“An important Russian oil terminal on the Black Sea caught fire overnight following a large-scale attack by Ukrainian drones,” reports The Moscow Times on Monday, April 6. The independent Russian media outlet Astra was the first to report strikes on the Sheskharis terminal near the port of Novorossiisk. According to The Moscow Times, this is “the latest strike to date against infrastructure vital to Moscow’s energy revenues.”
In recent weeks, the Ukrainian army has bombed several “Russian oil terminals located on the coasts of the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea,” as confirmed by The Kyiv Independent. Kiev’s aim is to “reduce the Kremlin’s capacity to export oil and reap exceptional profits from the global surge in oil prices” since the outbreak of the war in Iran. This seems to be working, according to calculations by Bloomberg, which stated that “the continuous drone strikes on oil terminals have caused Russian maritime exports to drop to their lowest level in two months.”
Oil exports plummeted by 43% during the week of March 22-29, falling to 2.318 million barrels per day from 4.072 million barrels per day the previous week. Only 22 oil tankers were chartered during this period, 15 fewer than the previous week.
“Novorossiisk is the largest Russian port on the Black Sea,” reminds Bloomberg, which claims to have consulted NASA satellite images confirming the ongoing fires. “At the beginning of March, Ukrainian drone strikes had already led to the halt of oil shipments there,” the article adds, noting that it was previously targeted in November.
Operated by Transneft, the state monopoly on pipelines, this terminal serves as the endpoint of the Russian pipeline network, handling between 3.5 and 4.5 million tons of crude oil per month – roughly 1 million barrels per day, or up to 20% of Russia’s maritime oil exports.
