Russia's fourth-largest oil refinery shuts down after Ukrainian strike, Reuters reports
Photo: The NORSI oil refinery has suspended operations (Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations)
Russia's NORSI oil refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region, the country's fourth-largest, has halted operations following a Ukrainian drone attack, Reuters reports.
According to two industry sources, the strike damaged the CDU-5 primary refining unit.
Its capacity is 12,000 tons per day, which accounts for approximately a quarter of the refinery's total production capacity.
The sources added that the refinery could use other units to resume operations in the near future. Lukoil, which owns the plant, did not respond to a request for comment.
Exchange and official reaction
The St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX) suspended sales of diesel fuel and gasoline from NORSI starting Wednesday.
Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gleb Nikitin reported on Wednesday that an industrial facility was damaged by drone debris, leaving two people dead. He did not specify the name of the facility.
What is known about the refinery
NORSI is located near Kstovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 450 kilometers east of Moscow.
The facility is capable of processing around 15 million tons of crude oil per year. The refinery's annual output is about 5 million tons of gasoline, over 5 million tons of diesel, 2 million tons of fuel oil, and around 500,000 tons of bitumen.
Ukraine has stated that long-range drone strikes on Russian energy facilities aim to weaken a key source of war funding and bring the conflict closer to home for Russians.
Putin claims that such attacks on civilian infrastructure are designed to sow division among the population.
Due to systematic strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Russian oil refineries, gasoline prices in Russia saw a 20-year record increase within a single week.
Moscow is already asking Kazakhstan for 50,000 tons of gasoline to mitigate the domestic deficit.
