Thread: UPDATE 2-Venezuela says all Chalmette oil sent to China

UPDATE 2-Venezuela says all Chalmette oil sent to China
Fri Mar 28, 2008 5:55pm EDT

(Recasts, adds details, additional minister comment)

CARACAS, March 28 (Reuters) - Venezuela is sending to China all the oil it previously shipped to a U.S. refinery jointly owned with Exxon Mobil amid a legal battle between the OPEC nation and the U.S. oil giant, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said on Friday.

"With respect to the shipments, we put them at China's disposal," Ramirez told reporters. "All of it."

Exxon and Venezuela have been in dispute over supplies to the Louisiana-based Chalmette refinery since Exxon won court orders freezing $12 billion in Venezuelan assets as part of a legal battle over compensation for Exxon assets Venezuela nationalized in 2007.

State oil company PDVSA halted supplies to Chalmette, a 50-50 joint venture that can process about 193,000 barrels per day of crude, after Exxon began rejecting some of the cargoes that Venezuela destined for the refinery.

Ramirez said PDVSA rerouted the supplies in protest, which he said were meant to pressure Venezuela as part of an international arbitration over the 2007 nationalization of the Cerro Negro heavy oil project that Exxon once ran.

Exxon wants at least $5 billion in compensation, though PDVSA says it is due less than $1 billion.

A London court this month lifted one of the freeze orders, though Exxon still has similar injunctions in Netherlands and Netherlands Antilles courts.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is keen to export more oil to Asia to reduce traditional dependence on United States energy markets. (Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by David Gregorio)

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsN ... 1220080328

Venezuela is increasingly becoming a little pain in the you know what. Chavez is trying to conspire with the rest of the world in an effort to turn against the United States and he's using oil as the lure. China needs tremendous amounts of oil to support industry and large population.

If Bush wants to start another war, he should start looking at who the real enemies of the United States truly are. He needs to start looking SOUTH instead of east.