A Lukoil refinery in the Russian city of Volgograd is on fire after being hit by Ukrainian drones overnight, Andrey Bocharov, governor of the Volgograd region, said on Tuesday.
The Volgograd refinery is Lukoil’s second-biggest crude processing facility in Russia and a key fuel supplier to the southern federal district in the country.
Russia has said it had shot down 13 Ukrainian drones over the Volgograd region on August 19, the Kyiv Independent reports.
The attack on the Volgograd refinery is the latest in a series of at least half a dozen drone strikes at refineries in Russia from Ukraine since the beginning of August.
Hours before the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska last week, Ukraine said it had struck an oil refinery in Russia and a Caspian port that Moscow uses to ship weapons from Iran for the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine said it attacked the Syzran refinery, owned by oil giant Rosneft and located in Russia’s Samara region, about 500 miles from the Ukrainian border with Russia.
The refinery, one of the largest in Rosneft’s network, produces a wide range of fuels and supplies fuel to the Russian army, the Ukrainian army said last Friday.
The Tuesday attack on Lukoil’s Volgograd refinery came hours after talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, where the Ukrainian President was accompanied by the leaders of the most influential European countries, including the UK, France, Germany, and Italy.
Following the talks and renewed prospects of peace in Ukraine, oil prices continued to slide on Tuesday, in anticipation of potential trilateral Trump-Zelenskyy-Putin talks that could result in a peace deal. That would likely also result in the lifting of sanctions on Russian crude, making more of it available on global markets.
Meanwhile, Russia is set to boost its export of crude in the coming weeks, due to attacks on its refineries and halts to oil processing at these.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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