There isn't any foreign ownership of oil in Venezuela. The entire country's supply was nationalized in the early 1970's. After that, as the prices collapsed, Venezuela was thrown in a severe economic tailspin (from which they've never recovered). Many foreign firms were invited back on a contractual basis in order to gain access to their expertise to extract oil from area where PdVSA did not have the expertise or technology to do so. Since crude prices were low throughout the 80's and 90's, some had to be offered fairly attractive terms in order to make deals worth doing.
Of course, the Chavez government unilaterally re-negotiated these deals early in his first term as oil prices began rising. I believe this is why many of the companies simply accepted the new terms since the overall economics had indeed changed. Why Venezuela wouldn't honor its deals and renegotiate at the end of contracts is indeed less than honorable behavior.
PdVSA still doesn't have the technology to access many of the deeper and more difficult wells in Venezuela. Also, Venezuelan crude is notoriously heavy and difficult to pump. I don't think the foreign firms would ever be out entirely unless the terms become so odious that they simply leave. Or if Venezuela were to begin ignoring intellectual property rights and just steal the technology for extraction.
While having family ties to Venezuela, I never supported the idea of a coup as it only further subverts Democracy and make sa martyr of Chavez and his doomed-to-fail economic policies. That said, now that they are passing a law that essentially gives him the right to rule as a king (by decree) for 18 months and since their next legislative item is to ammend the constitution to allow unlimited re-election, it is hard for me to see what other options the opposition has. Remember, Chavez won the election handily, but his opposition was still over 30% which means that it included a very large amount of the non-super rich.
It's pretty scary stuff as the country has basically gone the other 50% toward total dictatorship in the last six months. And we have gotten so used to taking a non-judgmental, hands-off approach that many in the media pretend like it isn't such a big deal.
I foresee something of a cold war coming with Venezuela. And given the natural affinity (and family ties) that many Venezuelans have with the USA, that's tragic and unnecessary.
