By Antonio Maria Delgado | Miami Herald

The decision by ConocoPhillips to seize the Caribbean assets of PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, has established a dangerous legal precedent that could swamp the South American country’s already impoverished oil monopoly under a wave of similar claims and cut deeply into its ability to operate, experts said.

The decision, which came amid the accelerating deterioration of Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.’s production capacity, could lead creditors to try to seize other Venezuelan assets abroad, including oil exports, to recover the more than $40 billion they claim they are owed.

“Creditors are now saying to themselves, ‘Look, we now have confirmation that you can go out and embargo PDVSA,’ and many of them are going to rush into court to ask for their own seizures,” said Antonio De La Cruz, executive director of Inter American Trends in Washington, D.C.

“We are at the start of a snowball” rolling downhill, added Russ Dallen, managing partner of Caracas Capital Markets, an investment bank in Miami. “Now that people have started to file lawsuits, we are going to see a run because no one wants to be the last in line.”

Bron: Miami Herald