Orinoco River basin, reportedly putting the worth of those assets at less than $1 billion.

Venezuela nationalized the foreign-owned oil fields last year, turning operations over to its state-owned energy company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. and has claimed that Exxon is exaggerating the value of its fields.

Exxon has succeeded in getting U.S. and British courts to order freezing $12 billion of PDVSA assets until a court linked to the World Bank reaches a verdict in the case.

Those court freezes of Venezuela's government-owned assets on behalf of a U.S.-based private corporation angered Venezuela President Hugo Chavez who threatened to retaliate by cutting off oil exports to the United States.

The takeover of foreign oil interest in Venezuela comes after the nation enacted legislation in 2006 that forces all foreign oil companies to give PDVSA at least a 60 percent stake in their oil operations in Venezuela.

France's Total accepted $834 million, Italy's ENI accepted $700 million and Norway's Statoil accepted $266 million, after the three companies agreed to accept the book price for their oil fields after PDVSA took them over.

Unlike the United States where the federal government does not own businesses, and businesses are privately owned and operated, many governments of other nations around the world, such as Venezuela, Cuba, India and China, do own businesses. In those nations, the governments own businesses outright or they own an interest in most of their nation's businesses.