Ukrainian drone strikes on oil facilities in Russia continue to hurt production of its largest export, recent figures show.
Since January, attacks on oil facilities across a wide area of Russia have increased in frequency. Ukraine often does not claim direct responsibility for the strikes, which hamper Moscow's war machine and key export revenue generator.
The International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Paris, said the strikes could see 500,000 to 600,000 barrels a day of Russia's crude processing lost in the second quarter of this year—about 10 percent of the country's capacity of 5.2 million barrels a day.
According to Dow Jones, industry reports have indicated that as much as 800,000 barrels a day of processing capacity has been damaged or shut because of the attacks.
The IEA reported that 11 refineries in Russia were said to be damaged from attacks, while others were unsuccessfully targeted.
According to the IEA, closing the refineries after attacks for four to eight weeks for repairs "could mean a significant loss of diesel and naphtha supplies to international markets."
Mykhailo Gonchar, the president of the Centre for Global Studies "Strategy XXI" group, previously told Newsweek that analysis found the average daily oil refining capacity in Rosneft had slumped by a fifth (19 percent) compared with January.
He added that the losses were "significant but not yet fatal" for the country's oil industry.
Gonchar told Newsweek in March: "So far, they have a troublesome character, bring losses, require unforeseen costs for repairs and the war budget does not receive the full revenues. Of course, Russia does not report objective data on the damage caused."
Russia's official weekly refinery output data for March put crude runs at 5 million to 5.2 million barrels a day, higher than the IEA's assessment of 4.6 million barrels a day.
In the first three days of April, Russian refiners produced an average of 5.25 million barrels a day, significantly lower than the 5.78 million barrels of crude processed in the first days of April a year ago, according to an assessment by Bloomberg.
Some of Russia's facilities have been repaired quickly, with only Rosneft PJSC's Tuapse refinery near the Black Sea, which was attacked in January, remaining offline until mid-May, the IEA said.
Other oil sites—including in Ryazan and Pervyy Zavod south of Moscow, the Rostov region near the Ukrainian border, and Nizhny Novgorod and Kirishi, close to St. Petersburg—have also been targeted, forcing Russia's refiners to turn to spare or underused crude-processing units, Bloomberg reported.
"The ineffectiveness of Western sanctions against Russia in the sector of oil and oil products forces Ukraine to strike at Russian oil refining," said Gonchar, who is also the chief editor of the journal Black Sea Security.
He added, "For some reason, it is forgotten that Russia destroyed Ukrainian oil refining and fuel infrastructure with missile and drone strikes back in 2022."
Correction 04/16/24, 03:05 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to clarify that Mykhailo Gonchar's comments were made last month not in April.
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Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
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