Venezuela settles Williams, Exterran claims

Venezuela settles Williams, Exterran claims

CARACAS -- Venezuela will pay Williams and Exterran $420 million for the 2009 nationalisation of assets including a major gas injection project, the South American country's oil minister said, according to Reuters.
Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters the deal meant the two companies would drop an arbitration case that is pending against Venezuela before a World Bank tribunal.

"We reached an agreement of $420 million. They will drop the arbitration. They had been asking for $1.2 billion," the news wire quoted him as saying.

The nationalizations in 2009 were part of a broader wave of state takeovers that targeted the assets of more than 70 smaller oilfield service companies, the majority of them Venezuelan.

During President Hugo Chavez's 13 years in power, his socialist government has put almost all the OPEC member's oil industry under state control, including multi-billion dollar projects run by US majors.