London judge lifts asset freeze on Venezuela oil firm PDVSA

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LONDON (AFP) - A London High Court judge on Tuesday suspended a court order which froze 12 billion dollars (7.6 billion euros) of assets owned by Venezuela state oil firm PDVSA in a dispute with US energy giant ExxonMobil.

Judge Paul Walker, announcing his ruling at the High Court, said he would publish a "short document" later in the day to outline his reasoning before releasing a longer document on Thursday.

The public hearing was brought before the High Court at the end of February but Walker said that some of the arguments were heard in private.

ExxonMobil declined to comment on the decision while representatives for PDVSA said that they were "very happy" with the ruling.

The US energy group, the world's biggest by market capitalisation, had won the court order earlier this year.

It was part of an international arbitration sought by ExxonMobil to gain compensation for the leftwing Venezuelan government's nationalisation of key oil fields in the Orinoco basin.

America's ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips remain in dispute with Venezuela, demanding current market-price values for assets taken by PDVSA.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips took the dispute to international arbitration under a unit of the World Bank. ExxonMobil meanwhile asked courts in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and the Dutch Antilles to freeze 12 billion dollars of PDVSA's global assets.

PDVSA suspended oil supplies to ExxonMobil on February 12 in retaliation for the US energy giant's efforts.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also threatened to cut off oil deliveries to the United States over the legal moves but he has since backtracked to say he would only stop oil shipments if Venezuela came under attack.

The US State Department had brushed off the threat and noted that Chavez has issued similar warnings in the past.