Eric McCrady’s company, with no verifiable operating history, carried out a series of legal changes in Colorado —dissolution, reinstatement, name correction, and replacement of its registered agent with a powerful law firm— in the 32 days following the signing of a memorandum of understanding with PDVSA, while its CEO received global media coverage that contrasts with the opacity of its corporate structure.
Redacción: La Tabla/Plataforma de Periodismo de Datos 21 AGO 2026
On May 1, 2026, Crossover Energy, a company registered in Colorado with no known operating presence, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Venezuelan government and its state-owned oil company PDVSA to explore crude oil extraction in the Orinoco Belt. Nine days later, on May 10, its CEO Eric McCrady filed Articles of Dissolution for one of his two companies in the Colorado registry, followed on June 10 by Articles of Reinstatement that erased its tax delinquency status, which it had carried since November 2023.
In parallel, on May 11, he replaced his own name as registered agent with the law firm Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable, Golden & Nelson, P.C., a powerful full-service firm with over 150 attorneys and offices in six states, whose partner Kip Hunter served as general counsel for Sundance Energy —the company that McCrady drove into bankruptcy in 2021 with over $250 million in debt before it was liquidated in 2022. Earlier, on February 27, McCrady had already corrected the name of one of his companies, which had been listed as a real estate firm, to align it with its new energy focus.
All these maneuvers —dissolution, reinstatement, name correction, and agent change— were executed in just 32 days, in a race against time to present a flawless corporate facade to its potential Venezuelan partners.
The corporate legitimization offensive coincided with an unprecedented media deployment. On Tuesday, August 18, in Houston, during the IMAGE conference, McCrady held a press conference to explain that, although Hunt Oil was signing its contracts with PDVSA that same day, Crossover Energy would do so «in the coming days or weeks.» The conference received unusually generous coverage from global media outlets such as Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN Brasil, The Wall Street Journal, and El Universal, which amplified McCrady’s message without delving into the opaque background of his company: a firm with no public website, no verifiable operating history, led by a CEO who had already crashed one oil company and who now, with the assistance of the Trump administration’s National Energy Dominance Council, aims to operate in the Orinoco Belt, where investments exceeding $20 billion are required.