alt Hacker News> On top of that comes what is owed to oil companies and suppliers, claims stemming from expropriations under Chávez and the outstanding loans from China and Russia.
It seems like China or Russia would expect to be paid not in dollars, but in Oil Wells and Refineries. Why would they accept restructuring of the debt instead of repo'ing the assets?
Replies
I expect Russia won't be collecting anything.
> It seems like China or Russia would expect to be paid not in dollars, but in Oil Wells and Refineries. Why would they accept restructuring of the debt instead of repo'ing the assets?
Because a number of those assets are still owned by other countries that paused FDI due to Trump's Venezuela sanctions in 2018-19.
For example, India was Venezuela's largest oil exporting customer following Maduro's election with it's state-owned (ONGC, Indian Oil, Oil India) and private sector (Reliance) majors being given sweetheart extraction deals that India had to freeze due to sanctions.
Brazilian players like J&F Group also did the same thing with Venezuela's ONG industry as did Spanish players like Reposol.
Now that the Venezuela sanctions regime is over, those assets which were continued to be owned by those countries are being restarted by those countries.
The biggest winners of Maduro's capture was basically Brazil, India, and Spain as their companies were able to restart operations minimizing China's near monopoly in Venezuela after the expanded sanctions regime kicked off in 2018 while being nimbler than American players who essentially have to start from scratch.
If Venezuela used Enron math, then repo'ing the assets could get tricky. Are we sure the same assets haven't been leveraged more than once? Does Russia and China show up with their armies to see who gets it?