Guaido team favoring ConocoPhillips in Citgo fight

Another senior Venezuelan opposition figure has resigned following the government's leak of a strategy that would favor ConocoPhillips in an escalating battle among creditors for shares in Venezuelan state-owned PdV's US refining unit Citgo.

Jose Ignacio Hernandez, who held the title of special attorney general in opposition leader Juan Guaido's US-backed exiled administration, announced his resignation late yesterday shortly after the government of President Nicolas Maduro leaked audio of Hernandez discussing the strategy in a meeting with the opposition-controlled National Assembly's energy commission.

In the audio, the veracity of which was confirmed by the attorney general's office yesterday, Hernandez describes an "understanding" with ConocoPhillips in which the US company would "pause" a stalled case against PdV in Portugal to focus on an ongoing case in a Delaware court, which has already ruled that Citgo shares can be sold to satisfy a debt to former Canadian mining company Crystallex, now owned by New York hedge fund Tenor Capital Management.

ConocoPhillips, which is the second creditor in line behind Crystallex in the Delaware case, will seek equal rights to Citgo shares once an embargo order is issued, according to Hernandez's account to the commission.

He said lawyers are still discussing the details of the understanding with ConocoPhillips.

"Conoco's objective is to obtain this embargo measure in order to get rights equal to that of Crystallex," says Hernandez, a former academic who led Guaido's legal team from the US since his 2019 appointment.

In the audio, which was posted on social media by Venezuela's executive vice president Delcy Rodriguez, Hernandez warns that Citgo is close to falling into creditors' hands, contradicting the Guaido team's public assertions that the asset is protected.

"I am surprised at how long these walls of defense that I built have lasted. Sooner or later…and no one knows the walls of the legal defense better than me, these walls are weak and fractured and they will collapse," Hernandez warns, adding that with a possible change of government in the US on top of political changes in Venezuela "we could be in a worse situation even than we were in January 2019" when Guaido declared his interim presidency.

Hernandez also discusses his "personal" effort to win recognition for the Guaido administration through the president of the World Bank — former US treasury official David Malpass — and its International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (Icsid), which issued arbitration awards for numerous companies, including ConocoPhillips, whose Venezuelan assets were expropriated under Venezuela's late president Hugo Chavez.

Legacy claims

ConocoPhillips' claims stem from the 2007 takeover of its stakes in two Venezuelan projects that were designed to upgrade Orinoco extra-heavy crude into lighter synthetic grades for export. The 120,000 b/d PetroZuata project, now known as Petro San Felix and wholly owned by PdV, has been mothballed for years. The 190,000 b/d Ameriven project became PetroPiar, which is controlled by PdV with a minority stake owned by Chevron. PetroPiar is among the few PdV ventures that continues to operate, but at a diminished level. Chevron remains in Venezuela under a US sanctions waiver that expires in December.

ConocoPhillips did not reply to a request for comment on the alleged understanding with Guaido's team.

Hernandez says he had already resigned before the audio leaked. Yesterday he released a 28 May resignation letter to Guaido in which he urges "deep institutional reforms in the State's legal defense".

Last month, two directors of an "ad hoc" PdV board of exiles resigned and they have not yet been replaced. Guaido's envoy to Chile recently departed as well.

Inside Venezuela, Maduro is tightening his grip on power ahead of National Assembly elections that would remove the constitutional basis of Guaido's claim to an interim presidency. His supreme court appointed an electoral board and is seeking to replace the leadership of opposition parties.

By Patricia Garip