Venezuela's oil facilities unscathed in US strike, sources say

Venezuela's state-run oil production and refining were operating normally on Saturday and suffered no damage from a U.S. strike to extract the country's president, two sources with knowledge of the operations of energy company PDVSA said.

U.S. forces captured President Nicolas Maduro, U.S. President Donald Trump said, after months of pressuring him over accusations of drug-running and illegitimacy in power.

The port of La Guaira near Caracas, one of the country's largest but one not used for oil exports, was reported to have suffered severe damage, one of the sources said.

Trump in December announced a blockade of oil tankers entering or leaving the country and the U.S. seized two cargoes of Venezuelan oil.

That lowered the OPEC country's exports last month to about half of the 950,000 barrels per day (bpd) it shipped in November, according to monitoring data and internal documents.

The U.S. measures prompted many vessel owners to divert away from Venezuelan waters, which has rapidly increased PDVSA's inventories of crude and fuel.

PDVSA has been forced to slow down deliveries at ports and store oil on tankers to avoid crude output or refining cut-backs.

PDVSA's administrative system also has not fully recovered from a cyberattack in December that forced it to isolate terminals, oilfields and refineries from its central system and to resort to written records to continue operations.

-Marianna Parraga/Reuters