Ukraine Claims Strike on Saratov Oil Refinery

Ukraine attacked the Saratov crude-oil refinery in Russia’s Volga region overnight as Western nations seek to push President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

Explosions and a fire were registered in the vicinity of the plant, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a Telegram statement on Tuesday, adding that details of the damage are being clarified.

The claim couldn’t be independently verified by Bloomberg. Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft PJSC, which owns the refinery, didn’t respond to a request for comments.

Since last month, Ukrainian military forces have intensified drone attacks on Russian energy facilities, including oil refineries, aiming to curb fuel supplies to the front lines. Last week, drones also hit Russia’s largest Baltic oil terminal in Primorsk and claimed strikes on pumping stations feeding another Baltic hub, the Ust-Luga terminal.

So far this year, Ukrainian forces targeted oil-processing facilities accounting for around half of all Russian refining capacity, according to Bloomberg calculations. Yet the actual amount of fuel-supply disruption is lower than that.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated that since the start of August the strikes took offline about 300,000 barrels a day of Russian refining capacity. That’s more than 5 percent of the nation’s total active oil-processing capacity, according to Bloomberg estimates. The actual supply disruptions may be less than that as refineries often manage to repel the attacks or minimize their impact, carrying out repairs as quickly as possible.

Still, repeated focused strikes on refineries have exacerbated Russia’s seasonal fuel shortage, forcing the government to ban gasoline exports and divert some diesel to the domestic market. Reuters said that, following the recent drone attacks, Russia’s crude-pipeline operator Transneft PJSC has informed the nation’s producers about reducing the volumes of crude it accepts for storage and warned it may reduce oil intake if its infrastructure incurs further damage.

Transneft said in a statement that the report was incorrect in implying that “radical restrictions on the acceptance of oil from producers are possible in the near future.”

So far, Ukraine’s allies have mostly ignored the strikes. While Washington and Brussels haven’t given public support for Ukraine’s attacks, they haven’t criticized either. That’s a shift from when Joe Biden was in the White House and members of his administration would reprimand Kyiv for incursions that affected Russia’s oil industry.

The Group of Seven nations are now working on a new sanctions package against the Kremlin after US President Donald Trump said he’s prepared to impose “major” sanctions on Russian oil buyers, such as India and China, if other NATO nations do the same. But raising tariffs on Asia’s two largest economies would be difficult for the European Union, as many countries in the bloc, including Germany, rely on those export markets. 

The Saratov refinery, located in the Volga region, has a design processing capacity of about 140,000 barrels of crude a day. It’s one of the key suppliers of gasoline and diesel to the European part of Russia, where most of the country’s population lives.