Ukrainian battle drones vs. Russian oil refineries
I have recently published an article at Carnegie discussing the wave of attacks by Ukrainian drones at Russian refineries. Today Bloomberg asked me for a comment on the subject, but they could not take more than a few words into print. Well, here is the director's cut.
The attacks have shown that more than half of Russian refining capacity is within attack range of Ukrainian drones. So far, the attacks have been carried by light drones, armed with a few kilograms of explosives. Russian refineries have been designed to withstand traditional aerial bombings by thousand-pound dumb bombs. Drones are not able to destroy a refinery but can damage various units, and under sanctions, it may be difficult and time-consuming to repair the damage. In most cases, it would not shut the attacked refinery down for a long time but may cause throughput reductions and changes in refining slate toward lesser-value products.
It will be a numbers game - if Ukraine attacks refineries with a few dozen drones, most of them would be downed, some of them would cause some damage, some of this damage would take longer time to repair, and the whole affair would be more of a nuisance and inconvenience. If Ukraine manages to sustain the pressure in terms of number of the drones and time, the problems will start to accumulate into something bigger.
In case of successful attacks at several targets, part of the shortage might be alleviated by shipments delivered via the TransNefteProdukt pipeline system. It allows for deliveries from Omsk, Ufa, and Perm refineries, which are out of reach of drone attacks all the way to St. Petersburg, Belgorod on the Ukrainian border, and Novorossijsk. Recently this system has transported up to 1 mbd, mostly diesel for exports. Some of this capacity originates further west, at Volga region refineries.
At the same time, Russia will be deploying air defense measures. Russia has already been successful in preventing an attack at the Yaroslavl refinery by downing a drone with electronic jamming. This type of anti-drone defense can be relatively abundant, but may not work against every kind of drone, while old-school anti-air guns are in shorter supply and need to be allocated amongst various types of potential targets, and refineries may have second priority after Putin's dachas in Valday and on Ladoga lake.