Ramírez detects Washington's hand in ExxonMobil action, ExxonMobil seen as the villain

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez drew a direct link between the court case opened by ExxonMobil against the state oil corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), and the Bush administration's presumed campaign against this country.

In a lengthy interview in the Ultimas Noticias, the minister on Tuesday reiterated President Hugo Chávez' warning that PDVSA would halt oil exports to the United States if ExxonMobil or other parties continued taking action against Venezuela. "We're ready," he declared.

Of all the foreign companies involved in projects in the Orinoco Belt, he said, "only ExxonMobil maintained an aggressive and hostile attitude." It was a "typical interventionist, imperialist company."

Other companies such as Total of France, ENI of Italy, London-based BP, had agreed to negotiate reducing their stakes to enable PDVSA to take a majority interest, Ramírez added.

So had other North American companies such as ChevronTexaco, Opic and PetroCanada. As to ConocoPhillips, which like ExxonMobil declined to surrender a majority holding to PDVSA, Ramírez said Venezuela was "on the way to resolving differences."

However, he went on to say PDVSA would "evaluate" taking legal action against multinationals for the damage he claimed they had done to the country after it opened up its oil reserves to foreign exploration and exploitation in the 1990s, before President Hugo Chávez came to power.

The minister confirmed that the cases brought by ExxonMobil before courts in New York and London against PDVSA were not the only legal actions the corporation faced. There were, he said, five cases in all, of which one involving the Italian power generation company, Enel, had been resolved by arbitration favoring PDVSA.

He said negotiations with Total, whose interest in Orinoco Belt operations has been cut from 47 percent (and not 33 percent as previously stated), were nearing completion.