Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on November 14, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
The Saratov oil refinery halted operations on Nov 11 due to Ukrainian drone attacks, potentially impacting Russia's oil supply.
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia's Saratov oil refinery on the Volga river stopped primary oil refining on November 11 following Ukrainian drone attacks, two industry sources told Reuters on Friday.
According to the sources, the plant could remain halted until the end of the month.
Ukraine has ramped up drone attacks deep inside Russia, aiming to knock out oil refineries, depots and pipelines and cripple Moscow's biggest source of funding for the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine's military reported on Tuesday about strikes on the Saratov oil refinery. It said the attacks caused explosions and a large fire in the area around the site.
The plant was also hit on Friday.
The governor of the Saratov region said that drone attacks had damaged civilian infrastructure earlier on Friday.
According to the sources and a video, posted on social media and purporting to show the attacks on the refinery, a large reservoir caught fire at the plant.
Rosneft, which controls the plant, did not reply to a request for comment.
The sources said the crude distillation unit, CDU-6, the plant's single primary processing unit, could be damaged by the strikes. Its nameplate daily capacity stands at around 20,000 metric tons, or 147,000 barrels of oil.
In 2024, the Saratov refinery processed 5.8 million tons of oil, accounting for around 2.2% of Russia's total oil processing. It produced 1.9 million tons of diesel, 1.2 million tons of gasoline and 1 million tons of fuel oil.
(Reporting by Reuters, Editing by Louise Heavens)
An oil refinery is an industrial facility where crude oil is processed and transformed into useful products like gasoline, diesel, and other petrochemicals.
Drone attacks involve the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to strike targets, often used in military contexts to damage infrastructure or disrupt operations.
Drone attacks on oil facilities can lead to significant disruptions in production, affecting supply chains and potentially increasing global oil prices.
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