Rosneft’s largest refinery in Ryazan had to completely stop oil processing after a Ukrainian drone attack. The plant was damaged by fire and according to company sources, it will remain out of operation at least until the beginning of December.
Rosneft suspended oil processing at its largest refinery in the city of Ryazan following a Nov. 15 Ukrainian drone attack, three industry sources said. TASR informs about this according to Tuesday’s Reuters report.
- Rosneft has suspended oil processing at the Riazan refinery.
- The cause is a fire caused by a Ukrainian drone.
- According to sources, the plant will remain shut down until December.
- Ukraine intensified attacks on Russian oil plants.
- The refinery stopped selling products on the stock exchange in St. Petersburg.
Debris from the drone caused a fire
“The plant is expected to remain shut down until the end of the month. No production is planned before December 1,” one source said. The governor of the Ryazan region, Pavel Malkov, wrote on the Telegram platform on Saturday morning that “debris from an unmanned aircraft caused a fire in one of the industrial facilities”, but did not provide further information about the plant.
Ukraine has stepped up drone strikes deep in the Russian interior, targeting oil refineries, warehouses and pipelines. This year, it has already hit at least 17 important races. But Russia’s oil refining is set to fall by just 3 percent in 2025 as refiners avoid a sharp drop in fuel production by using spare capacity to compensate for damage caused by the attacks.
The distillation unit was stopped already in October
According to Reuters sources, the fire forced the refinery to shut down its main distillation unit with an annual capacity of over eight million metric tons, which is 48 percent of the plant’s total capacity.
A separate oil distillation unit was already shut down on October 24 after a drone attack, which reduced the refinery’s capacity by 26 percent. Its repairs are still not complete and other units of the plant are also shut down, sources said. It is not clear if this happened as a result of the attacks.
The refinery has suspended the sale of oil products on the St. Petersburg International Trade Exchange since November 15. Reuters sources also say that the refinery processed 13.1 million tons of oil in 2024 – 4.9 percent of the total volume in Russia.
