Lukoil’s largest oil refinery halts operations after drone attack
The Kstovo oil refinery, Russia’s fourth-largest by capacity, has stopped processing crude oil after a drone strike on July 2 damaged its main distillation unit.
Drone Strike Hits Major Russian Refinery
The Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsinzec oil refinery in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, has halted crude oil processing following a drone attack on July 2. The facility is Russia’s fourth-largest refinery by processing capacity and the country’s second-largest producer of petrol.
The strike damaged the AVT-6 primary crude distillation unit, which accounts for 53% of the plant’s processing capacity. Another unit, AVT-5, responsible for 25% of capacity, had already been damaged in a previous drone attack on June 24.
Since Thursday, the plant has suspended wholesale sales of petrol and diesel fuel on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange. The refinery has an annual capacity of 15 million tonnes of crude oil and produces 5 million tonnes of petrol per year.
Background: On the night of July 1–2, Ukrainian drones damaged the oil refinery in Kstovo, Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.
