Drones Set Russia's Second-Largest Refinery on Fire Again, a Day Before Abu Dhabi Talks

Kirishi has been listed as halted since mid-September. Drones flew about 800 kilometers to hit it again, the sixth Russian refinery struck this month, a day before U.S.-mediated talks open.

A Ukrainian drone struck the grounds of the KINEF refinery at Kirishi, in Russia's Leningrad Oblast, overnight Nov. 8-9 and started a fire that was later contained, Governor Alexander Drozdenko confirmed on Telegram. He had first acknowledged only hits in the town's industrial zone. Drozdenko claimed air defenses downed 113 drones over the region, and a woman died in Vsevolozhsk when drone debris fell on the roof of her apartment building. Ukraine's General Staff has not commented.

The Surgutneftegas plant is Russia's second-largest refinery. It stands about 800 kilometers from the Ukrainian border and can process 20 million metric tons a year, roughly 400,000 barrels a day, according to Reuters. It supplies fuel to St. Petersburg and aviation kerosene to Pulkovo airport, where Russia's aviation agency imposed temporary flight restrictions during the attack.

NASA's FIRMS satellites detected the fire at 4 a.m. Photographs and video point to the ELOU-AVT-6 and ELOU-AVT-2 primary processing units as hit, a preliminary identification by Militarnyi. The operator has not confirmed unit damage.

Kirishi was last struck on Aug. 30. That attack stopped all crude processing, industry sources told Reuters, and the refinery ledger kept by bne IntelliNews has listed the plant as halted since mid-September. By that ledger, the new strike raises the strike count and leaves capacity offline unchanged.

The ledger records six Russian refineries struck so far in November, against seven in all of October, with no plant newly reported halted this month. Up to 45% of Russia's nameplate refining capacity is offline if earlier halts still hold, it estimates. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak put capacity under repair at about 10% in early September.

Rosneft has limited customers in Krasnoyarsk Krai to 30 liters of AI-95 gasoline and 50 liters of AI-92, Kommersant reported Nov. 9. Russia's average gasoline price stood at 98 rubles a liter on Nov. 2, per The Moscow Times.

Ukraine's Air Force counted 317 Russian drones launched the same night, 105 of them jet-powered. Russia's Defense Ministry said it targeted electrical substations in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Vinnytsia regions.

Two days of U.S.-mediated talks open in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Nov. 10. Both delegations arrive after a night in which each side struck the other's energy infrastructure, and whether the Kirishi hit damaged the two processing units still awaits confirmation from Surgutneftegas or Ukraine's General Staff.