President Maduro’s appeal to oil-rich nations Sunday laid bare just how isolated he has become, a Latin American oil expert says, before describing Venezuela as “broke” and drowning in $150 billion of debt.

The Venezuelan dictator’s plea came in a letter in which he appealed to OPEC for support, claiming that U.S. “direct aggression” was undermining Venezuela’s energy sector and threatening global oil stability.

In a letter to OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais and published by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil, Maduro wrote, “I hope to count on your best efforts to help stop this aggression, which is growing stronger and seriously threatens the balance of the international energy market, both for producing and consuming countries.”

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“OPEC is unlikely to get involved,” Francisco J. Monaldi, Latin American Energy Policy Director, told Fox News Digital.

“Saudi Arabia is the key player, and they will not want to confront the Trump Administration. But more importantly, they never get involved in this kind of conflict,” he added.

In his plea, Maduro argued that U.S. actions were designed to “destabilize” Venezuela and urged oil-producing nations to show solidarity.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on Venezuela targeting government officials, state-run industries like oil and mining, and financial transactions in response to concerns over corruption, trafficking and human-rights abuses.

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His request followed President Trump’s order to close U.S. airspace over Venezuela, a move that tightened Washington’s pressure campaign and further restricted the regime’s ability to carry out international business.

Yet Monaldi stressed that Maduro knows his appeal was only symbolic and had “framed” the situation to suit his own narrative over oil.

“Maduro knows perfectly well that he is not going to get the reaction that he would want, but is framing the conflict as a conflict about oil,” he argued.

“Venezuela could once again become a major oil producer and produce about 4 million barrels a day in less than a decade, significantly quadrupling their current output.

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“The country could increase production if the oil sector is opened fully to private foreign investment, and that requires regime change.

Four million barrels of oil per day will be the equivalent of about $90 billion per year in revenues, which is similar to what Venezuela received in the best of times.

The income could allow Venezuela to pay the debt back and recover swiftly, micro, economically, although it will take years to get to that figure.”

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“Now Venezuela is a country that is broke and has $150 billion of debt,” he said.

Tensions escalated further this week after a call between President Trump and Maduro, in which Trump said the Venezuelan leader should step down and leave the country, a direct push toward political transition.

“A regime change is something that the U.S., if they can achieve it, would consider a positive outcome,” Monaldi said.

But he emphasized that Washington’s goals extend beyond energy. Venezuela, he said, has endured years of mismanagement and instability, making it not necessarily a safe bet.

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The broader U.S. priority, he added, is maintaining the Western Hemisphere.

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“The U.S. has priorities to preserve the Western Hemisphere as a region in which geopolitical rivals are not strong,” Monaldi said.

“The U.S. wants to reduce crime and drug trafficking in the region and the negative effects that Venezuela has had, you know, that have impacted the rest of the Latin American region,” he added.

A member of Honduras’s election council has accused one of her colleagues of seeking to derail proceedings as the Central American country awaits the outcome of Sunday’s presidential election.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Cossette Lopez-Osorio of the National Electoral Council (CNE) alleged that her fellow panel member, Marlon Ochoa, sought to delay a news conference through “intimidation”.

“The press conference to mark the resumption of the results release was disrupted,” Lopez-Osorio wrote.

“Councillor Marlon Ochoa opposed restarting the process and sent members of the LIBRE party, as well as members of his staff, to storm the Hotel Plaza Juan Carlos, engaging in acts of intimidation to prevent the public appearance.”

The accusations escalate the already heated atmosphere surrounding Sunday’s race.

Currently, two candidates are in a dead heat as votes continue to be counted: Salvador Nasralla of the centre-right Liberal Party and Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the right-wing National Party.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Nasralla had inched ahead with more than 39.93 percent of the vote, with Asfura close behind at 39.86 percent.

A former frontrunner in the race, Rixi Moncada of the left-leaning LIBRE party, had fallen behind in early vote counts. According to the CNE, approximately 20 percent of the votes have yet to be tallied.

Infighting on the council

But even before the first ballots were cast in Sunday’s election, controversies had gripped the council, resulting in accusations of malpractice from all three leading parties.

The CNE is led by a three-person panel. Each CNE councillor is selected by Honduras’s legislature to represent the three main political parties: the Liberal Party, the National Party and LIBRE, the party of outgoing President Xiomara Castro.

Lopez-Osorio represents the National Party. She has had a tumultuous relationship with her LIBRE counterpart, Ochoa.

In October, Ochoa filed a complaint with federal prosecutors, alleging that Lopez-Osorio had been caught in audio recordings conspiring with the Honduran military to influence the results.

Lopez-Osorio has denied the allegations. “These are fabricated recordings,” she told the Honduran newspaper La Prensa, calling Ochoa’s complaint “outrageous”.

Attorney General Johel Zelaya nevertheless opened an investigation into the audio recordings on October 29.

Ochoa, meanwhile, continued to raise doubts about the election proceedings as the November 30 vote drew near.

On November 9, for instance, he posted on social media that a test of the voting system had “failed”, citing connectivity issues.

That result, he said, “constitutes further proof that the leaked audios are true and that there is a conspiracy against the electoral process, orchestrated from within the electoral body itself”.

The CNE has faced other high-profile conflicts as well. Also in October, the head of Honduras’s joint chiefs of staff, Roosevelt Hernandez, said the armed forces would seek to hold its own vote count.

But the president of the CNE, Liberal Party member Ana Paola Hall, rejected his demand, and legal experts have said there is no constitutional basis for the Honduran military to review the results.

Trouble at the ballot box

Fears of irregularities and electoral interference have long loomed over Honduras’s presidential race.

In March, for example, advocates argued that long lines and delays in the distribution of election material impeded voters from participating in the election. Some polling stations stayed open late into the night as a result of the delays.

This week’s vote count also stuttered amid government website crashes. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Lopez-Osorio addressed some of the “technical failures” and “transmission issues” that have marred the proceedings.

She denied that the hiccups were part of any kind of conspiracy. “It is literally a technical failure in the disclosure platform,” she told CNN host Fernando del Rincon.

Lopez-Osorio explained that the CNE was “searching for explanations” and had been in contact with the company in charge of the technology, ASD SAS. The vote count, she added, would continue.

“We have very narrow margins, and we also have a large proportion of ballots to process in these remaining days,” she said.

A statement published on the CNE website echoed her comments. “The CNE has demanded that ASD SAS provide the fastest possible technical solution, so that all citizens have full and permanent access to the statistical data,” it read in part.

Still, those comments are unlikely to dampen efforts to contest the election results in the coming days.

Already, United States President Donald Trump — supporter of the right-wing Asfura — has amplified election fraud claims with posts on his online platform Truth Social.

“Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!” Trump wrote on Monday.

Moncada, the left-wing candidate, also appears poised to challenge the results. In a statement this week, she denounced Trump for his “imperial foreign interference” in the election process. She also called the initial election results proof that October’s audio leak was authentic.

“The elections are not lost,” she wrote. “The two-party system imposed its electoral plot on us, following the trap revealed by the 26 audio recordings.”

She added, “I declare that I will maintain my positions and that I will not surrender.”

For her part, Lopez-Osorio also called on the electorate to be vigilant, ending her post about her colleague Ochoa with the message: Stay “alert, Honduran people”.