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As President Donald Trump vows to return U.S. energy investment to Venezuela, the Latin American country remains on the hook for billions of dollars owed to American energy companies following years-old legal battles over oil contracts.
Once a key supplier to global oil markets, Venezuela reshaped its relationship with international energy companies in the mid-2000s, as then-President Hugo Chávez tightened state control over the oil industry.
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A pump jack stands near an oil spill at a Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) facility in the Orinoco Belt of El Tigre, Venezuela.
Between 2004 and 2007, Chávez effectively forced foreign companies to renegotiate their contracts with the government. The new terms sharply reduced the role and profits of private firms while strengthening Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).
The move drove some of the world’s largest oil companies out of the country.
ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips exited Venezuela in 2007 and later filed claims against the government in international arbitration courts. Those courts ultimately ruled in favor of the companies, ordering Venezuela to pay ConocoPhillips more than $10 billion and ExxonMobil more than $1 billion.
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Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. (Carolina Cabral/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
While precise figures are difficult to verify since Venezuela has not published comprehensive debt statistics in years, the International Monetary Fund estimates the country’s economy will total about $82.8 billion in 2025.
Debt levels, however, stand at nearly 200% of that total, meaning Venezuela owes nearly two dollars for every dollar it produces.
On top of that, Venezuela has failed to repay about $60 billion in bonds, with total foreign debt…
