Russian oil depot hit by Ukraine as Kremlin bans fuel exports

The Telegraph:  Russians are feeling the effects of Ukrainian strikes on oil infrastructure “in their pockets” as a depot in the Kursk region became the latest site to be targeted.

Russian officials said that the depot in the region which borders Ukraine exploded after it was hit early on Sunday morning.

“Fire brigades and emergency services are working at the scene of the incident,” said Roman Starovoyt, the regional governor on Sunday morning. He did not specify which oil depot was hit or its size.

The attack is part of a Ukrainian strategy to strike oil and gas facilities across Russia, which the British Ministry of Defence said had forced the Kremlin to ban fuel exports for six months to try to dampen price rises.

“It is likely that Russia’s refining capacity had been temporarily reduced by multiple uncrewed aerial vehicle strikes against refineries across Russia,” it said.

Russia’s fuel export ban, introduced on March 1, follows a similar three-month ban that came into place in mid-September. The ban last year was triggered by Russian farmers who threatened to protest unless the Kremlin brought fuel price rises under control.

Fuel prices in Russia have risen by around 10 per cent this year after drone attacks on oil and gas facilities, including a strike on major chemical export infrastructure near St Petersburg and refineries on the Black Sea and central Russia.

The Kremlin has blamed fuel price rises on market fluctuations but commentators on Russian regional news websites have complained that people are “feeling it in their wallets’” and even Russian energy insiders have linked shortages to attacks on infrastructure and the effect of Western sanctions.

Anastasia Bunina, deputy director of the Gainful oil company, told the Irkutsk news website that the drone attacks were pressuring the industry just as it was trying to cope with the breakdown of an oil refinery at Nizhny Novgorod that usually refines 5 per cent of Russia’s fuel because of a lack of spare parts from the West.

“The second factor is the drone attacks on southern factories,” she said. “Their products were mainly exported, but nevertheless there are certain declines in production.”