The doctrine that made PDVSA attachable won in court and stalled at the Treasury
A 1983 Supreme Court test allowed the oil company to be treated as the Republic itself: the creditor need only prove control, not fraud. On that basis the PDV Holding shares were auctioned and a US$5.892 billion bid approved. The order was entered on November 29; closing still awaits a license that has not been issued and two unresolved appeals.
A Canadian mining company whose gold project Venezuela expropriated ended up, twenty years later, triggering the auction of the largest Venezuelan-owned refiner in the United States. Between those two facts sits a feature of U.S. law that is almost never explained and that decides the entire outcome: the alter ego doctrine. Understanding it matters well beyond this file, because it is the tool any creditor holding a final judgment can use to collect from a state by reaching the assets of its oil company.
The default rule is the opposite. A state-owned company and the state that owns it are separate legal persons, and one's debt is not collected against the other's property. That separation is what allows a national oil company to operate abroad without every lawsuit against its government dragging it in. Breaking it requires an exception, and the exception has a name and a test.
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