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  • VENEZUELA: President Hugo Chavez announces Venezuela has stripped the world's biggest oil companies of operation control over Orinoco Belt crude projects

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VENEZUELA: President Hugo Chavez announces Venezuela has stripped the world's biggest oil companies of operation control over Orinoco Belt crude projects

Venezuela stripped the world's biggest oil companies of operational control over massive Orinoco Belt crude projects on Tuesday (May 1), sending in workers backed by troops to occupy the multi-billion-dollar installations. Rallying thousands of workers dressed in the signature red of his self-styled revolution, President Hugo Chavez hailed what he called the end of U.S.-prescribed policies that had opened up the largest oil reserves in the hemisphere to foreign investment. "Now you are workers of Oil of Venezuela. The oil of Venezuela is Venezuela. The oil belt of the Oricono is Venezuela. Venezuela is free, our oil is ours thanks to the Bolivarian Revolution. Long live a free Venezuela! Long live the workers! Long live PDVSA! Homeland, socialism or death. We will overcome! Thank you brothers, thank you sisters," Chavez shouted looking out from a platform over a sea of red hats, helmets and flags after the major step in his nationalisation drive. Behind him was a huge banner reading "Full oil sovereignty. Road to socialism." Russian-made fighter jets roared overhead and in front of him women pushed toward the stage screaming for him to blow kisses. U.S. companies Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and France's Total obeyed a February decree to transfer operational control of their projects developing the OPEC nation's Orinoco crude reserve, one of the largest oil deposits outside the Middle East. The May Day takeover came exactly a year after Bolivian President Evo Morales, a leftist ally of the anti-U.S. Chavez, startled investors by ordering troops to seize gas fields in his country, accelerating Latin America's bid to reclaim resources. The four Venezuelan projects are valued at more than 30 billion U.S. dollars and can turn about 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) of heavy, tarry crude into valuable synthetic oil.

ITN Source | May 2, 2007Watch more videos from ITN Source

Tags:. .sending. .operational. .came. .middle. .total











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