Willemstad: A court on the Dutch island of Curacao has authorized the local subsidiary of U.S. oil giant ConocoPhillips to seize $636 million worth of assets held on the island by Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA.The move comes as Houston-based Conoco seeks to recover $2 billion in a decade-old dispute over the expropriation of its Venezuelan oil projects by the OPEC nation's socialist government, which is struggling with an economic crunch that has caused widespread shortages of food and medicine.
Curacao Economy Minister Steve Martina said at a news conference Sunday that Conoco already had taken control of some oil products at the Isla Curazao refinery, though he did specify how much.