Venezuela Due Diligence for Investors
Financial diligence tests the numbers. Operational diligence tests whether the numbers can happen.
How Venezuela Field Support serves investors
Venezuela Field Support provides independent operational due diligence for private equity, credit funds, and institutional investors evaluating Venezuelan exposure.
The engagement takes the operating assumptions inside a model — restart timelines, throughput, cost base, counterparty capability, infrastructure availability, logistics, and personnel requirements — and tests the ones that can be tested on the ground. Assets and counterparties are physically verified where the decision warrants it. Findings are documented for an investment committee, with observed facts separated from inference and an explicit statement of what could not be established. Venezuela Field Support does not provide investment, legal, tax, or sanctions advice.
The model’s riskiest inputs are the least diligenced.
A Venezuela investment case typically receives thorough financial, legal, and sanctions diligence. The operational inputs — how long a restart really takes, whether the local operator has the capability it claims, whether the infrastructure supports the throughput assumption, what the cost base actually looks like — are frequently taken from management representations.
Those inputs usually drive more of the return distribution than anything the financial model debates. They are also the ones most easily verified, if someone goes and looks.
- Restart and ramp assumptions against observable condition
- Counterparty capability against physical evidence
- Infrastructure availability against the throughput case
- Logistics assumptions against the actual corridor
- Local sourcing assumptions against what exists
- Personnel and support cost assumptions against conditions
- Ownership and control representations against records and observation
- Operational dependencies that could halt the asset
How investors use Venezuela Field Support
Pre-LOI screening
A fast read on whether the opportunity's operating premise is plausible, before diligence costs are incurred.
Confirmatory operational diligence
Structured verification of the model’s operating assumptions, with physical confirmation of assets and counterparties.
Counterparty validation
Independent verification of the operating partner, contractor, or offtaker the case depends on.
Asset condition observation
Documented observation of the physical asset, its supporting systems, and its access.
Post-close monitoring
Periodic independent verification that reported condition and activity match reality on the ground.
Portfolio support
In-country support, logistics, and life support for a portfolio company operating in Venezuela.
Written for an investment committee
A diligence finding is only useful if it can be defended in a committee and, later, to an LP.
- Every assumption tested is listed, with its verification status
- Observed, inferred, and reported are distinguished throughout
- Field observations are dated and tied to a method
- Photographic evidence is indexed to the assumption it tests
- Items that could not be verified are stated, with the reason
- Nothing is asserted with more confidence than the evidence supports
A typical engagement
Sponsor in confirmatory diligence
- Situation
- A sponsor is in confirmatory diligence on a Venezuelan energy asset. The return case depends on a restart timeline, a local operating partner, and an assumed logistics route.
- Requirement
- Independent verification of the three assumptions the case is most sensitive to, before final approval.
- Potential response
- Sensitivity-led assumption register agreed with the deal team
- Asset and supporting systems observed and photographed
- Operating partner’s premises, equipment, and workforce verified
- Logistics corridor driven and documented
- Ownership and control representations checked against records
- Findings memo with verification status per assumption
- Items routed to the sponsor’s counsel where legal or sanctions questions arose
Venezuela Field Support does not provide investment, legal, tax, sanctions, or export-control advice, and does not make recommendations on whether to invest. It provides operational verification and decision-support findings. Investment, legal, and compliance conclusions rest with the client and its qualified advisers.
Test the assumptions that drive the return.
Tell us which inputs the case is most sensitive to. We will tell you which can be verified on the ground and how.