Russia's Oil Revenues Plummet By 20%

Revenues collapsed after Ukraine struck the largest oil refineries in the Russian Federation.

The Russian economy lost every fifth dollar of revenue from the sale of hydrocarbons after Ukrainian drone strikes paralyzed the work of the largest refineries.

At the end of March, the export of oil and petroleum products brought Russian oil workers $9.3 billion, the International Energy Agency reported on Friday in its monthly report. Compared to February, oil revenues of the Russian economy collapsed by 20%, or more than $2 billion, although the physical volume of exports increased: it amounted to 7.84 million barrels per day (+3%), according to IEA estimates.

Over the month, crude oil exports increased by 400 thousand barrels per day, and its average price increased by $1.8 to $75 per barrel, but at the same time, sales of petroleum products decreased by 200 thousand barrels daily. This, as the IEA writes, was a consequence of the emergency shutdown of Russian oil refineries, which have been subject to regular attacks by Ukrainian UAVs since the beginning of the year.

According to Reuters estimates, at least 10 factories were damaged by drones between January and March. Among them are the Volgograd oil refinery of Lukoil, where one of the oil refining units caught fire, as well as the Ilsky oil refinery, the Novateka plant in Ust-Luga, the Tuapse oil refinery of Rosneft, the Novoshakhtinsky oil refinery in the Rostov region and the NORSI plant in the Nizhny Novgorod region, part of among the top largest in the country (owned by Lukoil).

On March 13, the largest Rosneft oil refinery in Ryazan, which supplies fuel, in particular, to Moscow and the region, was hit by a UAV. Three days later, due to a UAV attack, the only operating oil refining unit at the Syzran oil refinery caught fire, and on March 23, one of the two oil refining units was shut down by the Rosneft Kuibyshev Oil Refinery.

According to Rosstat, from the beginning of March to April 7, gasoline production in Russia fell by 10.1%, and diesel fuel by 7.6%. Due to the threat of a shortage, the Russian authorities turned to Belarus and Kazakhstan for help: the Kremlin asked the former for 100–150 thousand tons of gasoline per month, and the latter for creating a reserve of 100 thousand tons in case of emergency.