ISW assesses how Ukraine's attacks on refineries affected oil refining in russia

Ukraine's drone attacks on russian refineries and recent floods have reduced weekly russian oil refining to an 11-month low. However, this indicator is still not critical for the russian economy, reports the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

According to military analysts, as of April 2, Ukrainian drone attacks disabled 14% of all oil refining facilities in russia.

In turn, the flood in the Orenburg Oblast on April 7 led to the shutdown of the Orsk oil refinery. At the same time, the Reuters news agency wrote that on April 23, this refinery had already resumed full operation.

Experts note that the reduction of russian oil refining capacity forced russia to import gasoline from Kazakhstan and Belarus in early April to solve the shortage problem and try to prevent the increase in domestic gasoline prices.

"Future strikes by Ukrainian drones may disable the majority of russian oil refining capacities and cause critical restrictions in russian oil refining, which will begin to significantly affect the production of distillates in russia," analysts believe.

At the same time, ISW notes that Ukrainian drone strikes have not yet had a significant impact on russian oil refining or on domestic russian or international supplies of crude oil and distillates.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, during the first week of April 2024, russian oil companies produced the minimum amount of gasoline and diesel fuel.

According to the Bloomberg agency, Ukrainian drone attacks on russian refineries damaged more than 10% of production facilities.

We will remind, according to information from the Western media, in March, the US authorities asked Ukraine to stop attacks on oil refineries in russia.