Russia's fourth-largest oil refinery halts processing after drone attack, Reuters reports

NORSI stops operations

On August 26, a Ukrainian drone attack damaged an unspecified industrial facility in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, local Governor Gleb Nikitin said on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s General Staff later confirmed that the facility was NORSI. It is Russia’s second-largest gasoline producer and fourth-largest oil refinery.

The drone attack damaged:

• several processing units;
• infrastructure between the units;
• general plant facilities.

Sources could not say when the damage would be repaired and oil processing would resume at the refinery.

Drone attacks on oil refineries

All of Lukoil’s major Russian refineries are currently out of operation.

The Perm refinery stopped working after a drone attack on August 21, while the Volgograd refinery stopped on July 31.

NORSI can process about 15 million metric tons of crude oil per year and produce:

• about 5 million tons of gasoline;
• more than 5 million tons of diesel fuel;
• 2 million tons of fuel oil;
• about 500,000 tons of bitumen.

RBC-Ukraine previously reported that on the night of August 26, Ukraine’s Defense Forces struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries, the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod region. Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed that the strike caused a fire at the facility.

It was also reported that as of August 14, Ukrainian drones had attacked nearly one-third of the large oil refineries in Russia.

In addition, Orsknefteorgsintez, one of Russia’s major oil refineries, completely stopped operations following Ukrainian attacks.