Billionaire investor and President Donald Trump donor Paul Singer could gain more than Citgo—the crown jewel of Venezuela’s international oil assets—if a bid by an affiliate of his hedge fund to purchase the company is approved by regulators.
Elliott Investment Management, which is backing refining startup Amber Energy in its attempt to purchase Citgo, would also then come into possession of a little-known, 300-acre island in the Delaware River, Petty’s Island in New Jersey, which is set to become a nature preserve after years of being used for oil storage and refining petroleum products.
Newsweek contacted Elliott Investment Management and Amber Energy by email on Sunday morning, outside of standard working hours, for comment.
Why It Matters
After U.S. elite troops seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas and flew them to New York, Trump announced that his administration will “run” Venezuela and “fix” its battered oil infrastructure. It will do so, he said, with the help of oil and gas companies in the U.S., which will invest billions of dollars in the country's oil industry.
The Venezuelan strongman’s capture came shortly after a U.S. judge ruled in favor of Citgo being sold to Amber Energy, in a move that would position Singer’s Elliott Investment Management to benefit significantly from Trump’s promised boost in Venezuelan oil production.
What To Know
Citgo, which has three refineries in the U.S., is a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA. It has owned Petty’s Island for 110 years, though it has been trying to offload it to the state of New Jersey since the early 2000s, with mixed results.
A 2009 offer was eventually approved by officials. The plan was for Citgo to clean up the island by 2020, removing pollutants from the soil and groundwater, moving contaminated materials away, and restoring the island’s ecosystems and habits, before handing it over to the state of New Jersey. Five years after the deadline, the work is still ongoing, according to reports.
With Amber Energy’s purchase awaiting approval by regulators and several question marks over how the situation will evolve on the ground in Venezuela, the future of the island, originally hunting grounds of Native Americans, has become uncertain.
Citgo and its ownership have been at the center of a bitter legal fight for years now, as creditors have demanded its sales to pay off $20 billion in debts.
At the end of November, Delaware Judge Leonard Stark ordered the sale of Citgo’s parent company to Amber Energy for a discounted price of $5.9 billion. Elliott Investment Management said in a press release at the time that the court order was “backed by a group of strategic U.S. energy investors.”
Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, estimated at 303 billion barrels as of 2023, and while its exports have shrunk in recent years due to U.S. sanctions and the poor state of the country’s infrastructure, Trump has vowed to boost it again, though experts say it might take years. If Amber Energy’s purchase of Citgo is approved, Singer’s hedge fund would eventually benefit from an increase in production of Venezuelan oil.
Singer is the founder, president, and co-CEO of Elliott Management as well as an influential GOP donor. Since founding the company in the 1970s, he has accumulated a fortune that Forbes estimates at about $6.7 billion.
In 2024, the billionaire threw his support behind Trump’s candidacy, with federal filings showing that he gave roughly $8 million to various political action committees to help him get elected.
What People Are Saying
Linda Cairnes, the Camden community program coordinator for New Jersey Natural Lands Trust, told NJ Spotlight News about the island in July 2025: “This is a good place to hang out. I’m watching ospreys build a nest, I’m watching eagles fly by, you see deer running by, we see geese trying to cross the road…It’s just amazing watching the wildlife around here.”
She added: “Whatever happens to this island in the long run, we want Camden residents front and center because they’re right here. This is their space, and they deserve this space.”
U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican whom Trump is hoping to unseat this year, wrote on X about Amber Energy’s purchase of Citgo: “Paul Singer, globalist Republican mega-donor who’s already spent [$1 million] to defeat me in the next election, stands to make billions of dollars on his distressed Citgo investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela.”
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who has now taken over the leadership of the country, said in December of Citgo’s forced sale: “We energetically reject the decision adopted in the judicial process.”
President Donald Trump said after Nicolás Maduro’s capture: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”
He added: “We’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be.”
What Happens Next
Citgo’s sale to Amber Energy must be approved by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. It has until the end of May to either approve or reject the auction’s winner.
Technically, if Amber Energy successfully acquires Citgo, the company should then continue the removal of contaminated material on Petty’s Island and eventually hand over the island to New Jersey Natural Lands Trust, which will declare it a nature preserve. The company has until now declined to comment on the issue.
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