Venezuela's Chavez celebrates legal victory over Exxon Mobil Corp.

Chavez on Monday praised a recent legal victory over Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., calling a British judge's ruling that favored Venezuela's state oil company a defeat for Washington

Judge Paul Walker's March 18 decision tossed out an order to freeze US$12 billion (€7.8 billion) in assets belonging to Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA — a move Chavez lauded as "a victory against (U.S.) imperialism."

"I feel like a baseball manager that suddenly has his team in the major leagues, winning against the Yankees,"

Exxon Mobil decided to seek international arbitration with PDVSA last year

The company later won court orders in the U.K. and other countries to freeze PDVSA's international assets

Chavez vowed to soon levy a new tax on foreign oil companies to recoup a larger share of their rising profits

"They're earning money that they haven't accounted for,"

large additional earnings aren't a product of any extraordinary effort