On Monday, Rafael Ramirez, the oil minister, said Venezuela seized two oil fields from France's Total SA and Italy's Eni SpA after the companies failed to comply with a government demand that operations be turned over to state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA.

He said: "Those two companies resisted adjusting to our laws. Those fields return to total, absolute control by Petroleos de Venezuela."...

Private oil companies had run 32 oil fields in Venezuela independently under contract with the government. But Venezuela demanded last year those contracts be changed into so-called "mixed company" joint ventures that give PDVSA a minimum 60% stake...

Ramirez said 20 companies, including Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and China National Petroleum, representing 25 oil fields have signed on to the new legal framework to create joint ventures.

In an exclusive interview with Greg Palast for BBC Newsnight the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has ruled out any return to the era of cheap oil.

The colourful Venezuelan leader hosts the OPEC meeting on June 1 in Caracas and he will ask OPEC to set $50 a barrel - the average price last year - as the long term level. During the 1990s the price of oil had hovered around the $20 mark falling as low as $10 a barrel in early 1999.

Chavez told Newsnight "we're trying to find an equilibrium. The price of oil could remain at the low level of $50. That's a fair price it's not a high price". Hugo Chavez will have added clout at this OPEC meeting.

US Department of Energy analyses seen by Newsnight show that at $50 a barrel Venezuela - not Saudi Arabia - will have the biggest oil reserves in OPEC. Venezuela has vast deposits of extra heavy oil in the Orinoco. Traditionally these have not been counted because at $20 a barrel they were too expensive to exploit - but at $50 a barrel melting them into liquid petroleum becomes extremely profitable.

The US DoE report shows that at today's prices Venezuela's oil reserves are bigger than those of the entire Middle East including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Iran and Iraq. The US DoE also identifies Canada as another future oil superpower. Venezuela's deposits alone could extend the oil age for another 100 years.

The US DoE estimates that Chavez controls 1.3 trillion barrels of oil - more than the entire declared oil reserves of the rest of the planet. Hugo Chavez told Newsnight's Greg Palast that "Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. In the future Venezuela won't have any more oil - but that's in the 22nd century. Venezuela has oil for 200 years." Chavez will ask the OPEC meeting in June to formally accept that Venezuela's reserves are now bigger than Saudi Arabia's.