Citgo share auction creditors oppose terms of Elliott-affiliate’s bid

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By Marianna Parraga and Gary McWilliams

HOUSTON (Reuters) -Creditors seeking proceeds from a U.S. court-ordered auction of shares in a parent of Citgo Petroleum to compensate them for Venezuela’s debt defaults and expropriations on Tuesday widely criticized terms of a conditional offer selected in the second bidding round.

An Elliott Investment Management affiliate on Friday was named the presumptive winner of the share auction with a bid that puts an up to $7.286 billion enterprise value on Venezuela-owned oil refining company Citgo.

Amber Energy’s bid, subject to the resolution of parallel claims by a group of bondholder, is the best way to get the process started to maximize the value of Citgo for creditors, an attorney for the court officer overseeing the auction told the court.

“Our view is: let’s get this bid locked down and binding,” said attorney Ray Schrock. Creditors objecting to undisclosed terms of the offer would have a future opportunity to review details.

“They’ll have plenty of time to see the terms,” he added. “We have somebody prepared to move forward. What we don’t want to do is lose the bird in hand.”

But Crystallex, the company that in 2017 first brought a case that found Citgo parent PDV Holding liable for unpaid judgments and holds the highest-ranked claim, said terms proposed by Elliott’s Amber Energy would mean creditors who are collectively claiming $21.3 billion were “unlikely to ever be paid.”

Amy Wolf, an attorney representing ConocoPhillips, which holds the largest claims in the case, said the sales process “is not ending in the way we all would have liked.”

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga; editing by Gary McWilliams)