In November 2017, Harry Sargeant III, a wealthy American businessman, flew to Ve...
GULF STREAM, Fla. - In November 2017, Harry Sargeant III, a wealthy American businessman, flew to Venezuela to see about buying some oil.
Within a year, Sargeant had inked an attractive oilfield agreement to help raise plummeting crude production in Venezuela, whose economy is in a free fall. A new Delaware company called Erepla Services LLC, of which Sargeant is a shareholder, would rehabilitate three troubled oilfields in exchange for almost half the revenue.
The intended partnership also highlights Venezuela’s desperation. With Western oil majors steering clear of new investment there, the country has turned to China and Russia as well as upstart firms like Erepla. Maduro has long sought an end to what he calls an economic war being waged against his government by the United States. His embrace of an American company belies his public denunciations of Trump.
He says he decided to give the country another shot on his search for heavy crude because he still had industry contacts there. Maduro, he said, wanted him to explain why American companies were not investing in the oil sector there. And, with the help of a translator, the Venezuelan president waxed philosophical about the ravaged economy, Sargeant recalls.Sargeant did not end up purchasing the New Jersey asphalt plant. Instead, a few months later, he and his team began discussing a production venture with PDVSA, according to Ali Rahman, a Washington DC-based executive at Erepla.
Disputes ensued at the Armed Forces Board of Contract Appeals. The U.S. government in the civil proceedings claimed IOTC used “bribery and fraud” to win permission from the nation of Jordan to transport oil across its territory. IOTC and Jordan denied those allegations at the time.
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