PDVSA claimed that the fuel should be placed at its disposal, since it could possibly be marketed and cancel the debt for the storage service.
The court of first instance of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba, ordered the “forced sale” of all the crude belonging to Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), stored in a tank of the Bonaire Petroleum Corporation (Bopec).
According to the web portal Chronicles of the Caribbeanthe decision was made at the request of the trustee who manages the bankruptcy of Bopec, Constantijn Val Liere, who in December had sued the Commerchamp joint-stock company.
Commerchamp is a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela established in 1987 and, as described by the state company itself in its 2011 report and account, its objective is the “retail marketing of hydrocarbon products and derivatives for the international market, specifically fuel for aviation, marine bunkers and vehicle gasoline”.
371,790 barrels were brought to Bonaire in May 2018, shortly before PDVSA’s operations in that town ceased, as a result of the sanctions imposed on the government of Nicolás Maduro.
At that time, the fuel was in the custody of PPSA, described as a “sister company” of Commerchamp, since both are subsidiaries of the Venezuelan state company.
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On July 1, 2021, PPSA was ordered to pay Bopec 41.7 million dollars, only in installments and interest for late payment. Meanwhile, the trustee ordered a “retention” of the fuel oil, with the purpose of ensuring that the debt would eventually be cancelled, even partially.
Meanwhile, PDVSA claimed that the fuel should be placed at its disposal, since it could possibly be marketed and cancel the debt for the storage service.
However, the Bopec bankruptcy trustee and Judge Nootemboom-Lock concluded that this would not be possible in the short term, as Commerchamp lacks a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department to carry out this operation.
The auction would allow both Bopec and the Pdvsa subsidiary to acquire some liquidity. The judge observed that the appeal decision is still pending. For this reason, she also ordered that the money obtained from the commercialization of the fuel oil be deposited in a trust account, until the entire litigation is settled.
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