HOUSTON -(Dow Jones)- ConocoPhillips (COP) Chief Executive Ryan Lance said Wednesday that the results of an international arbitration proceeding between the oil company and Venezuela are expected soon. Conoco, which left Venezuela in 2007 after the government there decreed that the majority of the shares of its Orinoco oil belt projects should go to the Venezuelan state oil company, appealed to the international courts for compensation. Lance said that the hearing has concluded, and "now they're considering all the evidence that they've heard." "We expect a response in the near future," Lance said during the company's first shareholder meeting as an independent oil and gas producer. "Maybe by the end of the year of the early part of next year." Another oil giant, Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), also got its Orinoco belt assets expropriated, and received compensation earlier this year from an international arbitration panel. -By Angel Gonzalez, Dow Jones Newswires; 281-536-3064; angel.gonzalez@dowjones.com
