Venezuela President Hugo Chavez Sunday said his government may file a suit against ExxonMobil (XOM) for allegedly taking as much as 500,000 barrels of crude from oil fields without paying for them. "They took 500,000 barrels of crude from here without reporting them, before they began developing" the fields, Chavez said during his radio and television show. "Let's sue ExxonMobil and demand that they pay for what they stole. They're the aggressors, they're the thieves," he said.The president's comments came minutes after a worker for Petroleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, said on live television that Exxon had managed to steal hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil years ago unbeknownst to the government.
The accusation is the latest in a legal spat that pits one of the world's most powerful oil companies against a country that holds some of the largest oil reserves on the planet. Early this year ExxonMobil, pending a arbitration with PdVSA, secured court orders to freeze as much as $12 billion in PdVSA's worldwide assets. PdVSA has appealed, but the freeze remains in effect. Last year, ExxonMobil filed for arbitration against PdVSA to resolve a dispute over how much the state-oil company should compensate ExxonMobil for the nationalization of a heavy-crude oil venture last summer.