Venezuela says Citgo is worth more, urges court to block sale
Venezuela told a U.S. court Citgo may now be worth $15.1 billion, far above Amber Energy’s $5.9 billion bid.
Venezuela has asked a U.S. court to stop the sale of Citgo Petroleum’s parent, arguing that the refiner is now worth far more than the $5.9 billion bid already approved for PDV Holding. In a May 12 letter unsealed Thursday, lawyer Alexandra Cumings said even a conservative valuation discussed in court would put Citgo at about $15.1 billion, a gap that could reshape the auction and the payouts available to creditors.
The challenge lands at a critical moment in a fight over one of the most strategically important refining assets linked to Venezuela. Delaware Judge Leonard Stark approved Amber Energy’s bid late last year, but the sale still needs approval from the U.S. Treasury Department, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is weighing whether to suspend it while disputes over valuation and an alleged conflict of interest play out. Amber Energy is an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management, and its chief executive, Gregory Goff, has argued separately that the company has an $11 billion investment plan for Citgo and wants the deal to close quickly.
The valuation dispute is unfolding against a harsher market backdrop for oil assets. Citgo is the seventh-largest U.S. refiner, and its results released in March 2025 showed 811,000 barrels per day of annual throughput and $3.8 billion in year-end liquidity. The company operates three refineries in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Corpus Christi, Texas, and Lemont, Illinois, making it a major processor in the U.S. fuel system as well as a prize in a long-running creditor battle.
That battle began with Crystallex in 2017, after an arbitral tribunal found Venezuela responsible for expropriating the miner’s assets. Since then, the case has become the gateway for more than a dozen other creditors, with about 15 claimants seeking roughly $19 billion in total. The pressure intensified further when the PDVSA 2020 bonds were found valid in a separate New York case, adding claims secured by a majority stake in Citgo.
Citgo’s ownership chain runs through Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, and Delaware-incorporated PDV Holding, while its governance has been handled since 2019 by a U.S.-recognized opposition board rather than the Maduro government. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control extended a protective license through June 19, keeping the refiner shielded from creditors for now. With valuation rising, creditor claims mounting, and U.S. sanctions policy still in the mix, the case has become a test of how American courts handle foreign sovereign assets under pressure.
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