Ukraine said it attacked an oil refinery and a gas-processing plant in Russia overnight, as Kyiv intensifies its campaign against the country’s energy infrastructure.
Ukraine’s summer campaign against Russian refineries has pushed the country’s daily oil-processing rates to multiyear lows and strained fuel supplies, with several regions facing shortages and rationing. To support the domestic market, the government in Moscow introduced a temporary ban on most exports of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.
Ukrainian forces on Tuesday attacked the Afipsky oil-processing facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region, close to the border with Ukraine, and the Astrakhan gas-processing plant near the Caspian Sea coast, the General Staff in Kyiv said in a Telegram statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Krasnodar region governor Veniamin Kondratiev said in a Telegram statement that the Afipsky refinery had caught fire after an aerial attack. The attack also damaged a local train station and at least 10 residential buildings in the Afipsky settlement, he said.
The Afipsky refinery, owned by privately held ForteInvest, has a processing capacity of about 180,000 barrels per day. The plant has been attacked several times, most recently in July.
Satellite imagery taken Tuesday by NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System showed several relatively fresh heat anomalies in the Afipsky settlement and at the refinery site, potentially indicating fires.
Ukrainian forces also damaged two gas-separation units at the Astrakhan processing facility, the General Staff said. Bloomberg could not independently verify the statement and Russian gas giant Gazprom PJSC, which owns the plant, did not immediately respond to a Bloomberg request for comments. The Astrakhan plant was last hit in May.
NASA FIRMS satellite imagery taken Tuesday also indicates fresh heat anomalies at the Astrakhan plant. However, similar hotspots have been detected in previous days, meaning the anomalies may be related to operations at the facility.
Separately, the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in the Rostov region halted operations because of damage from a strike, Governor Yuri Slyusar said on Telegram. Ukrainian military officials haven’t yet commented on an attack on Novoshakhtinsk, and the latest NASA FIRMS imagery doesn’t show any heat anomalies at the refinery site.
The Novoshakhtinsk facility, with a design capacity of about 110,000 barrels a day and owned by Russian engineering holding Peton, was last hit in late May.
Russia is experiencing gasoline shortages, while domestic supplies of diesel and jet fuel are sufficient, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said at the weekend. The government has yet to decide whether to extend a ban on diesel exports by producers that is currently in force through the end of August, he said.