Jim Mulva, chief executive of ConocoPhillips, the third-largest US oil company, is holding out against both the terms under which Venezuela is expropriating the company’s oil assets and the commercial terms under which they will be managed.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Mulva said he visited Caracas last week to continue talks, even as the government went ahead with plans to seize a minimum 60 per cent stake in all foreign-controlled oilfields on May 1. The move to expropriate the oil assets of Conoco and other energy companies under the country’s privatisation programme is billed as an attempt to rid the country of what President Hugo Chávez calls the “mechanisms of materialism”.