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10 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

Has anyone found a credible estimate of the percentage of refining capacity at which Russia is currently operating?

At one point, I recall that an estimated 20% of refining capacity was impacted, but that was a week or two ago.

Lots of great information about Shadow Fleet tankers full of oil not being able to dock anywhere, and multiple nations scrutinizing the shadow fleet movements after the sanctions were imposed.   With the additional sweet goodness of all those ports transferring oil being hit, do we have any idea about the percentage of normal Kremlin sold oil being reduced?    

They have to be hemorrhaging money and deeply in need of that revenue.  Add to that the fact that they need to actually buy gasoline from other countries now to meet their domestic needs.  Somebody has to be keeping score.

10 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-using-spare-oil-refining-capacity-offset-ukrainian-drone-damage-sources-2025-11-13/

Answering my own question, partly, this article suggest that it’s still not as bad as we had hoped it would be because apparently Russia has other refining capacity that was not being used, and which went online to mitigate the production losses from the September-October attacks.

I have to note that saying “industry sources” is not the depth of information that we should rely on if those industry sources are the Russians. But Reuters…

If true, this does show Russian resilience - for a timeframe anyway.  Albert Spear was a genius and kept Nazi war production going despite night and day bombing at a rate that was truly impressive.   But that was a matter of when, and not if, the war economy would collapse.

But it also occurs to me if they have to start up previously non-producing smaller refineries, they can’t set up decent air defenses everywhere for them. If they can’t stop their largest refineries from getting hit multiple times, the smaller ones in Dogpatch Russia are going to be easy targets over time because they are running out of Pantsirs and S-400s.    And I would bet they are not moving any out of Moscow or St. Petersburg in any event.    

Political priorities versus strategic priorities.

Getting hard data on this is damn near impossible. By definition, 80-90% of the information is coming from Russian sources. The info attributed to Reuters is being parroted by everybody else. Where did Rueter's get the info? My guess is Russia. After reading the article, and half a dozen others, I don't agree with much of what was written

By my count, Ukraine has attacked half (15/30) of Russia's 30 largest refineries since Aug 2025, which means ~ 75% of the capacity was targeted. 13 of those targeted, mentioned specific process units were targeted and/or damaged. The video's of explosions and fires indicate there was significant damage at those facilities. Massive explosions and fires at US refineries are few and far between. The explosions and fires in Russia since August have been massive. I have not seen any factual info on the aftermath of these attacks, but I have a pretty good idea that it is anything but business as usual.

Here are a few photo's of various fires at US refineries, none of which were bombed or hit by missiles:

image.png.62cad978417066db660f44a1bfc915a9.png 

image.png.489cc298d7f946e25db0fff1680d6f3f.png

image.png.5edb19ee2dd8c65d6824698367f58afe.png 

image.png.d0ab4789b85301380086250d1995d927.png

 

I know Russia doesn't have to deal with unions, or OSHA, or personal injury lawyers, but any repairs would take a considerable amount of time, even without the sanctions.  I would have more faith in a Russian commercial airliner than any repairs made to a Russian refinery in the past 2 years.

  Russia's refining capacity was ~ 6,600,000 barrels/day (6.6 MMBPD), and in 2024 had in operating rate of ~ 6 MMBPD in 2024.

Russia's internal demand for petroleum products in 2024 was ~ 4 MBPD, or 67% of the refining output. In the last 2 months, Russian demand has exceeded the output. 

Russia reduced, and then stopped petroleum product exports in the last 2-3 months, and has been rationing gasoline and diesel since then. That is a combination of reduced refining operations, logistics, and internal demand. I'm guessing the internal demand has dropped in the last 2 years, which makes the numbers worse.

But you don't stop one of the few sources of hard currency unless you have to, and Russia stopped exporting refined products. That is not indicative of a drop of 3 or 4%.  And as you are all aware, refined products cost a lot more than the crude oil they are made from.  They would still be running if they could.

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Posted

After reading all of this, it appears that the Russians fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never go in against a Ukrainian when death is on the line’.”

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