Venezuela's government-run oil giant -- the country's largest source of cash -- is warning that it could default on its bonds as early as next week, CNN reported. Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, failed to get investors to agree on a deal to push back debt payments by three years. The company said it is extending its deadline for a third time so investors can accept a deal by Friday night. This time, it warned that things could get messy.

Venezuela’s state-owned oil company offered an improved deal to bondholders as it seeks to push back debt payments coming due this year and next, Bloomberg News reported today. Petroleos de Venezuela SA said that it will pay investors as much as 1.22 times the face value of the notes they hold in exchange for longer-maturity securities, after offering no price premium in a proposal Sept. 16. While the original swap offer was for $7.1 billion of bonds, PDVSA said yesterday that it wouldn’t swap more than $5.325 billion of securities.

Venezuela’s petroleum industry, whose vast revenues once fueled the country’s Socialist-inspired revolution, underwriting everything from housing to education, is spiraling into disarray, the International New York Times reported. To add insult to injury, the Venezuelan government has been forced to turn to its nemesis, the United States, for help.

An international arbitration tribunal has ordered Venezuela to pay a Vancouver-based mining company more than $1.2 billion ($1.5 billion Cdn.) for expropriating its gold mines. Venezuela took over Rusoro Mining’s investments in the country as part of a nationalization of the gold industry in 2011, the Toronto Star reported on a Canadian Press story. Rusoro Mining Ltd. said Tuesday the money is due immediately and it expects that Venezuela will comply with its international obligations.

Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s decision to reopen the border with Colombia grants his countrymen a lifeline of crossing into frontier towns to buy what they need. Five border crossings opened Saturday under a plan announced by the presidents of both countries to gradually normalize movement. Cars will be allowed to cross in a month. But for now, traffic is limited to pedestrians, meaning for many of 54,000 Venezuelans who crossed over, how much they take home depends not only on what they can afford, but also how much they can carry.

With Venezuela's economy veering into depression and Venezuelans scrambling to find basic goods, the government's decision to keep servicing the country’s $68bn in external bonds has been called everything from “crazy” to “a crime against humanity.” Putting bondholders above Venezuelans, these critics argue, is just morally wrong, Bloomberg News reported. But such charged rhetoric is no substitute for a sober analysis of Venezuela's debt predicament. Seen in that light, the wisdom of defaulting is less clear cut.

Venezuela’s bonds are soaring on speculation the government may be looking to strike a deal to push back looming debt maturities, a move that would give the cash-strapped nation desperately needed breathing room, Bloomberg News reported today. State-owned oil producer Petroleos de Venezuela SA has seen its $3 billion of bonds due in April jump 5.3 cents this week to 69 cents on the dollar, the highest September 2014.

The International Monetary Fund issued a report that consumer-price inflation in Venezuela is forecast to hit 480 percent this year and top 1,640 percent in 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported today. As Caracas extends its declared state of economic emergency, many economists say that the nation will soon have to ask the IMF for a bailout. It’s gotten so bad, the government this month handed over control of food stocks to the military, ceding even more power to the armed forces.

Venezuela is “highly unlikely” to have enough hard currency to fully make its debt payments this year, although a default isn’t inevitable, according to a report from Moody’s Investors Service, Bloomberg News reported. State-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, which has large payments due this year, is likely to default before the sovereign, the credit ratings company said. That, in turn, could imperil government finances to the point it won’t be able to make payments either, according to the report.

Venezuela is convulsing from hunger, the International New York Times reported. Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves. And they showed that even in a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food.