A little more digging has revealed that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s populist president, does not have the world’s international oil companies quite as cornered as he professes…at least not yet. This Dow Jones story gets it about right: Chevron, BP, Total, Statoil and even ExxonMobil, have all signed an agreement to renegotiate their Orinoco heavy oil contracts with PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company, and ConocoPhillips is likely to do so before the May 1 deadline. But what do these signatures actually mean? This is where things get a little fuzzy. On May 1, despite the flags, military and pomp, the main change will be the logo of the oil workers’ uniforms. Instead of Sincor, Total’s venture, the tags will read PDVSA. But whether Chavez will be able to extract the 60 per cent controlling stake he wants, and how he will compensate the partners, will be hacked out in tense negotiations over the next few months. Chavez may generally have gotten what he wants until now, but the oil companies have at least one trump card: they have the know-how to run the fields.

In the latest sign of the pressure on the international oil companies, all but one of the foreign majors operating in Venezuela’s Orinoco belt have signed new contacts with the government (AP story in the Houston Chronicle), to begin the process of the state taking control of the project. The Reuters version here.

Chevron, BP, Total, Statoil and even ExxonMobil, which traditionally plays hardball in these cases, have signed Hugo Chavez’s new terms for continuing to operating in the vast heavy oil resource region. Only ConocoPhillips, which has two projects in the area, is still holding out.

Mr Chavez, of course, has hailed the agreements as a victory for his brand of socialism. But for the IOCs, things could be worse. They have still got substantial equity stakes in projects in one of the biggest oil reserves in the world, bigger perhaps even than Saudi Arabia’s. The way things are going these days, they should probably be grateful for small mercies.