ConocoPhillips judgement piles pressure on Venezuela’s PdV

Venezuela's state oil company is reeling from plummeting output and debts

In a further blow to cash-strapped Venezuelan state-oil company PdV, an international arbitration tribunal ruled this week it owes ConocoPhillips $2bn as part of fallout from the 2007 expropriation of the American oil producers' assets in the country. ConocoPhillips filed for an arbitration hearing under the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in 2014, as part of a decade-plus long legal battle with PdV to settle the Venezuelan government's expropriation of its Hamaca and Petrozuata Orinoco heavy-oil projects. The Chamber of Commerce arbitration was separate from a concurrent case being heard under the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which