Venezuela’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) said it was the target of a cyberattack over the weekend that disrupted export operations, but the company added in a Monday statement that the incident affected only some administrative systems and did not impact operational areas.
An internal memo seen by Bloomberg instructed operational and administrative staff to disconnect from the network and shut down their computers, and three sources told Bloomberg that systems managing the country’s main crude terminal remained offline on Monday.
The outage was also confirmed in a Reuters report citing an inside source who said, “There’s no delivery (of cargoes), all systems are down”.
The cyberattack occurred amid rising tensions between Venezuela and the United States following last week’s seizure by U.S. authorities of a sanctioned oil tanker carrying Venezuelan crude, a move reported by the BBC. PDVSA in its statement blamed the United States and domestic conspirators for orchestrating the attack, calling the action part of an effort to “undermine national stability” and to seize Venezuelan oil; the company has been subject to U.S. sanctions since an Office of Foreign Assets Control action in January 2019.
Venezuela is a major oil producer and exporter and PDVSA oversees production, refining and exports as well as natural gas exploration and production. Public technical details about the attack, including the method used, the identity of the attacker and a restoration timeline, were not provided.