By David Lee Smith September 14, 2007
You can’t blame ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) for reaching the end of its patience. With Venezuela’s Castro-wannabe President Hugo Chavez sending the company and five of its peers packing earlier this year, and with negotiations on compensation having become a dry hole for the company, Exxon will pursue arbitration in the dispute.
The company could be joined by ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), which, like Exxon, has refused to roll over and accept Venezuela’s settlement terms. The four companies who capitulated to Chavez include Chevron (NYSE: CVX), BP (NYSE: BP), France’s Total (NYSE: TOT), and Norway’s Statoil (NYSE: STO).
The six companies had been operating various heavy-oil projects in the country’s Orinoco River basin. But with Chavez’s nationalization program affecting such industries as energy, electricity, steel, and banking, they were expelled last spring in favor of state-run Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, which assumed command of the operations.
The Orinoco’s thick, gooey oil will continue to challenge PDVSA. It’s difficult to extract and refine. Being a significant producer of oil on an international scale, and a key supplier to the U.S., Chavez’s truculent approach to the industrialized world in general and the U.S. in particular could worsen the world’s tight oil supply-demand balance. In fact, the Energy Information Administration arm of the U.S. Department of Energy believes that Venezuelan production already has declined to about 2.4 million barrels per day, down from 3.1 million barrels.
Exxon’s petition for arbitration goes to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an independent international organization with ties to the World Bank. If the company’s efforts — which should take a few years to run their course — succeed, but Venezuela disavows compliance, Exxon could pursue its case in the courts of any country that is an ICSID signatory.
Earlier this year, ExxonMobil said it wouldn’t enter into any new energy projects in Russia, given that nation’s increasingly hardball approach with western companies. Exxon has found dealing with the Russian government challenging at its Sakhalin-1 project, which the company operates. It also has watched the Russian government bounce BP and Royal Dutch Shell from projects at the big Kovykta gas field and Sakhalin-2, respectively.
This governmental heavy-handedness has contributed to draining Exxon’s patience. It’s also one of the many reasons I continue to pound on my Foolish friends (figuratively, of course) to include the company or other quality international producers in their investment portfolios.
http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2007/09/14/exxonmobil-swings-back.aspx
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
