A new drone attack set fires in the southern industrial zone of Volgograd overnight on 13 November, Russian officials said. They say four workers from local companies were killed and two people are in hospital. Russia has waged a full-scale war on Ukraine since February 2022, and its strikes have killed civilians in Ukrainian cities.
The Lukoil-Volgogradneftepererabotka refinery is near the site, but there is no official confirmation that it was hit. Videos from monitoring accounts show a large fire, which they link to the plant's grounds. The refinery is again on the list of likely targets.
The plant is a key asset of Lukoil and the biggest fuel producer in Russia's Southern Federal District. It processes about 14m tonnes of crude a year, or about 280,000 barrels a day. That is around 5% of Russian refining.
An industry publication says the plant has primary distillation, hydrocracking, delayed coking, catalytic reforming and isomerisation of gasoline fractions. It makes more than 60 products, including motor gasoline, diesel, liquefied gases, petroleum coke, bitumen and base oils.
Since the end of October, Ukraine has stepped up long-range strikes on Russia's oil sector. Ukraine is defending itself against the full-scale Russian invasion that began in February 2022. Its targets are refineries, pumping stations, storage depots, terminals and logistics hubs. It has also hit large industrial centres deep inside Russia.
On 10 November, two oil industry sources estimated that Russia's refining capacity had fallen by about 30% since the campaign resumed. In one week, 9 of the 35 biggest Russian refineries were disrupted or had accidents, they said.
The refineries hit since the end of October have a combined rated capacity of about 300,000 tonnes a day. That does not mean this much is lost every day. Russia's total primary refining capacity is about 930,000 tonnes a day, and at the end of October about 700,000 tonnes were actually being processed. A separate estimate from the industry sources says the real drop could reach 200,000 tonnes a day.
The Russian army needs diesel and jet fuel for military transport, armoured vehicles, supplies and aircraft. Shutting one refinery does not leave the army without fuel: Russia has reserves, other refineries and pipelines, and it can shift fuel around. But every outage puts more strain on the rest of the system. Open data does not show how much fuel the army has missed because of the strikes.
There are several ways to cover a shortage, and each has a cost. Fuel can be moved from other regions, but that takes more transport. Reserves are not endless, other refineries can run harder only up to their technical limit, and cutting exports means less income in foreign currency.
Repeated strikes add up. Repairs at refineries depend on imported parts, electronics and control systems, and sanctions make them slower and costlier. Even when one plant is restored, the whole system does not go straight back to how it was.
In the long run, this means higher transport costs, more strain on railways and roads, and harder supply to remote regions and military groups.
On 9 November it became clear that fuel shortages had returned to at least 6 Russian regions. In Karelia, some Rosneft filling stations sell up to 30 litres of petrol and up to 50 litres of diesel per purchase, and have temporarily limited sales in canisters. Local officials say there are also limits in Buryatia, Zabaykalsky Krai, the Nizhny Novgorod, Arkhangelsk and Penza regions, and Krasnoyarsk Krai.