Saturday,
February 16, 2008
Italy's
ENI Reaches 1 Billion Agreement with Chavez's
Venezuela
for Nationalization
Historically,
Powerful Nations have either Intimidated Smaller
Mineral Rich countries, or Installed and or Supported Puppet Governments
to award "Sweetheart" deals to that Powers Corporate/Trading
Interests to "Raid" that country's
riches.
In
early 2007, Venezuelas
president Hugo Chavez gave some of the worlds biggest oil companies a
choice: turn over majority control of their projects to a state-owned company
and remain as minority partners, or face a complete nationalization of
operations in Venezuelas
Orinoco River basin. Ultimately, Exxon and
ConocoPhillips opted to leave, while BP and Norways Statoil decided to
stay.
Venezuela is among a small but
growing number of resource-rich countries to put the squeeze on international
corporations. Russia
early this year pressed both BP and Shell into turning over majority stakes in
Russian gas operations to state-owned Gazprom. Bolivia nationalized gas and oil fields, and Ecuador used
troops to take over Occidental Petroleums holdings. It is not just the oil
and gas sector facing renationalization. Zimbabwes
government said in June it would nationalize the countrys uranium as well
as its coal and methane projects. To the resource-rich developing states
involved in such moves, it is an important signal of sovereignty.
Exxon
and ConocoPhillips have lobbied the US Government to "demonize"
Chavez, as a Narco Dictator (although elected), a
Terrorist Haven, and freeze Venezuela's
assets in the US, (10 x reasonable value) and threaten Venezuela
with military action, even though Chavez's
agenda is similar to that of Hillary and Obama.
ENI
of Italy on the other hand has chosen to be "civilized" and negotiated a
$1 Billion settlement [Or perhaps, ENI wasn't
able to convince Bush to 'bully"
Chavez on it's behalf :)
Petroleos de Venezuela Says
Agreement With Italy's
ENI Reached
Blooberg News
By Matthew Walter
February, 16 2008
Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the
state oil company, said it has reached an agreement with Italy's largest oil company, Eni
SpA, for compensation for a Venezuelan oil field the
government took over in 2006.
Venezuela's oil and energy ministry
confirmed the agreement today in an e-mailed statement. Eni
Chief Executive Officer Paolo Scaroni said yesterday
the company had agreed to accept book value for its stake in the Dacion oil field in Venezuela. Each side declined to
say how much was paid.
In a 2006 filing
the Securities and Exchange Commission, Eni said the Dacion field had a book value of 654 million euros ($959
million).
To contact the
reporter on this story: Matthew Walter in Caracas
at mwalter4@bloomberg.net .
Last
Updated: February 16, 2008 11:34 EST
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