Some Oklahoma oil and gas firms have had their share of experiences with the Venezuelan regimes that ran the country’s oil industry. They have not been good.
Executives at Helmerich & Payne in Tulsa experienced the tough-handed decisions going back to a 2007 agreement in which the company agreed to supply its drilling rigs to the Venezuelan state-owned corporation that controlled the exploration, production and exportation of oil in Venezuela. The state-owned oil corporation was Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).
By 2008, Helmerich & Payne was hit with unpaid debt from the contracts totaling more than $63 million. A year later, the unpaid debt climbed to more than $100 million and the Tulsa company decided enough was enough…it would not renew its contracts and packed up its drills.
It was followed by a takeover by the Venezuelan National Guard under orders of then-President Hugo Chavez of the Helmerich & Payne yards where its equipment was stored. Chavez went so far as to issue a Decree of Expropriation, prompting Helmerich & Payne to sue the country and the state-owned corporation in federal district court.
The lawsuit challenged the expropriation and commercial activity excepts to the FSIA. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 is considered the primary U.S. law that determines when foreign countries and their agencies can be used in American federal or state courts.
Foreign states are generally immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts but the immunity can be lost if the lawsuit claims exceptions such as property seizures or state-sponsored terrorism. Venezuela responded to the lawsuit and moved to dismiss the case and the district court granted the motion with respect to the expropriation claim but denied it with respect to the commercial activity claim. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the decision, stating the expropriation claim was neither insubstantial nor frivolous.
The case ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court where the court sided with Venezuela in 2017. However, when the case later returned to lower courts, there was an eventual ruling for H&P finding jurisdiction for the American parent company’s claim.
The Supreme Court was a unanimous decision against Helmerich & Payne and the justices ruled the D.C. Circuit used the wrong standard and that the FSIA’s “expropriation exception” didn’t apply to the Venezuelan subsidiary’s claim (PDVSA. It didn’t end the court battle because the Appeals Court ruled just last year that H&P did have a valid claim under the international law for the taking of its rigs.
As the Transnational Litigation Blog reported, “On October 3, 2025, the D.C. Circuit issued its latest opinion in Helmerich & Payne International Drilling Co. v. Venezuela. Judge Gregory G. Katsas affirmed the district court’s rulings that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s (FSIA) expropriation exception allows the plaintiff’s claim, that the district court has personal jurisdiction, and that the act of state doctrine is inapplicable.”
Then there is the case of a Purcell oil and gas firm that made international news 10 years ago when it landed a $1.29 billion contract with PDVSA to drill wells in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt region. 
Executives at Horizontal Well Drillers never offered any public comments about the deal at the time and declined several requests for interviews. Operations collapsed when the company reportedly defaulted on a loan from Callidus Capital, a Canadian financial firm.
By January 2020, the company had closed its doors.