Ukraine's recent drone attacks have knocked out about 600,000 barrels of Russia's daily oil-refining capacity, as estimated by Torbjorn Tornqvist, the director of the international energy commodities trading company Gunvor Group, Bloomberg reported on March 18.
In the past weeks, Ukrainian forces have launched a series of drone strikes aimed at damaging Russia's oil industry. Ukraine has hit oil refineries in multiple regions deep inside the Russian territory.
The strikes increased diesel futures for a fourth straight session while gasoline futures climbed for a sixth, according to Bloomberg.
"It is significant because obviously, this is gonna hit the distillate exports straight away," Tornqvist said in an interview.
"So that will probably take down exports by a couple of hundred thousand barrels, so to me, it's a distillate problem."
Gunvor Group was a major trader in Russian petroleum before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine but withdrew from the trade shortly after the all-out war started in February 2022.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase & Co estimated that the Ukrainian attacks had disabled about 900,000 barrels per day of Russian oil refining capacity, wrote Bloomberg.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) drones have recently successfully attacked 12 oil refineries in Russia, a source told Ukrainska Pravda on March 17.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had described the attacks as an attempt to disrupt the country's pseudo-democratic presidential election, which took place on March 15-17 and expectedly granted Putin the fifth term in office.
Igor Kossov
