Oil giants Exxon and ConocoPhillips leave Venezuela

ConocoPhillips and Exxon decided to leave their operations in Venezuela rather than sign deals with the Chavez administration. Spokesmen for the firms were “disappointed” with the resolution and ConocoPhillips believes that it will lose nearly $5 billion, yet energy analysts feel that the move will not result in major changes to world oil supplies or prices:

“‘It's not going to result in any less crude coming out of there,’ said Kevin Saville, managing editor for the Americas energy desk at Platts, the energy research arm of the McGraw-Hill Companies.”

Four other multinational oil companies- Total, Chevron, BP, and Statoil- did agree to nationalization deals with Venezuela’s government that would grant them a minority stake to work along the oil-rich Orinoco Belt.

In other news related to oil, Bolivian president Evo Morales will travel to Russia and the Middle East in August to work on energy agreements and Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa refused to enter arbitration to settle a dispute brought up by Occidental Petroleum.

Sources- Bloomberg, BBC News, CBS News, People’s Daily Online, BusinessWeek

Image- Al Jazeera (Hugo Chavez on the (far right of the photo) visited several oil refineries earlier this year)