Fighting Back Against Chavez: Exxon Mobil Wins Freeze on $12 Billion in Venezuelan Assets

Take that, Thugo.

Exxon Mobil Corp has won court orders freezing up to $12 billion in Venezuelan assets around the world as it fights for compensation for operations lost to President Hugo Chavez's nationalization drive.

Nationalization? You mean socialist takeover of property, right?

Oh wait, we're dealing with Reuters here. My bad.

The largest U.S. company sought the asset freeze to guarantee repayment should it win arbitration over the Cerro Negro heavy oil project.

The move is the boldest challenge yet by an international oil major against any of the governments around the world that have moved to increase their holds on natural resources as energy and commodity prices have soared.

"To me it sounds like a very aggressive tactic," said Stephen Zamora, professor of international law at the University of Houston Law Center.

"I can't really say that I'm aware this has been used in other investment disputes. They may be trying to get the government to settle."

As if seizing a private company's assets isn't aggressive?

Exxon -- which last week posted the largest ever year's profit by a U.S. company -- said on Thursday it has received court orders in Britain, the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles each freezing up to $12 billion in assets of Venezuela state oil firm PDVSA. An Exxon spokeswoman said the total that could be frozen worldwide was $12 billion.

Exxon also won a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in December freezing more than $300 million belonging to PDVSA, seeking to guarantee repayment should it win the arbitration.

Chavez pals Sean Penn and Kevin Spacey were unavailable for comment.

Guilt by Association

Somehow I doubt the New York Times would get all hot and bothered if a Democrat administration hired a bunch of ACLU lawyers or appointed one to the Supreme Court, but when someone from the dreaded Big Oil has anything to do with their obsession over global warming, then it's time to stop the presses and start the investigations.

Material Shows Weakening of Climate Reports

A House committee released documents Monday that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role.

In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he had made in government reports over several years. Mr. Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

They were the first public statements on the issue by Mr. Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Before joining the White House, he was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry lobby.

He was hired by Exxon Mobil after resigning in 2005 following reports on the editing in The New York Times. The White House said his resignation was not related to the disclosures.

Read the rest. Henry "Nostrilitus" Waxman suspects a conspiracy. But of course.

The documents “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” said a memorandum circulated by the Democrats under the committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California.

We're rapidly getting to the point where it will be considered criminal to be a Republican or work for the oil industry.