Court Hearing on Citgo Auction Could Be Delayed Until September

The court officer who oversees the auction of Venezuela’s PDV Holding, the parent company of refiner Citgo Petroleum, has asked a Delaware court to postpone the hearing on the winning bids by two months until September 19, to have more time to evaluate the bids and negotiate a sales agreement.

The deadline for submitting binding bids for Citgo’s parent company expired last month, while the deadline for completing the court-appointed auction and the awarding of the winners is currently July 15.   

But Robert Pincus, the court-appointed special master to oversee the case, seeks more time to evaluate competitive offers, among which “multiple bids were actionable,” the court officer wrote in a motion with the court arguing for the postponement.

The U.S. federal court in Delaware accepted until mid-June binding bids in the second bidding round for the shares of Citgo’s parent company, as creditors and claimants seek compensation for asset nationalization under Hugo Chavez and failure to repay debts under Nicolas Maduro.

Citgo is the seventh-largest refiner in the United States with a total capacity topping 800,000 barrels per day (bpd). It has plants in Texas, Louisiana, and Illinois, along with pipelines and a gasoline distribution network that supplies 4,200 outlets in the United States.

The sale process of shares to pay creditors and claimants against Venezuela’s oil asset appropriation and debts owed by Citgo was launched by the Delaware court in October 2023.

A first bidding round with non-binding offers ended earlier this year, and the deadline for submitting of binding bids in second bidding round is today.

Overall, creditors and claimants have sought to recoup at courts in Delaware a total of $24 billion in claims and arbitration awards against Venezuela.

However, in the first round of the auction the highest bid was only $7.3 billion, which is just one-third of the value of the claims approved by the court, Reuters reported in March this year.

To compare, Citgo is valued at between $11 billion and $13 billion.

If the second-round bids do not come close to about $10 billion, Venezuela could seek a third bidding round, two sources told Reuters in May.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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