Western oil companies have been fighting to recoup tens of billions of dollars that they say Venezuela owes them — debts that could play a prominent role in efforts by President Trump to compel U.S. businesses to produce more oil in the country, the New York Times reported. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips top the list of oil companies with big financial claims against Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, was captured by U.S. forces over the weekend in Caracas.

The Trump administration plans to control future sales of Venezuelan oil and hold the proceeds in U.S. accounts, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, making the clearest statement yet on Washington’s strategy to bring the impoverished nation’s crude to market and control its most valuable resource, Bloomberg News reported. Wright, who spoke at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conference in Miami Wednesday, said initially the barrels would come from crude Venezuela is holding in storage, which has been filling up amid the U.S. blockade and threatening to force some production off line.

A judge at Brazil's federal audit court TCU said on Monday that he may consider measures to prevent the sale of assets during the liquidation of Banco Master, a mid‑sized lender shut down by the Brazilian central bank in November after months of liquidity problems, Reuters reported. Judge Jhonatan de Jesus also ordered an inspection of central bank documents that underpinned its decision to wind down Master.

For activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, Nicolás Maduro’s swift exit comes at an auspicious time, the Wall Street Journal reported. A U.S. judge in November backed a roughly $6 billion bid by Elliott for Citgo Petroleum, the refining firm owned by Venezuela’s state-run company Petróleos de Venezuela, known as PdVSA, in a forced sale to satisfy creditors. Citgo, based in Houston, owns a U.S. network of refineries, pipelines and terminals that some analysts have said could be worth between $11 billion and $13 billion. The deal was controversial in Venezuela.

White House and State Department officials have told U.S. oil executives in recent weeks that they would need to return to Venezuela quickly and invest significant capital in the country to revive the damaged oil industry if they wanted compensation for assets expropriated by Venezuela two decades ago, Reuters reported. In the 2000s, Venezuela expropriated the assets of some international oil companies that declined to give state-run oil company PDVSA increased operational control, as demanded by late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. U.S.

Peru’s government has approved an emergency decree allowing private investment in parts of the state-owned oil company Petroperu, as authorities move to stabilise a firm weighed down by mounting losses and debt, Aljazeera.com reported. President Jose Jeri announced the decision shortly before the beginning of the new year. The measure permits the reorganisation of Petroperu into one or more asset units, opening the door to private participation in key operations. That includes those at the flagship Talara refinery, which recently underwent a $6.5bn upgrade.

Venezuela started shutting wells in a region that holds the world’s largest deposits of oil in the face of a blockade by the Trump administration meant to financially squeeze the nation, Bloomberg News reported. Petroleos de Venezuela SA began shuttering wells in the Orinoco Belt on Dec. 28 as the state-run refiner ran out of storage space and inventory swelled. PDVSA aims to reduce Orinoco Belt production by at least 25% to 500,000 barrels a day, the people said. The decrease represents a 15% cut of Venezuela’s overall output of 1.1 million barrels a day.

Azul has received U.S. bankruptcy judge approval for its chapter 11 plan, clearing the way for a balance-sheet overhaul less than seven months after the Brazilian airline sought court protection, the Wall Street Journal reported. Judge Sean H. Lane of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved the largely consensual plan, overruling objections from the U.S. Trustee related to third-party releases, exculpation provisions and certain fees.

Brazilian union Sindipetro-NF, one of the largest representing Petrobras workers, has rejected the most recent proposal by the state-run oil firm to end a 12-day-long strike, it said in a statement on Friday, Reuters reported. Sindipetro-NF represents about 25,000 workers in the oil industry, including ones in Petrobras' offshore oil platforms in the Campos basin, the second-highest for oil production in Brazil.

Brazilian airline Azul SA is the latest in a string of overseas carriers turning to chapter 11 in the US, becoming “bankruptcy tourists” to access legal protections largely out of reach in their home countries, according to a Bloomberg Law commentary. Azul’s bankruptcy plan, approved this month, slashes more than $2 billion in debt and allows it to reject aircraft leases it couldn’t easily shed at home. Other foreign carriers seeking chapter 11 in the US over the past five years include Avianca, LATAM, Grupo Aeroméxico, and, more recently, Brazil’s Gol Linhas Aéreas.