MOSCOW (Reuters) – A fire was extinguished at Volgograd oil refinery in southern Russia on Saturday following a drone attack, local authorities said.
Russia and Ukraine have targeted each other’s energy infrastructure in strikes designed to disrupt supply lines and logistics and to demoralise their opponent as they try to get the edge in a nearly two-year-old conflict that shows no sign of ending.
Russia energy infrastructure has been also hit by technical failures in the past month, adding to uncertainty in global oil and gas markets already rocked by the conflict in the Middle East.
Volgograd governor, Andrey Bocharov, said on the local administration’s Telegram channel that there were no casualties from the incident.
“As a result of the fall of a downed UAV, a fire broke out at the Volgograd Oil Refinery. Fire and rescue forces quickly got to work – the fire was promptly localised, the open burning was eliminated. There are no casualties,” he said.
Oil producer Lukoil, which owns the refinery, has not immediately replied to a request for comment.
Volgograd oil refinery on the Volga River has capacity to process 14.8 million metric tons (almost 300,000 barrels per day) of crude oil per year.
Another Lukoil-owned oil refinery, NORSI, also suffered outages in January. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has said that repairs to the refinery will take at least a month or a month and a half.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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