Venezuela ordered to pay Exxon US$1.6b

New York

A WORLD Bank arbitration panel on Thursday ruled that the Venezuelan government must pay ExxonMobil US$1.6 billion to compensate for taking control of the US firm's heavy-oil project in the country.

A three-member arbitration panel for the Washington-based International Centre For Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) unanimously granted the award to the biggest US oil company following the June 2007 expropriation of the Cerro Negro project in Venezuela, a heavy-oil region known as the Orinoco Belt.