Ukrainian drones attacked early on Friday a small privately-owned refinery 40 miles from Moscow’s outskirts, a source at the Ukrainian intelligence services told Reuters.
The refinery in the Kaluga region, which has a capacity to process some 24,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, was damaged, according to a Reuters’ source.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, carried out the attack, a source at the agency confirmed to the Kyiv Independent. The extent of damage is being verified.
Four drones were shot down, Kaluga region’s governor Vladislav Shapsha said, without mentioning an attack on a refinery. There are no injuries or damage to infrastructure, he added.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has intensified drone attacks targeting Russian refineries.
Earlier this week, a fire erupted at an oil refinery in a region southeast of Moscow following a suspected Ukrainian drone attack, ahead of this weekend’s presidential election in Russia, in which Vladimir Putin is running unopposed and sure to win another six-year term in office.
A drone attacked early on Wednesday an oil refinery in the region of Ryazan, whose main city of the same name is some 120 miles southeast of Moscow, the region’s governor Pavel Malkov wrote on Telegram.
A Lukoil refinery in western Russia caught fire after a drone attack on Tuesday. A crude processing unit at the refinery in Nizhny Novgorod is on fire after a drone attack was carried out on Tuesday morning, Gleb Nikitin, governor of Nizhny Novgorod, wrote on his Telegram channel.
A few hours earlier, a drone attack was launched at a fuel and energy facility in the Oryol region. One of the fuel tanks caught fire as a result of the attack, a representative of the local authorities told Russian news agency TASS.
Lower refining capacity in the second quarter, due to refinery maintenance and emergency repairs following the attacks, could be one of the reasons why Russia said it would focus on cuts to oil production instead of exports in its voluntary supply reduction as part of OPEC+ in the second quarter, analysts say.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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