Second drone strike on Moscow refinery damages units, sparks fires

A second drone attack this week has damaged processing units at Gazprom Neft’s Moscow refinery and sparked multiple fires across the site, industry sources said.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on June 18 in a Telegram post that the region had been targeted in a large-scale drone raid and that several drones fell on the refinery, which was already hit on June 16, forcing a shutdown, Caliber.Az reports via British media.

The refinery, owned by Gazprom Neft, is a key fuel supplier for Moscow.

Sources said Thursday’s (June 18) attack damaged the Euro+ combined oil refining unit, commissioned in 2020 as part of a modernisation programme.

The unit includes a crude distillation section with a nominal capacity of around 140,000 barrels per day — about 47% of the refinery’s total capacity — as well as a catalytic reformer and a diesel hydrotreating unit.

In addition to Euro+, secondary units, inter-unit pipelines and auxiliary equipment were also damaged. Storage tanks containing oil products were hit and caught fire, the sources said.

The refinery had already been undergoing repairs following the June 16 strike, in which one of its two primary crude distillation units, CDU-6, was damaged and set ablaze.

Sources said the plant had planned to restart the Euro+ unit midweek and resume processing oil at around half capacity while repairs continued.

The Moscow refinery is located in the southeastern part of the city and plays a key role in supplying fuel to the capital. It processed 11.6 million metric tons of crude oil in 2024, producing gasoline, diesel and bitumen.

By Aghakazim Guliyev