Venezuela - (Adds company details from signing ceremony)

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela struck deals Friday for natural gas projects in the Caribbean with foreign companies, including U.S.-based Chevron (nyse: CVX - news - people ), in a sign it is open to some outside investment despite sweeping nationalizations.

In transportation, production and exploration projects that the government said could draw billions of dollars of investment over the next few years, Venezuela agreed to work with minority partners from Japan to Italy.

As well as Chevron, Russia's Gazprom, Italy's Eni , Qatar Petroleum, Japan's Mitubishi Corp., Mitsui , Itochu and Malaysia's Petronas signed the accords to work on the offshore natural gas projects, the Venezuelan government said.

The deals help make President Hugo Chavez's case that his OPEC nation can work with foreign investors from around the world despite his deteriorating relations with the Bush administration which labels him an autocrat.

Chavez, who ejected U.S. major oil Exxon Mobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) and ConocoPhillips (nyse: COP - news - people ) from multibillion-dollar oil production projects last year, presided over the signing ceremony and told the Chevron delegation, "We want to be friends with gringos."

Exxon and ConocoPhillips filed lawsuits against Venezuela for last year's nationalizations but Chevron quickly struck a deal and remained in another of the crude projects targeted for takeover by the socialist leader.

Venezuela is a major oil supplier to the United States, its top energy customer.

Its natural gas operations are much smaller and some of its offshore exploration projects in the sector have failed to fulfill the potential the government has said they could achieve.

Last week, Chavez expelled the U.S. ambassador and threatened to cut off oil supply to the United States. (Reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Saul Hudson; Writing by Saul Hudson; editing by Marguerita Choy.

Source >  Forbes.com | sept 19

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