CITGO office in Houston, Texas, USA. File photo.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Yván Gil, referred to the process of the forced sale of CITGO Petroleum Corp. as one of the most outrageous acts of “theft, criminality, and judicial piracy in modern history.”
The foreign minister made this assertion on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the start of the illegal US unilateral coercive measures (euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”) against Venezuela’s oil industry.
In a post on his Telegram channel, FM Gil stated the following: “On January 28, 2019, one of the most outrageous acts of theft, criminality, and judicial piracy in modern history began: the government of the United States imposed an oil embargo on Venezuela with the aim of suffocating its economy and initiated a web of sanctions and a judicial system at the service of corporate interests to seize CITGO, the largest Venezuelan asset abroad.”
Gil emphasized that the US expropriation of CITGO is the result of betrayal by Venezuela’s far right, which called for sanctions against the country. “The illegal sale of CITGO is now in its final stage due to the betrayal of an extremist sector of the Venezuelan opposition, which called for economic strangulation and the theft of CITGO and of everything that by sovereignty, belongs to the Venezuelan people.”
On December 2, 2025, Venezuela repudiated the forced sale of CITGO by the United States. Delcy Rodríguez, who at the time was executive vice president, asserted that the illegal measure was carried out “in collusion with extremist Venezuelan sectors.”
(Últimas Noticias) by Carlos Eduardo Sánchez
Translation: Orinoco Tibune
OT/CB/SL
Cameron Baillie is an award-winning journalist, editor, and researcher. He won and was shortlisted for awards across Britain and Ireland. He is Editor-in-Chief of New Sociological Perspectives graduate journal and Commissioning Editor at The Student Intifada newsletter. He spent the first half of 2025 living, working, and writing in Ecuador. He does news translation and proofreading work with The Orinoco Tribune.
