Venezuela: CITGO Auction Judge Orders Bidding Restart, Greenlights Parallel Lawsuits
Caracas, December 31, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Delaware District Judge Leonard Stark has ordered the relaunch of a bidding process for Venezuelan-owned refiner CITGO.
On December 18, Stark determined that the company’s data room be opened to potential buyers. Court-appointed “Special Master” Robert Pincus, charged with overseeing the sale, proposed a three-month bidding period. He would then offer his recommendation to the court in April 2025 ahead of a final sale hearing in mid-2025.
In October 2022, Stark launched an auction of shares belonging to PDV Holding (PDVH), CITGO’s parent company, to satisfy creditor claims against Venezuela. Most of the debt stemmed from international arbitration awards in favor of corporations that had assets nationalized by the Venezuelan state.
The court recognized 18 claims totaling US $21.3 billion, with firms set to be compensated on a “first come, first served” basis. Crystallex ($1.0 billion), Tidewater ($80 million), ConocoPhillips ($1.3 billion) and O-I Glass ($700 million) are the first on the list.
The Delaware court decided to seek new offers following strong opposition to a winning proposal chosen by Pincus. In September, the special master picked a $7.3 billion bid from vulture fund Elliott Management subsidiary Amber Energy as the auction winner. However, creditors rejected both the offer’s amount and sale terms, forcing the bidding process to restart.
The revamped proceedings may include a so-called “stalking horse bid” which would set a minimum price for CITGO. For its part, Amber stated that its purchase agreement was now “moot.” Crystallex, Red Tree Investments and Gold Reserve have at different points expressed interest in submitting proposals.
Though the process might yield higher offers, the auction might be affected by parallel lawsuits pursued by some of the Delaware creditors.
On Monday, Judge Stark ruled out issuing an injunction to block Gramercy Distressed Opportunity Fund, G&A Strategic Investments and Siemens Energy from seeking compensation through separate litigation. The corporations have filed lawsuits in New York and Texas courts in attempts to collect on respective $537 million, $1.1 billion and $194 million debts, stating that their positions on the Delaware creditor list mean they are unlikely to collect on their claims.
Pincus had urged the judge to bar the parallel legal efforts to stop creditors from “jumping the line.” He likewise argued that the added risk could hurt potential offers. Nevertheless, Stark rejected the motion to file an injunction as lacking a legal basis.
Besides the separate judicial cases, the CITGO court-mandated sale must also account for the holders of the defaulted PDVSA 2020 bond, for which 50.1 percent of the refiner’s shares were pledged as collateral. Successive protection orders from the US Treasury Department have stopped bondholders from executing the collateral.
Special Master Pincus has unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the PDVSA 2020 bondholders. The eventual new CITGO ownership will have to settle with the bondholders, potentially lowering auction offer amounts.
Estimated at $11-13 billion, CITGO has been under the control of the US-backed opposition since 2019 following the Trump administration’s recognition of the Juan Guaidó-led self-proclaimed “interim government.” Guaidó and his associates have drawn accusations of malpractice and conflicts of interest that ballooned CITGO’s liabilities.
In 2021, US oil giant ConocoPhillips secured a default ruling to collect on an $8.5 billion arbitration award after “interim government” lawyers failed to appear in court. The debt has since surpassed $10 billion with interest. ConocoPhillips managed to tag its claim to the Delaware auction in 2023.
For its part, the Venezuelan government has condemned the court-ordered sale of its most important foreign asset as “the theft of the century.” The Nicolás Maduro administration has vowed to challenge the loss of the refiner. However, because it is not recognized by Washington, it remains barred from presenting its case in US courts.
A subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, CITGO owns three refineries with a combined capacity to process 769,000 barrels per day (bpd). The firm’s portfolio likewise includes a pipeline network and over 4,000 service stations, mostly on the US East Coast.