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Gunvor: Russia has lost 600,000 barrels of daily oil-refining capacity due to drone attacks

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Gunvor: Russia has lost 600,000 barrels of daily oil-refining capacity due to drone attacks
An employee looks out over the illuminated petroleum cracking complex at the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez oil refinery, operated by OAO Lukoil, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, on Dec. 4, 2014. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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.

Ukrainian drones hit one Russian oil refinery after another
Ukraine faces a challenging problem: how to stop a resurgent Moscow in its tracks long enough to rotate the troops, resupply, and fortify. Part of the answer is playing out right now in the skies over Russia. Over the past two weeks, at least dozens of Ukrainian drones reportedly struck
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The Kyiv Independent staff documented what it feels like to live and sleep in Kyiv, Ukraine, as Russia intensifies its drone and missile attacks on the city. Filmed over several weeks in June and July, our journalists take shelter in bathrooms, basements, and parking garages as explosions ring out overhead.

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