COURT RULING
US oil major Conoco gets green light to seize Venezuelan assets
Willemstad — A Curacao court has authorised ConocoPhillips to seize about $636m in assets belonging to Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA due to the 2007 nationalisation of the US oil major’s projects in Venezuela. The legal action was the latest in the Caribbean to enforce a $2bn arbitration award by the International Chamber of Commerce over the nationalisation. The court decision, reported by Caribbean media outlet Antilliaans Dagblad on Saturday, says Curacao can attach "oil or oil products on ships and on bank deposits". Conoco and PDVSA did not respond to requests for comment on the decision. Conoco earlier in May moved to temporarily seize PDVSA’s assets on the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao and St Eustatius. That threw Venezuela’s oil export chain into a tailspin just as the country’s crude production has crumbled to a more than 30-year low due to under-investment, theft, a brain drain and mismanagement. Reuters reported on Friday that PDVSA was preparing to shut down t...
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