Reuters: Russia's Syzran refinery halted operations after Ukraine's Dec. 5 drone attack

Russia's Syzran oil refinery on the Volga River halted oil processing on December 5 after being damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack, two industry sources told Reuters.

On December 5, the Ukrainian military said that it had carried out long-range strikes overnight on an oil refinery in the Russian city of Syzran and the Temryuk port in the Krasnodar region.

The sources said the drones hit the plant's CDU-6 crude distillation unit, which is primary equipment that was also targeted by drones in August and required two weeks of repairs.

One of the sources said that the latest repair work could last for about a month.

Oil refining at the Syzran plant was well below capacity last year at about 90,000 bpd, or 4.3 million metric tons, the sources said.

In 2024, the plant produced 800,000 tons of gasoline, 1.5 million tons of diesel and 700,000 tons of fuel oil.

Recently, Ukraine and Russia have been attacking each other's energy facilities as US-brokered peace talks have failed to progress, mostly due to Putin's demand for territorial concessions from Ukraine, which Zelenskyy rejects. 

The Syzran Refinery, owned by state-controlled Rosneft and operational since 1942, is a critical node in Russia's Volga-Urals refining cluster, processing crude from West Siberian fields and local Samara operations. Located approximately 700 km (430 miles) from the Ukraine border on the Volga River, it supplies fuel to domestic markets in Samara, Saratov, and Penza regions, as well as exports via rail and Caspian Sea routes, per Rosneft.

By Khagan Isayev