The value of US refiner Citgo has increased substantially because of the war in Iran, so a court-mandated sale of the refiner should be halted, lawyers for Venezuela said in a filing last week.
Venezuela state-owned PdV, the parent company and owner of Citgo, and Venezuela have long argued that the refiner has been undervalued in the auction and have protested a US court's decision last year to pick a $5.9bn bid from Amber Energy, an affiliate of New York hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, as the winner.
In the months since a sale hearing in the case, the "value of publicly traded refiners has increased significantly", the lawyers for Venezuela said in a filing released on 14 May in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.
Based on the increase in stock price for fellow US independent refiners since August and using a conservative calculation discussed in the court case, Citgo should be valued at $15.1bn, more than double the Amber bid, the filing said.
The lawyers for Venezuela also allege that selling Citgo for $5.9bn would constitute a "historic windfall for a hedge fund that has extracted an unconscionable bargain from a conflicted and failed process", according to the court filing.
During the court case, lawyers for Citgo and PdV argued that the refiner was worth $18.6bn, which was rejected by US district judge Leonard Stark as "non-credible and unpersuasive."
Stark concluded in a 25 November opinion that the fair market value of Citgo was under $10bn. Amber's $5.9bn bid included a separate agreement to settle litigation claims with 75pc of a group of PdV bondholders for $2.13bn.
Citgo's three US refineries, as well as its lubricant plants and midstream and retail assets, are being auctioned off to satisfy debt defaults and expropriations owed by PdV.
Amber last month urged the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to give a final authorization required for the sale, arguing that it would invest more than $11bn to modernize and expand Citgo's operations which would put "downward pressure on fuel prices", according to a statement on the company's website which was originally published in the opinion section of The Wall Street Journal.
The fate of Citgo has been murky since the US ousted former president Nicolas Maduro on 3 January and subsequently lifted sanctions on Venezuela's oil exports.
Even though it is owned by PdV, Citgo has operated under a board appointed by the Venezuelan opposition and vetted by the US government since 2019, after the US denounced Venezuela's 2018 presidential election as illegitimate. Since then, the US has recognized the government led by interim president Delcy Rodriguez and restarted diplomatic relations.
OFAC last month lifted most restrictions on financial dealings with Venezuela's central bank and other financial institutions, as well as with the government overall.
Venezuela's government said last week that it plans to restructure all of its sovereign debt and that of PdV, which could reach up to $160bn.
Meanwhile, Citgo reported a profit of $157mn in the first quarter, compared with a loss of $82mn in the first quarter of 2025, pushed by soaring fuel prices because of the war in Iran, which has choked off oil and products supplies through the strait of Hormuz.
