In the last several weeks Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russian energy facilities, trying to affect Moscow’s export capabilities key to its revenue that’s funding its war in Ukraine, and as Kyiv waits on aid from the United States. Russia has been consistently going after key Ukrainian infrastructure, which also often means energy as well.
Most recently Russia hit a Ukrainian underground gas storage site, the latest attack from Russia on Ukrainian facilities, and as Kyiv tries to keep the power on. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said efforts to restore power supplies were underway in several regions, with the toughest trouble in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where about 200,000 people were without power after the attacks. The hits from Russia at one point took out half of the capacity of DTEK, the country’s largest energy producer.
Ukraine has been targeting numerous Russian refineries to try to reduce Moscow’s exports. Russia is still one of the world’s largest sellers of oil and gas – much of which is now going to India, China and other Asian nations – and any major disruption could boost prices worldwide. The United States has gone so far as to try to discourage Ukraine from those attacks, but Kyiv effectively sees this as a substitute for funds being blocked by the Republican-led U.S. Congress for defense.
Most recently, the Rosneft-owned Kuibyshev oil refinery in Russia’s city of Samara halted one of its two primary refining units, cutting off half of its capacity after a drone attack during the weekend, two industry sources told Reuters. Overall, the total of Russian oil refining capacity shut in the first quarter due to Ukrainian drone attacks on at least seven refineries amounts to about 4.6 million tons, or 370,500 barrels per day – about 7% of the country’s total, per Reuters calculations show. That does not include maintenance for other issues.
