Venezuela’s Chavez threatens to sue Exxon over oil `theft’

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez Sunday said his government may file a suit against ExxonMobil
for
allegedly taking as much as 500,000 barrels of crude from oil fields without paying for them.

“They took 500,000 barrels of crude from here without reporting them, before they began developing” the fields, Chavez said during his radio and television show.
“Let’s sue ExxonMobil and demand that they pay for what they stole. They’re the aggressors, they’re the thieves,” he said.

The president’s comments came minutes after a worker for Petroleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, said on live television that Exxon had managed to steal hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil years ago unbeknownst to the government.

The accusation is the latest in a legal spat that pits one of the world’s most powerful oil companies against a country that holds some of the largest oil reserves on the planet.

MarketWatch