VENEZUELA won a victory against Exxon Mobil on Thursday when a World Bank tribunal overturned a 2014 anti-nationalisation ruling.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes upheld Caracas’s appeal against the ruling granting the oil giant $1.4 billion (£1.15bn) compensation over late president Hugo Chavez decision to take over the Cerro Negro project in 2007.

“We were confident all along that our position was correct and are very pleased that the annulment committee agreed,” Venezuela’s lawyer George Kahale said.

The long-running dispute between US oil giant Exxon Mobil and Caracas flared up in 2015 when the firm began offshore oil exploration in neighbouring Guyana’s Essequibo region, which Venezuela claims as its own.

Exxon Mobil’s Guyana Country Manager Jeff Simon announced last week the firm was investing $5bn (£4.1bn) in drilling 17 wells expected to yield between 0.8 million and 1.4 million barrels of oil in the next few years.

Meanwhile Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro led a rally to celebrate the country’s annual Day Against Imperialism.

He called it a “day of courage, of dignity, for a people who chose to be free and have demonstrated over the past years that they are made out of the indestructible strength of our liberators.”

US President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Venezuelan Vice-President Tareck El Aissami last month at the urging of dozens of congress members from both parties.

And in December, outgoing president Barack Obama extended his decree designating Venezuela an “extraordinary threat” to US national security and foreign policy for a third year.