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Russia’s Largest Oil Refinery Halts Production After Drone Attack, Sources Say

Ukrainian General Staff

Russia's largest oil refinery in the Omsk region of western Siberia has halted operations following a Ukrainian drone attack, two industry sources said on Tuesday.

Monday's strike on the refinery was one of Ukraine's longest-range attacks of the conflict, now well into its fifth year.

The halt in operations at the plant, which is Russia's top producer of gasoline, is likely to exacerbate fuel shortages across the country.

"Facilities at the Omsk oil refinery were damaged as a result of [Monday's] attack. No plant personnel were injured," Anatoly Seryshev, President Vladimir Putin's representative in Siberia, said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Damage assessment is currently underway, and competent services have organized restoration work," Seryshev said, without detailing out how the refinery's operations were impacted.

Gazprom Neft, which owns the refinery, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

According to the sources, a crude distillation unit, CDU-10, which accounts for around 38% of the plant's production capability with a capacity of 24,580 metric tons a day, caught fire and was damaged in the attack.

The Omsk refinery stopped selling gasoline and diesel on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange on Tuesday, according to data from the exchange.

The sources said another primary processing unit, CDU-11, was also taken offline. It accounts for 37% of the plant's capacity and is able to process 24,000 tons of oil per day.

While the unit was not hit, some network links essential to its operation were damaged, the sources said. They said CDU-11, which entered operation in 2023, could resume work in the near future.

The Omsk refinery has two mothballed primary refining units, CDU-7 and CDU-8, with a production capacity of 10,000 tons each. In theory, the plant could restart them.

According to the source-based information, the Omsk oil refinery processed 22 million tons of oil, or around 440,000 barrels per day, in 2024, producing 5 million tons of gasoline and 8 million tons of diesel.

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