Now that Venezuela, and its state-owned petroleum company PDVSA, were both officially declared in default on their debt by ISDA last Friday, analysts were closely watching what the insolvent Maduro government would do next, now that it is – at least on paper – isolated from most international capital markets (with the occasional loophole when it comes to Chinese and Russian funds). We didn’t have long to wait, and as Reuters reports , a cash-strapped, and bankrupt, PDVSA has resorted to siphoning oil from its cash-paying joint ventures with foreign firms to feed its domestic refineries. In one example, PDVSA asked its Petropiar joint venture with Chevron to turn over as much as 45 percent of the oil it planned to export in November without payment. While state-owned PDVSA predictably did not respond to a request for comment by Reuters , Chevron – which stands to lose far more […]