In June–July 2026, petrol production in Russia fell by around one-third compared with the same period last year, according to fuel trading data from the St Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange. This means that Russia is now producing less petrol than it consumes. The country’s fuel crisis is becoming serious: if production continues to decline at the same rate as in June, and consumption remains unchanged, petrol stocks will be exhausted by the autumn. At the same time, not every Ukrainian attack on an oil refinery completely halts production.
How effective have Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian oil refineries been? What share of Russia’s total oil-refining capacity has been destroyed? How sharply have petrol and diesel production fallen in Russia? These frequently asked questions have generated considerable speculation and many false conclusions.
To assess the actual impact of Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, we used publicly available data covering a sufficiently long period to show how the situation has changed over time. The data consist of daily summaries of petroleum product trading on the St Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX), published at the end of each working day.
As a working hypothesis, we assumed that Russian oil refineries fully comply with the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) requirement to sell a fixed share of their output on the St Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange – 15 per cent until 1 July, and 10 per cent thereafter.1 On this basis, the volumes of petrol and diesel sold on the Exchange by each individual refinery should change in proportion to changes in its production. If a refinery is shut down – whether because of Ukrainian strikes or for maintenance, reconfiguration, or scheduled repairs – the Exchange’s data should reflect this.
The second assumption underlying our analysis is that each oil refinery has a stable share of sales at the nearest point of entry to the market, such as a railway loading station or the entrance to a petroleum pipeline.2
Oil refining: a one-third decline
We begin with overall exchange sales volumes. Until mid-March this year, exchange sales of petrol and diesel fluctuated between 90 and 110 per cent of the level recorded in 2025,3 indicating that output of petroleum products remained stable. Significant Ukrainian strikes began in mid-March and immediately reduced petrol sales to around 90 per cent of last year’s level. Diesel sales declined more gradually but had also fallen to around 90 per cent of last year’s level by the end of April. The strikes intensified in May, and by the middle of the month exchange sales of both petrol and diesel had fallen to around 70 per cent of last year’s level. The strikes continued in June, while sales volumes fluctuated between 50 and 70 per cent of the level recorded last year.
These estimates are broadly consistent with Rosstat data showing that oil refining output fell by 10 per cent year-on-year in April and by 15 per cent in May. If our assumptions are valid, oil refining output should have declined by around 35 per cent in June.
How Ukrainian strikes affect individual refineries
The impact of Ukrainian strikes on production varies between refineries. To examine the effects at individual facilities, we looked at refineries for which consistent time series are available, comparing petroleum product sales after they were struck with their average sales volumes over the preceding 20 working days.
Among the refineries closest to Moscow, the Ryazan Refinery has been affected most severely. Following the strike on 15 May, it has not resumed exchange sales, indicating a prolonged shutdown of the facility.
The NORSI refinery in Nizhny Novgorod has been the second most affected. It has been struck several times, although the damage has been less severe. The attacks in early April halted production for two weeks, after which sales resumed at their previous level. On 20 May, the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck the refinery again. This time, production volumes fell by around 20 per cent before recovering two weeks later. The strike on 24 June had only a minimal impact, while the attack on 2 July halted production for one week, after which output began to recover.
Strikes on the Moscow Refinery on 17 May were widely reported in the media as having ‘completely halted refining’, but the shutdown lasted only one week. A second strike on 16 June again interrupted production, this time for two weeks. By the end of the month, however, exchange sales had recovered to around 40 per cent of the baseline level, indicating that one of the refinery’s two crude distillation units had resumed operations.
The strikes on the Yaroslavl Refinery on 26 April interrupted sales for a couple of days, apparently while a fire at the facility was being extinguished. A second strike followed on 6 May, halting production for one week. For the following two weeks, sales volumes remained at around 20 per cent of their normal level. The strikes on 28 June and 6 July reduced sales by no more than 20 per cent, suggesting that the fall in production was minimal.
Among the second group of refineries, in the region of the Volga, the Volgograd Refinery was affected most severely. It suspended production from late May until mid-July. On 16 July, it resumed exchange sales at around 70 per cent of the baseline level, suggesting that a substantial share of its production capacity has been restored. The group of refineries in Samara Oblast4 was also heavily affected, suspending operations on three separate occasions.
The TANECO refinery in Tatarstan was struck once, on 12 June. Production subsequently fell to around 20 per cent of the baseline level, then recovered briefly before falling again to around 50 per cent of the baseline. This was clearly unrelated to the strikes on Nizhnekamsk on 8 July, which are likely to have affected the neighbouring TAIF-NK refinery instead.
The group of refineries in the Urals and Siberia has been affected least. The most significant Ukrainian strikes on them targeted the Perm Refinery on 30 April and 7 May, halting production for two weeks. The shutdown at the Omsk Refinery was short-lived, while the strikes on the Ufa refineries had only a limited impact, reducing production by around 20 per cent.
What is the overall picture?
By the end of June, exchange sales of petrol had fallen by around one-quarter compared with June of last year, while diesel sales had declined even more sharply, by almost one-third.
In 2024, Russia’s petrol production amounted to 41.1 million tonnes, equivalent to 108 per cent of domestic consumption. Diesel production reached 81.6 million tonnes, or 160 per cent of domestic consumption.5 A 25 per cent decline in petrol production since mid-May 2026 means that current domestic consumption now exceeds production. It is therefore unsurprising that, by the end of May, the Russian authorities had begun to discuss the need to start importing petrol. According to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s petrol stocks amount to 1.7 million tonnes, which is less than 10 per cent of the country’s petrol consumption over six months. If petrol production remains at the reduced level recorded in June, while domestic consumption stays unchanged, these stocks will be exhausted by the autumn.
The situation with diesel is somewhat better. Even with production down by around one-third relative to last year, Russian refineries are still producing more diesel than the country consumes, although the surplus has narrowed to just 5–7 per cent. In these circumstances, the ban on diesel exports introduced in Russia on 1 July appears entirely understandable. The shift from a large surplus to a near balance between supply and demand is forcing businesses to seriously reconsider the logistics of domestic fuel distribution, a process which is never quick or straightforward.
Endnotes
- Our dataset ends on 13 July this year, and it is not yet sufficient to determine the effect of the reduction in the exchange sales requirement on trading volumes. ↩︎
- For the purposes of our analysis, we disregarded the fact that each refinery holds some stocks of finished products that could be used to maintain exchange sales volumes. Such stocks are relatively small and could only sustain sales for a very short period. ↩︎
- For comparison, we matched equivalent weekdays rather than calendar dates. For example, we did not compare 19 January 2026 with 19 January 2025. Instead, we compared the Mondays of the second full week after the holiday period in each year. ↩︎
- The Kuibyshev, Novokuibyshevsk, and Syzran refineries. ↩︎
- In December last year, Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev stated that oil refinery output in 2025 would remain at the previous year’s level, a claim consistent with Rosstat’s data. ↩︎
