2005

President George W. Bush welcomes María Corina Machado, the founder and executive director of Súmate, an “independent democratic civil society group” (directly funded by the U.S government) in Venezuela, to the Oval Office Tuesday

Years Exxon was extracting oil in Venezuela:

Regarding its relationship with Venezuela, ExxonMobil operated in the country from the 1940s until 2007, when the Venezuelan government, led by Hugo Chávez, nationalized the company’s assets. In 2014, an international tribunal ordered Venezuela to pay ExxonMobil $1.6 billion in compensation for the expropriation of its assets.

And reported elsewhere:

“The ICC only awarded Exxon ten per cent of what they wanted,” Chavez said recently. “You can make your own conclusions.”

Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company, said on January 2 it would pay Exxon Mobile $255m, after accounting for money frozen in a New York bank account and outstanding debts.

“Exxon has been granted the value of its [initial] investment, but not the value of the project today,” Chris Nelder, an independent energy analyst, told Al Jazeera. The company had demanded as much as $12bn, citing potential lost future profits and other concerns, after the nationalisation of its Venezuelan heavy oil assets in the Orinoco belt in 2007.

“This is a victory against a corporation that tried to abuse Venezuelan law,” said Eva Golinger, a lawyer and author of The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela. “The Venezuelan government had originally offered $1bn for the nationalisation and now they end up only having to pay $255m.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2012/1/6/exxon-loses-venezuela-nationalisation-case

What’s in a prize?

Washington, D.C. — January 15, 2026

President Donald J. Trump today accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in a small ceremony at the White House during the visit of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. Machado, who received the same prize from the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo last year, presented her medal to Trump as a sign of appreciation and shared commitment to democratic ideals and peace efforts abroad. Trump graciously accepted, and is now in possession of the prize.

Trump accepted the medal with warm words for Machado:

“I am deeply honored to receive this Nobel Peace Prize medal,” Trump said.

“María is a wonderful woman who has been through so much, and this is a truly great moment for freedom and peace.”