MIAMI, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Officials at Venezuela's state-owned oil and gas giant PDVSA appeared Tuesday to back away from threats to "cut off" oil supplies to the United States amid a multibillion-dollar legal fight with ExxonMobil.

While PDVSA head Rafael Ramirez said Venezuela was still "ready" to cut off supplies if the lawsuit filed by ExxonMobil persisted, he did note that South America's top oil supplier and lone member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries did not want it to come to that.

Most analysts concluded that Venezuela's bluster over the ExxonMobil case and threat of cutting off supplies was more posturing than a real possibility. As the fourth-largest exporter to the United States, Venezuela can hardly afford to shut off supplies to the United States, even for a short while, said Patrick Esteruelas, a Latin America analyst for the New York-based think tank Eurasia Group.

"The Venezuelan government has become more and more dependent on oil, and oil exports to the U.S. in particular, making it highly unlikely that Venezuela will cut off oil supplies to the U.S. despite the latest threats," said Esteruelas, who noted that Venezuelan crude and refined product exports to the United States averaged 1.35 million bpd in 2007, close to two-thirds of Venezuela's total oil exports of 2 million bpd.

However, Venezuela has already decreased its exports to the United States in recent years, a result of production shortcomings, according to some PDVSA officials.