Strike on Russia's Taneco refinery marks leap in Ukrainian drone radius

A strike on Russia's Taneco refinery marks Ukraine's longest-range drone attack to date, extending the threat to energy infrastructure deeper within Russian territory.

Russia's newest refinery, located over 1,115 km from the Ukrainian border, caught fire April 2, local media reported, becoming the latest target of increasingly ambitious strike attempts.

Previously, the furthest reported target was Novatek's Ust-Luga gas condensate processing plant, situated around 900 km from the Ukrainian border on the Baltic Sea, while the majority of attacks have fallen within a 400-500 km radius.

While Ukrainian commentators had previously estimated a strike range as far as 1,200 km, the attack confirms the capacity of its technology, and places a renewed threat on the nearby Taif refinery, situated just outside the previous confirmed strike range.

According to Russian news outlet RIA Novosti, a fire at Taneco was extinguished after 20 minutes. The extent of any damage to refining operations remains unclear.

The refinery is one of Russia's largest, capable of processing some 324,000 b/d of crude oil, and delivers the majority of its diesel output to the Russian domestic market.

Damage caused by attacks on downstream infrastructure was already threatening to crimp domestic fuel supplies. S&P Global estimates that refineries with a combined nameplate capacity of over 1.6 million b/d nationwide have now been impacted to some degree by Ukrainian strikes, although the exact amount of capacity currently offline is not clear.

Speaking March 29, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that repairs to an FCC unit at the 340,000 b/d Norsi refinery could last up to two months, stunting gasoline production that has been hampered by an outage since Jan. 4.

Separately, Norsi's main primary distillation unit, accounting for over 50% of its capacity, is not expected back until June, while CDUs remain offline at Syzran, Ryazan and other sites.

Moscow has said that supplies have been buoyed by ramp-ups at other refineries, saying that availability of both gasoline and diesel has increased on the St. Petersburg exchange. A ban on gasoline exports remains effective until September, however, as the government has intervened to safeguard supplies ahead of peak demand season.

According to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data, Russia's refined product exports (excluding fuel oil) totaled 1.6 million b/d in March, down from 1.7 million b/d in February and 1.9 million b/d the previous year.

You can now track changes to Russian exports with our interactive global oil flow tracker.