Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA demands gas stations pay bills

By Mircely Guanipa, Tibisay Romero and Deisy Buitrago PUNTO FIJO/VALENCIA/CARACAS April 17 (Reuters) - V enezuelan state oil company PDVSA has asked gas station operators to immediately pay outstanding bills, according to sources and a company document seen by Reuters on Monday, as the firm faces an anti-corruption probe and expands a receivables audit. The government since last year has been investigating PDVSA, where commercial accounts receivable climbed to more than $20 billion. The probe has led to a wide-ranging review of contracts, the arrests of dozens of people and a shake-up of top oil officials. PDVSA has put many oil and fuel supply contracts on hold, called in clients to settle accounts and added new customers to its registry of approved companies.

"We request you to immediately honor any pending payment obligations from fuel sales," it wrote to station operators last week. "PDVSA needs its income to be fluid in order to sustain fuel production, storage, transportation and supply structure." The request to settle pending balances has focused on stations that sell in U.S. dollars and have not fully paid PDVSA, sources said. Failure to pay could jeopardize fuel supplies, PDVSA warned. PDVSA and Venezuela's Federation of Motor Fuel Selling Businessmen did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Under strict currency exchange controls, Venezuela had sold its domestic fuel at heavily subsidized prices in local currency. But fuel scarcity and a need for hard currency led it to allow some stations that independent owners ran to receive dollar payments in recent years. The dollar-denominated income from those domestic sales has become key for the company's cash flow amid U.S. sanctions limiting the OPEC country's oil exports. PDVSA CEO Pedro Tellechea, who became oil minister last month, wants to settle pending bills before approving new contracts. Suspending fuel deliveries could worsen an intermittent scarcity from 2020. In the letter to operators, PDVSA's domestic market division chief Gustavo Bravo reminded stations about the need to maintain accounts and said PDVSA would take "administrative and legal action" against unfulfilled payments. An unknown number of station operators in recent weeks have received account balances from PDVSA, one of the sources said. "If outstanding balances are not paid in 72 hours, they activate a credit hold and fuel supply to stations is suspended," said a station owner.
(Reporting by Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo, Tibisay Romero in Valencia and Deisy Buitrago in Caracas; Writing by Marianna Parraga; Editing by Josie Kao)

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