A Ukrainian drone strike has knocked the Lukoil-operated Volgograd refinery offline, halting one of Russia’s largest fuel processing hubs as Ukraine continues with its campaign to take advantage of Moscow’s downstream vulnerability to long-range attacks.
The Thursday attack, confirmed by regional authorities and company sources, ignited fires in the refinery’s main crude distillation unit and hydrocracker, forcing a full suspension of operations pending assessment, according to Reuters.
The CDU-5 unit, which handles roughly 66,700 barrels per day, is responsible for the lion’s share of Volgograd’s 13.7 million-ton annual capacity, representing around 5% of Russia’s total refining throughput.
Located on the Volga River in southern Russia, the facility supplies domestic fuel markets and exports refined products through Black Sea terminals. Local officials reported one fatality and several injuries from falling debris after Ukrainian drones struck both industrial and residential areas across the Volgograd region. The same attack wave disrupted air traffic and sparked multiple fuel-storage fires.
Lukoil has not indicated a restart timeline, while emergency crews continue containment and repair work in a tense security situation.
Kyiv has intensified strikes on Russian oil assets in recent months, arguing that energy infrastructure is both a legitimate military target and an economic lever. Ukrainian officials say these operations have reduced Russian refining output by as much as 17% this year and indirectly lifted Western refinery margins by tightening product supply. That incident follows other recent attacks, including one in which Ukrainian drones set a Russian oil tanker ablaze near a Black Sea port, disrupting fuel flows and highlighting persistent logistical exposure.
The Volgograd outage also coincides with new U.S. sanctions forcing Lukoil to divest global holdings, including assets in Europe and Africa. Sanctions have curtailed the company’s overseas operations and limited access to critical equipment and financial services, making it increasingly difficult to respond to domestic refinery disruptions from a spare capacity perspective.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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