Rosneft’s oil refinery at Ryazan, Russia’s fourth-largest, has suspended crude processing after a Ukrainian drone attack this weekend, industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
The Ryazan refinery, which has been targeted – and hit – by drone strikes all year, has now halted its main crude distillation unit.
“The plant is expected to remain idle until the end of the month. No (oil product) loadings are planned before December 1,” according to one of Reuters’ sources.
Pavel Malkov, the governor of the Ryazan region, on Saturday said on his Telegram channel that debris from downed drones “caused a fire at one of the industry facilities” in the region, without specifying which facility was damaged.
Another crude distillation unit (CDU) at the Ryazan refinery was hit at the end of October, taking 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the plant’s refining capacity offline, or about a quarter of the total capacity of the refinery.
The unit is still undergoing repairs while the other units have also been idled, although it is not clear whether all have sustained damages from Ukrainian drone attacks, the industry sources told Reuters.
The Ryazan refinery operated by oil giant Rosneft is one of the biggest crude processing plants in Russia with a capacity to process more than 260,000 barrels per day of crude—or 5% of Russia’s refining capacity.
Ukraine has intensified attacks on Russia’s oil refineries, depots, and export terminals in an escalation of the war on energy infrastructure, which has also seen Russia targeting Ukraine’s gas producing facilities and gas and power distribution networks as temperatures drop.
The key Russian oil port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea suspended oil exports for a few days, following a major Ukrainian attack on the port early on Friday.
Ukrainian forces have increasingly targeted Russian oil-refining, storage, and export infrastructure using drones and missiles. The campaign has gained intensity in recent months, with the Center for European Policy Analysis noting a shift in strategy “from smaller-scale strikes on storage tanks to targeting hard-to-replace refinery equipment, like cracking units, much of it western-made and subject to sanctions.”
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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