Maduro Scrambles To Defuse "Explosive" Situation As Supreme Court Reverses Ruling

While investors had largely given Venezuela"s economic catastrophe the benefit of the doubt for the past two years as crude collapsed and the country"s CDS soared to record highs only to normalize subsequently, yesterday bond investors got very nervous for the first time in a while, as the Venezuela 9.25% of 2027 bonds crashed on fears a presidential coup may be imminent after Wednesday"s decision by the pro-Maduro supreme court to assume the functions of congress, in effect making Venezuela a Maduro dictatorship. The opposition promptly slammed the decision as a "coup" against an elected body and demanded army intervention, and the tipping point came when even a formerly pro-Maduro Attorney General, Luisa Ortega, slammed the "unconstitutional" usurpation of power.

One day later, the bond selloff, coupled with a dire surge in domestic anger and protests, as well as international condemnation, appears to have been sufficient to spook Maduro that this may be one of his last (bad) decisions because on Saturday morning, Venezuela"s Supreme Court reversed its decision to strip congress of its legislative powers.

"This controversy is over ... the constitution has won," Maduro said in a televised speech just after midnight to a specially convened state security committee that ordered the top court to reconsider its rulings. The Supreme Court duly erased the two controversial judgments during the morning, the information minister said.

In an amusing twist, Maduro tried to cast the U-turn as his own personal achievement, one of a wise statesman resolving a power conflict, everyone and certainly his opponents said it was a hypocritical row-back by an unpopular government that overplayed its hand.

"You can"t pretend to just normalize the nation after carrying out a "coup,"" said Julio Borges, leader of the National Assembly legislature, quoted by Reuters. He publicly tore up the court rulings this week and refused to attend the security committee, which includes the heads of major institutions.

While the Supreme Court flip-flop may take the edge off protests, Maduro"s opponents at home and abroad will seek to maintain the pressure. They are furious that authorities thwarted a push for a referendum to recall Maduro last year and also postponed local elections scheduled for 2016. Now they are calling for next year"s presidential election to be brought forward and the delayed local polls to be held, confident the ruling Socialist Party would lose.

"It"s time to mobilize!" student David Pernia, 29, said in western San Cristobal city, adding Venezuelans were fed up with autocratic rule and economic hardship. "Women don"t have food for their children, people don"t have medicines."

Venezuelan Bolivarian National guards officers are confronted by university students
during a protest outside of the Supreme Court in Caracas, on March 31, 2017

As mentioned yesterday, today the National Assembly plans an open-air meeting in Caracas, while South America"s UNASUR bloc was to meet in Argentina with most of its members unhappy at Venezuela. The hemispheric Organization of American States (OAS) had a special session slated for Monday in Washington.

As Reuters adds, even before this week"s events, OAS head Luis Almagro had been pushing for Venezuela"s suspension, but he is unlikely to garner the two-thirds support needed in the 34-nation block despite hardening sentiment toward Maduro round the region.

That said, Venezuela can still count on support from fellow leftist allies and other small nations grateful for subsidized oil dating from the 1999-2013 rule of late leader Hugo Chavez. Maduro accuses the United States of orchestrating a campaign to oust him and said he had been subject this week to a "political, media and diplomatic lynching."

A woman wears a banner over her mouth with a message that reads in Spanish:
"Venezuela lives in a dictatorship" during a protest, in Caracas

Serious criticism even came from within government, with Venezuela"s attorney general Luisa Ortega rebuking the court in an extremely rare show of dissent from a senior official. "It constitutes a rupture of the constitutional order," he said in a speech on state television on Friday.

The Supreme Court"s decision helped to further galvanize resistance to Maduro, Pockets of protesters had blocked roads, chanted slogans and waved banners saying "No To Dictatorship" around Venezuela on Friday, leading to some clashes with security forces. Given past failures of opposition street protests, however, it is unlikely there will be mass support for a new wave. Rather, the opposition will be hoping ramped-up foreign pressure or a nudge from the powerful military may force Maduro into calling an early election.

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Meanwhile, the nation continues to disintegrate, with Reuters reporting that Venezuela"s murder rate rose to an average 60 per day last year, up from about 45 per day in 2015, the attorney general"s office said on Friday, as the country"s worst economic and political crisis in history continues to claim victims Official data put the murder rate at 70.1 per 100,000 inhabitants last year, one of the highest in the world and up from 58 in 2015.

Violent crime is one of the most pervasive anxieties for Venezuelans, especially in poor slums dominated by gangs and rife with guns. Numerous state security plans and disarmament drives in recent years have failed to curb violence given easy access to weapons, police participation in crime, and high levels of impunity in the nation of 30 million people.

A brutal economic recession that has millions skipping meals has pushed more Venezuelans towards crime, according to officials, rights groups and neighborhood organizations. Recently, Venezuela - the country"s with the world"s largest proven oil reserves, ran out of gasoline.

Venezuela In Dire Straits As Oil Production Falls Further

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Venezuela’s economic crisis continues to deepen. The South American OPEC member is thought to be sitting on nearly 300 billion barrels of oil, far more than any other country in the world, including Saudi Arabia (estimated at 268 billion barrels). But the economy has been in freefall for several years, with conditions continuing to deteriorate.

The economic crisis has morphed into a full-blown humanitarian disaster. Just this week the Wall Street Journal reported on Venezuelan women traveling to neighboring Colombia to give birth because the state of Venezuela’s hospitals are horrific, with shortages of medical supplies and trained staff. Infant mortality is worse than in war-ravaged Syria.

Food and other essential items are also painfully scarce, leading to long lines at shops. Tensions run high because there is not enough to go around.

Now even gasoline is running low in Caracas, Reuters reports, an unusual development for the capital city.

Gas shortages suggests problems for Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA are deepening. The government depends on oil production for more than 90 percent of its export revenues, and the collapse of oil prices back in 2014, coupled with a long-term slide in output, have ruined the company’s finances.

That, in turn, puts even more pressure on PDVSA. A shortage of cash is straining the company’s ability to import refined products as it falls short on bills to suppliers. PDVSA needs to import refined products to dilute its heavy crude oil, but without enough cash, tankers are sitting at ports unable to unload their cargoes. Reuters also says that “many tankers are idle because PDVSA cannot pay for hull cleaning, inspections, and other port services.”  

Separately, Bloomberg reported that Venezuela’s largest port at Puerto Cabello is quiet, with satellite imagery showing no vessels arriving or departing. “If you can see a country’s economic decline from space, you know it’s in big trouble,” Graham Stock, the head of emerging-market sovereign research at BlueBay, told Bloomberg on March 19. 

The economic malaise has Venezuela’s cash reserves plunging to $10.4 billion, according to the latest estimates, which is equivalent to only 10 percent of the country’s outstanding debt. Graham Stock told Bloomberg that he puts Venezuela’s odds of a default this year at 50 percent.

Inflation is likely over 700 percent annually, but in February the central bank decided to stop publishing money supply data, which surely doesn’t bode well. "If they are not publishing, you know it must be skyrocketing," Aurelio Concheso, director of the Caracas-based business consultancy Aspen Consulting, told Reuters in an interview.

The economic meltdown and humanitarian crisis has sparked anger across the country, and opposition to the incompetent management of President Nicolas Maduro is growing. That has been met with a clenched fist by the Maduro government, which has jailed political prisoners, weakened the National Assembly and indefinitely delayed gubernatorial elections. In response, 14 Latin American nations plus the United States and Canada are pushing a resolution in the Organization of American States calling on the Maduro government to hold elections and back off his nationwide crackdown. The efficacy of such a move is uncertain, but for a dozen nations in Latin America to intervene in such a way is a testament to how far Venezuela’s stock has fallen. “It’s one more step in the increasing isolation of Venezuela,” Javier Corrales, a professor and Latin American expert at Amherst College, said in a WSJ interview. “It’s a very important step in a region that realizes one of its members is in violation of the democratic precepts of the OAS charter.”

Venezuela’s predicament has ramifications for the oil market. The South American nation was desperate for collective production cuts from OPEC members, and has enthusiastically supported the deal. Venezuela pledged output cuts of 95,000 bpd from October levels, promising to average 1.972 million barrels per day between January and June. Early data shows that Venezuela has not yet followed through on those cuts – Reuters says it is achieving only a 7 percent compliance rate. But the government has ordered cuts from some PDVSA operations in Orinoco Belt, a sign that the Maduro government has intensions to follow through on its pledge. Non-compliance could rattle the resolve of other OPEC members, ultimately leading to an unraveling of the deal, which would likely push oil prices much lower and worsen Venezuela’s crisis.

However, production cuts also run the risk of exacerbating the economic depression that Venezuela finds itself in. Lower production means much less revenue. On top of that, Reuters says that some of the cuts will affect joint ventures that PDVSA has with Eni and Rosneft, two partners that won’t be too happy about being ordered to reduce output.

The bottom line is that Venezuela’s oil output might be heading down whether or not President Maduro wants it to. Fitch Ratings says that a default on PDVSA’s debt is “probable” this year, with an estimated $10 billion in debt payments falling due and only $2 billion in cash on hand. And the company would need much higher prices in order to boost production at any point in the near-term. “Giving the tight liquidity, prices need to be significantly higher to revive output,” Lucas Aristizabal, a senior director at Fitch, told Bloomberg in February. “At least more than $100 to start with.”