ConocoPhillips in talks to sell Venezuelan oil in U.S. to recover $10B owed - WSJ
Grafissimo/E+ via Getty Images
ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), which abandoned Venezuela after its assets were nationalized in 2007, is in preliminary talks to sell the country's oil in the U.S. as a way to recover ~$10B it is owed by Venezuela, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
According to the report, ConocoPhillips (COP) and national oil company PdVSA are considering a proposal that could allow the U.S. company to load, transport and sell Venezuela's oil in the U.S., which would give COP a chance to recover the money it lost in the country and help the U.S. meet its energy needs.
After ConocoPhillips (COP) pulled out of Venezuela, it eventually won nearly $10B in total international arbitration awards against the Venezuelan state and PdVSA over the seizure of its oil projects, making it the country's largest private sector creditor.
The possibility of a deal comes after the Biden administration issued a license in November to Chevron to restart oil production and exports from existing joint ventures with PdVSA.
Recommended For You
Comments (48)
Have a tip? Submit confidentially to our News team. Found a factual error? Report here.
n
nckadams
13 Jan. 2023
I have no objection to Conoco trying to recover something from the thieving Venezualan government. But I am concerned that any deal will help Maduro and his thugs much more than it will help Conoco.I also don't understand why our government would rather the U.S. buy oil from its enemies (e.g. the Chevron/PdVSA deal referenced in the article) rather than allowing more domestic production.
t
ttims2
13 Jan. 2023
@nckadams Accept domestic oil production in the US is up, and projected to beat all time production numbers this year.We forecast that crude oil production in the United States will increase by 540,000 b/d in 2023, averaging 12.4 million b/d for the year. In 2024, we forecast that U.S. crude oil production will increase by 400,000 b/d to average 12.8 million b/d.This Week in Petroleum - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
n
nckadams
13 Jan. 2023
@ttims2 I'm not sure what your point is relative to my comment. U.S. crude production may be up, but this is despite government policy, not because of it. Consider how much higher that production would be with policies that were not meant to throttle the domestic oil industry. We would not be going hat in hand to the Saudis or cutting deals with the Venezualans.
Anything COP can get out of Vz is simply icing on the cake. Btw, Venezuela is a great example of how the dictator model - which was attempted on the Jan 6th coup-attempt here in the U.S. tried to accomplish - can pretty much destroy a country. Just like in Nazi Germany, and just like in Stalin/Putin's Russia. I wish more Americans actually took history classes and understand that without American Democracy, the rule-of-law, and the U.S. Constitution, this country would have been a disaster under trump regime where he was installed as dictator-for-life ala Putin in Russia. It is sad (and somewhat pathetic to me ...) that I even find a need to explain this to people who were born in the U.S. and have benefited from that simple twist-of-fate - or at least had the opportunity to benefit from it. Whether or not they actually worked hard to make something of themselves is a different story.
H
E.D. Hart
12 Jan. 2023
@Michael Fitzsimmons yes, the rule of law (adherence to a constitution) makes wealth accumulation and capitalism possible...both which tend to be destroyed under fascism, and communism. Hard right and hard left authoritarianism does not lend itself to stable wealth accumulation.Interestingly, the right often gets the criticism of Venezuela wrong by claiming: "look here, see the failure of Venezuela--another example of socialism failed". Well, that's the Tucker Carlson version of events, but in reality Venezuela failed because of authoritarianism---not socialism.
@E.D. Hart - people still listen to Tucker Carlson? I mean I know Russians do ... Putin has put Carlson on his propaganda channel (i.e. "Moscow Channel #1") as proof (as if they needed more after trump ...) that the U.S. republican party (the new "GQP" ...) supports Russia over Ukraine. We'll probably here that Marjorie Taylor Greene and some of the other lunatic QAnon whackos will be shown on #1 next ... maybe they'll send Herschel Walker and the GQP's latest prize from NY .. what's his name, Santos? - like trump, obviously another compulsive and pathological liar - over to Moscow next. Good riddance, they can all stay over there for all I care.It's amazing to me that so many "American" investors don't understand the existential threat posed to their portfolios, pensions, and savings (not to mention their freedom and way of life ...) posed by dictator/kleptocracy model that Putin & trump and the new lunatic GQP are forcing down their throats. Can't they see that other than Gazprom, Russia doesn't have a single leading global brand - no Home Depot, Wal Mart, Microsoft, ... no Apple, Google, J&J, P&G, or Caterpillar or Boeing (I can go on and on). And do they not understand why? Well I will tell them: the dictator/oligarch/kleptocracy model the Putin and trump subscribe to kills personal freedom. And that kills personal motivation. And that kills innovation. Meantime, the dictator takes all the money from the middle-class. The super-rich (i.e. the oligarchy...) will do just fine (especially after the massive tax-cuts trump gave them instead of to the middle class as promised ...), they'll just jet-off to Switzerland or New Zealand or wherever, and the poor will always be poor (most of them), it's the middle-class that get thumped (or, in this case, trumped). It was that way in Nazi Germany, that way in Stalin/Putin's Russia, and that way in Venezuela. Anybody who thinks a trump dictatorship in the U.S. would be any different simply has no knowledge of global geopolitical and economic history ... all indications are that a trump/QAnon dictatorship would be as bad (or worse) than those I just named. Hopefully more and more Americans will wake up to these facts.
secorewb
12 Jan. 2023
Now that Jill is making Joe sell the corvette, he has offered to hold the money until the deal goes through in a safe and secured place.
b
d
ding dong
12 Jan. 2023
Wow. Biden winning for the O&G sector. The best president ever. What a refreshing change from the last one.
J
G
G7Doug
12 Jan. 2023
@ding dong Maybe just a back door to replenish SPR, with Venezuela as the producer COP should be able to meet Biden's price and every body wins.
t