A judge has approved the sale of Citgo to Amber Energy following a years-long legal saga. A court previously found that Citgo’s shares could be auctioned to pay off the debts that its state-owned parent company – Petroleos de Venezuela – owed to a Canadian mining company.
Bracewell’s J.P. Duffy told Houston Public Media the Venezuelan government faced mounting debts, as the country grappled with falling oil prices and political instability.
“Venezuela found itself the subject of a lot of legal actions that were allowed to proceed against [it] and found itself owing billions of dollars to foreign creditors,” Duffy said. “And some of those debts it had actually secured with the shares of Citgo’s parent company.”
