The dip in Russian oil production is only temporary, as output is expected to recover once refineries come back online after unscheduled maintenance, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday.
“This is a temporary phenomenon, and, generally, oil production will increase as the refineries resume operations and the situation stabilizes,” Novak said, as carried by Russian news agency TASS.
Amid the ongoing fuel crisis in Russia, authorities have regularly sought to alleviate concerns and talk up the resumption of refinery operations, which have been heavily disrupted by incessant Ukrainian drone attacks.
Fuel supply has improved this week, Novak said at an economic forum in Vladivostok on Thursday, as authorities seek to play down the refinery outages caused by Ukrainian drone strikes.
Russia has been suffering from a gasoline and diesel crunch since the spring, when Ukraine intensified its drone attacks at Russian refineries, aiming to cripple fuel supply to the front lines and to the domestic Russian market.
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As a result, Russia has banned diesel exports – a ban currently enforceable until the end of September – which has further tightened global middle distillate markets.
But oil production has been suffering, too, as attacks have crippled both refinery operations and export capacities with Ukrainian strikes at terminals in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
Following a year of tighter sanctions and Ukrainian attacks on refineries, ports, and tankers, Russia’s crude output has fallen further in the second half of 2026, severely affecting the nation’s crude production outlook, consultancy Rystad Energy said last month.
In light of all these disruptions, Rystad Energy has revised its Russian crude production forecast to average 8.95 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2026, before declining to around 8.6 million bpd in 2027, down by about 90,000 bpd from the previous forecast.
“The increasing frequency and effectiveness of drone attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure is no longer affecting only refineries; it’s constraining the country’s upstream sector as well,” said Daria Melnik, Vice President, Oil & Gas Research at Rystad Energy.
“Every barrel not processed by a refinery must either be exported, placed into storage or removed from production. While Russia was able to absorb that imbalance in June, July demonstrated that its export system cannot consistently handle the additional volumes,” Melnik added.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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