Venezuela's PDVSA says oil installations normal, domestic supplies assured

CARACAS, March 5 - Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA said all its installations were operating normally and domestic fuel supplies were guaranteed, following the death on Tuesday of President Hugo Chavez after a two-year battle with cancer.

"The call for calm is aimed at clearing the climate of rumours and political destabilization that enemies of the fatherland are trying to sow in the public opinion," PDVSA said in a statement.

Chavez's death is unlikely to have much immediate impact on the oil industry in the world's 11th largest crude exporter, where oil sales will continue to contribute more than 95 percent of the OPEC nation's hard currency earnings.

An extension of "Chavismo" under his preferred successor, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, should keep important existing projects on track in the Orinoco Belt region, while a change in parties could usher in more foreign capital.

Key operations will likely continue much as they have done, including joint ventures with Chevron and Spain's Repsol in the Orinoco belt adding a small amount to current production of around 3 million barrels per day (bpd).

Venezuela is South America's biggest oil exporter, a top-four supplier to the United States and an increasingly important fuel source for China. In 2011, OPEC said that Venezuela had overtaken Saudi Arabia as the country with the world's biggest crude reserves.

The Orinoco projects are expected to eventually add 2 million bpd of new output via investments of more than $80 billion (52.8 billion pounds).

Likely opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has said he would make some changes to the oil industry, ending some politically motivated oil deals signed during the Chavez years, streamlining PDVSA, which is widely seen as bloated and inefficient, and reviewing all of its joint ventures.

However, these would probably take years and Capriles would not want to endanger production, even in the short term. Neither he nor Maduro are expected to do much quickly about domestic fuel subsidies that have made Venezuela's gasoline the cheapest in the world: it costs less than $2 to fill up an average SUV.

(Reporting by Daniel Wallis and Marianna Parraga; Editing by Toni Reinhold)