Russian Oil Producers Sells Gasoline Reserves

Fuel production fell after the attacks of Ukrainian UAVs.

Russian oil companies have reduced gasoline production and began to sell off their accumulated reserves after massive attacks by Ukrainian drones on oil refineries, informed sources told Kommersant.

According to them, gasoline production in Russia for the week of March 13–19 fell by 3.9% compared to the previous week and by 5.2% compared to the production plan — to 779,400 tons (111,300 tons per day).

The minimum production volume was noted on March 18 — 104,700 tons per day. This is the first week when the production of gasoline was affected by drone attacks on the Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan and Syzran refineries.

However, despite the decline in production, oil companies increased shipments to the domestic market by 0.3% to 794,200 tons. The difference between output and shipments was closed by the oil workers at the expense of gasoline reserves at refineries and tank farms.

As a result, inventories for the week decreased by 1.5% (25.500 tons). In total, they amount to almost 2 million tons. Thanks to the introduction of a ban on the export of gasoline from March 1, its stocks are still 153,000 tons higher than a year ago.

In March, Ukrainian drones damaged the crude oil distillation unit at Lukoil's Nizhny Novgorod refinery, and also disabled two such units at the Ryazan refinery and one each at the Syzran and Kuibyshev refineries (all owned by Rosneft).

According to Kommersant, oil refining in March amounted to 722.600 tons per day, which is 0.5% less than in February. The Ministry of Energy expects that the decrease in the indicator at some refineries will be compensated by an increase in processing at other refineries. In the meantime, oil companies increased oil exports in March.

At the same time, the cost of gasoline at SPIMEX has been growing for the last two weeks. According to the results of trading on March 22, the exchange quotations of AI-95 in the European part of Russia increased by 0.7% to 66.900 rubles per ton.