But it is not, and it is not even close to that number.
There were six companies that were in joint ventures with Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Venezuela's state oil company. The are: BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron, France's Total and Norway's Statoil. Their complete investment in these four Orinoco belt fields is $17B.
I don't know the breakdown of investment other than all of them are significant, there were no relatively small shares. ExxonMobil was involved in two fields, but one of the two had not gone beyond early exploration and no production facilities had been built. The were part owners of the other field with another major besides PDSVA. So with only that information, I will make the guess their investment was about 1/6 of $17B or $2.8B But since I'm only guessing lets bump it up to $5B. Of their share, they are lossing about a quarter of it but call it $1.5B. Venezuela is repaying that investment. There is NO $30B loss. ExxonMobil and the others are claiming it is worth more than the investment. I have seen reports unverified that they (all 6) claim $30B of worth for the total investment, not the portion being nationalized. I'm doubt that a year before this happened they could sold their interest in a joint partnership with PDSVA they could have gotten near that amount. Not to many companies want to partner with the Chavez. And that was not the amount claimed when these companies were paying taxes on it.
More importantly, forced nationalization and expropriation is thuggery, not business as usual
Allthough I agree with the first, it is thuggery. I disagree this is all that unusual for Venezuela and certainly the precedence existed by the late 1990 when these investments were made.
You are probably not one of the 1m people Exxon employs, so you enjoy bashing the corp.
You have got to be the only person on FreeRepublic who has ever accussed me of bashing an oil company. Lacky or Shill is usually the insults sent my way related to the oil industry. Could you show me one instance where I have bashed the ExxonMobil?
How do you feel about emminent domain?
A necessary part of modern society. Fair compensation has got to be part of it and the ability to go to court when the party lossing property believes they have not be fairly compensated. Receiving energy and transporation in this country requires emminent domain. But lately it has been abused for revnue generation through increased taxes and that should not be allowed.
I meant to add that I believe the $1.5B is probably on the high side for the investment portion being nationalized. It could be as low as $0.5B. But ~$1B being repaid is far from the $30B loss you claimed.
I do not support this action by Venezuela. But I do not support the US government stepping in to make risky investments with unstable governments backed by the US tax payers. ExxonMobil has a legal path available to them if they believe their negotiations with PDVSA will not be acceptable. PDVSA has US investments that exceed the worth (regardless of whose numbers you use) of that which has been nationalized.