Venezuela’s supreme court has been asked to rule on whether bond payments due in the next two weeks adding up to more than $3.2bn can be made in local currency rather than the US dollars promised to bondholders, a local news outlet reported on Thursday. Were that to happen, PDVSA, the national oil company that issued the bonds, would be in default, analysts said, tipping the company and its controller, the Venezuelan government, into one of the worst debt crises of recent decades. However, it was not clear whether the possibility of such payment was genuine, or even if the request for information had come from the Venezuelan government or PDVSA. According to the report by news outlet El Estímulo, which includes a facsimile of the request for a ruling, the court has been asked to decide whether a clause in a law governing the central bank, determining that payments due in foreign currencies may also be settled in local currency, applies to bonds issued by PDVSA coming due in 2016 and 2017.