(S&P Global Platts, 13.Feb.2019) — Self-declared Venezuelan interim president Juan Guaido plans to appoint Luisa Palacios, an expert in emerging Latin American markets and international affairs, as president of state PDVSA’s US refining and marketing arm, Citgo, sources close to Guaido said Wednesday.
Guaido would also appoint Angel Olmeta, Luis Urdaneta and Edgar Rincon to Citgo’s board of directors, sources said. Olmeta was vice president of Citgo and Luis Urdaneta was a vice president of PDVSA in the 1990s, while Rincon is a specialist in financial evaluation and commercial negotiation.
Current Citgo President Asdrubal Chavez has been barred from entering the US after the White House revoked his visa in its dispute with the embattled government of President Nicholas Maduro.
Just under half of Citgo has been leveraged as collateral to Russia’s Rosneft to cover a $1.5 billion loan to the Venezuelan government, and other creditors have laid claims to the company over unpaid debts.
The sources also confirmed that Guaido will appoint Gustavo Baquero, an oil industry veteran and university professor, as his president of PDVSA. PDVSA’s current president is Manuel Quevedo, a former brigadier general in the Venezuelan National Guard with no oil experience before being tapped for the position and as the country’s oil minister by Maduro in late 2017. As Venezuela’s top OPEC representative, Quevedo holds the rotating OPEC presidency for 2019.
Guaido has not announced any appointments for PDVSA president or oil minister, according to sources.
There was no information available about who would accompany Baquero on a parallel PDVSA board of directors appointed by Guaido, the leader of Venezuela’s National Assembly.
There were also no details when the appointments of Baquero and Palacios will be made.
The Maduro regime has come under increasing international pressure, with Guadio recognized as interim president by more than 40 governments, including the US, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and the UK. Mexico, Russia and Cuba, however, have said they will stand by Maduro, who broke diplomatic and political relations with the US.
On January 28, the Trump administration unveiled sanctions on PDVSA, which served as a de facto ban on US crude imports of Venezuelan oil and an immediate ban on US exports of diluent to Venezuela. The new sanctions require any payment for crude from PDVSA to be deposited into blocked accounts within the US. The funds would ultimately be transferred to a new Venezuelan government, led on an interim basis by Guaido, if and when Maduro relinquishes power.
On February 1, the US Treasury also gave non-US companies three months to wind down transactions with PDVSA that involve the US financial system, essentially prohibiting sales of PDVSA crude and products in dollars.
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