Venezuela State Oil Co. to Pay Off Debt

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuela’s state oil company plans to avoid having to file detailed financial reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by paying off its debt traded in U.S. markets, the company’s president said.

“We should not be in the Security Exchange Commission, and when we pay off our private debt we will leave,” Rafael Ramirez, president of Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, was quoted as saying in Wednesday’s edition of the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional.

The PDVSA strategy was confirmed Wednesday to The Associated Press by a company spokesman who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to be quoted by name.

Ramirez said for Venezuela’s state companies, it is “unacceptable to (have to) turn in reports to foreign countries.”

Ramirez gave no indication as to how long it would take to pay off the company’s debt, and did not specify the current amount of debt.

PDVSA bought back some $2.5 billion in bonds in 2004, which allowed the company to sharply decrease a debt previously estimated at some $6 billion. The company is nearly a year behind on filing its 2004 financial results, but company executives have said the report will be finished shortly.

PDVSA has roughly $1 billion in retained dividends on 2004 earnings that will be freed up when the SEC report is filed.

President Hugo Chavez’s government has said the delays in the reports came after the government was forced to fire thousands of workers in 2003 after an anti-Chavez strike that nearly paralyzed the country’s key oil industry.

Venezuela is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter and a major supplier of fuel to the United States.