Three Russian refineries partially shut down: intelligence named reasons

Three Russian refineries partially shut down: intelligence named the reasons Sergey Popovich

Three oil refineries in Russia have partially stopped working due to unfinished repairs, complicated by Western sanctions. This could significantly affect the economic situation in Russia.

The reason was a shortage of imported spare parts from countries that imposed sanctions on Russia. This was reported by Channel 24, citing the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.

How sanctions are stopping Russian oil refineries

Three oil refineries in Russia – Volgogradsky, Ilsky and Yaisky – have partially stopped operating due to unfinished scheduled maintenance in October.

The shutdown of these plants will negatively affect domestic oil refining volumes, the fulfillment of export contracts, will create difficulties with fuel supplies to the domestic market and will increase the costs of maintenance and modernization of the plants.

It is expected that during the downtime, oil refining capacities will decrease to 1.8–2 million tons per month.

The reasons for this were limited access to Western equipment and components due to international sanctions, as well as lack of domestic replacements for necessary spare parts.

The Russian import substitution program did not produce significant results. Local manufacturers provide only about 30–45% of the market demand for such components, and only for some of them (pumps, compressors, reactors, etc.)

In addition, Russia's attempts to use Chinese technologies as an alternative have also been unsuccessful, since Chinese equipment is often incompatible with Russian equipment. This means that some components must be replaced entirely, which significantly increases costs.