Venezuela denounces US-ordered ‘forced sale’ of oil company Citgo

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A Delaware justice has ordered the merchantability to settee debts, arsenic Venezuela says US subject buildup is targeting its lipid reserves.

Published On 3 Dec 2025

Venezuelan Vice President and Minister of Petroleum Delcy Rodriguez has condemned a US court’s determination to authorise the “fraudulent” and “forced” merchantability of Venezuelan lipid institution Citgo successful the United States to wage disconnected billions of dollars successful debts.

“We energetically cull the determination adopted successful the judicial process”, Rodriguez said successful a connection work connected authorities tv astir the sale, which the Venezuelan authorities has ever opposed.

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Delaware Judge Leonard Stark past week ordered the merchantability of Citgo’s genitor institution to Amber Energy, an affiliate of the hedge money Elliott Investment Management, for $5.9bn. Elliott Investment Management said successful a property merchandise that the tribunal bid was “backed by a radical of strategical US vigor investors”.

Citgo, a Houston-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, SA), a state-owned lipid company, has been facing claims that it owes much than $20bn to creditors, reflecting the broader fiscal woes of the South American state nether US sanctions, which person targeted its erstwhile profitable lipid industry.

The company’s creditors see the Canadian steadfast Crystallex, which different US tribunal said was owed $1.2bn by the Venezuelan authorities successful 2019 implicit Caracas’s 2008 seizure and nationalisation of the Las Cristinas mine, which is affluent with gold, diamonds, robust and different minerals.

The merchantability of Citgo comes arsenic Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claims that the US’s caller subject build-up successful the Caribbean Sea surrounding his state is aimed astatine seizing Venezuela’s immense lipid reserves.

(FILES) A antheral walks past a billboard of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), speechmaking "Return CITGO to the Venezuelans," successful Caracas connected June 27, 2023.

While Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven lipid reserves, estimated astatine 303 cardinal barrels arsenic of 2023, it exported conscionable $4.05bn worthy of crude lipid successful 2023, acold beneath different large oil-producing countries, successful portion owed to US sanctions imposed during US President Donald Trump’s archetypal term.

Last week, Maduro called connected chap members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to assistance his state antagonistic “growing and amerciable threats” from the US and its president.

However, Paolo von Schirach, the president of the Global Policy Institute, said that helium doubted that Venezuela’s plea would elicit overmuch enactment “within OPEC itself”.

The Trump medication has claimed that its subject actions successful the portion are focused connected tackling cause trafficking.

Venezuela was historically 1 of the largest exporters of oil to the United States, but income declined sharply aft Hugo Chavez was elected president successful 1998.

Then, facing strict sanctions nether the archetypal Trump administration, Venezuela shifted its exports to countries including China, India and Cuba.

A flimsy easing of the commercialized tensions nether erstwhile US President Joe Biden’s medication saw US multinational institution Chevron granted a constricted lipid accumulation licence, earlier sanctions were again tightened astatine the opening of the 2nd Trump medication successful March this year.

PDVSA, the state-owned lipid institution that has dominated Venezuela’s exploitation of its immense lipid reserves, has faced different challenges, including ageing infrastructure, underinvestment and mismanagement, arsenic good arsenic the effects of planetary sanctions.

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