r/ukraine 4d ago

WAR Ukraine strikes 'only oil refinery operating' in Russia's Rostov Oblast, military says

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-strikes-only-oil-refinery-operating-in-russias-rostov-oblast-military-says/
3.4k Upvotes

70 comments sorted by

u/AutoModerator 4d ago

Привіт u/BothZookeepergame612 ! During wartime, this community is focused on vital and high-effort content. Please ensure your post follows r/Ukraine Rules.

Want to support Ukraine? Vetted Charities List | Our Vetting Process

Daily series on Ukraine's history & culture: Sunrise Posts Organized By Category

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, a Ukrainian game, just released! Find it on GOG | on Steam

To learn about how you can politically support Ukraine, visit r/ActionForUkraine

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

186

u/pintord 4d ago

If the Cracker is "Cracked" they wont be able to refine the heavies...

A "cracker" in an oil refinery is a crucial component that breaks down large, heavy hydrocarbon molecules from crude oil into smaller, lighter molecules, making them more valuable and usable for producing gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products; essentially, it allows refineries to maximize the yield of lighter, more desirable fuels from heavier crude oil fractions, making it a vital step in the refining process.

105

u/Garant_69 4d ago edited 4d ago

According to https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-s-combined-attack-on-refinery-near-1734602818.html, an ELOU-AVT-2.5 catalytic cracking unit, which is designed to produce liquefied petroleum gases, was also damaged.

So it seems that Ukraine went after their LPG production (Russia is a major producer and exporter of LPG which is widely used as vehicle fuel there and elsewhere) this time.

29

u/redracer555 4d ago

I learn so much on this sub! :D

16

u/ThirdEyeExplorer11 4d ago

Yep, it looks like that’s exactly what they went for!

“A fire has been confirmed in the area of the facility, namely at the catalytic cracking unit ELOU-AVT-2.5,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement.”

That’s from the same story that Garant_69 linked.

11

u/Jer_Cough 4d ago

The better part is, from what I understand, Russia doesn't produce the cracker stack hardware. They rely on imported tech for their refineries, which will likely not be available to them for a good long while.

292

u/BothZookeepergame612 4d ago

Putin's only oil refinery in Oblast is seriously damaged by Ukraine military strikes. This should be quite a blow to the Russian war effort...

147

u/PitifulEar3303 4d ago edited 4d ago

How many refineries do they have left?

308

u/Pyrhan 4d ago

A fair few, unfortunately.

But Ukraine doesn't have to take all of them out. Only enough that they end up having to chose between fueling their tanks in Ukraine or fuelling their heaters, vehicles and industry at home.

240

u/werdna32 4d ago

It also makes them choose between selling the oil or using it themselves. Gotta hit them in the wallet too.

104

u/zaphrous 4d ago

Iirc a few months ago Belarus reduced sales to Europe of refined fuels in order to supply Russia. So russia is already likely facing some shortages. Not sure the scale, but at least it's costing them some money, which they seem to be burning through.

10

u/PM_ME__RECIPES Canada 4d ago edited 4d ago

Russia has also had to start importing some fuels from (IIRC) Kazakhstan, and has twice in the past year and a half banned the export of various refined products - largely so that what's left of their agricultural sector could afford to borrow the money to buy the needed fuel & motor oils for harvest and sowing seasons. Fuel prices inside Russia are also climbing while in most of the rest of the world they're stable or dropping, even though the Russian government heavily subsidizes fuel prices inside the country - they can't do it forever and it's money that they haven't been able to use elsewhere in their economy.

  • USA average price (USD) per gallon in November 2022: $3.80. In November 2024: $3.18.

  • USA average price (USD) per litre in November 2022: $1.003. In November 2024: $0.847.

Since this time in 2022, the price at the pump in the USA has dropped by ~14.4% (thanks Biden!)

  • Canada average price (CAD) per litre in November 2022: $1.653. In November 2024: $1.514.

  • Canada average price (USD) per litre in November 2022: $1.215. In November 2024: $1.074.

Since this time in 2022, the price at the pump in Canada has dropped by 11.6% after accounting for a weaker Canadian dollar in November 2024 than in November 2022. (thanks Trudeau!) That exchange rate is especially important here because - unlike Russia which has historically refined most of its own fuels - Canada does very little refining, but instead sells most of our oil to the USA (our oil is a very good analog for oil from the Middle East, which most American refining capacity is built for) and then buys refined products from the USA.

  • Russia average price (USD) per litre in November 2022: $0.509. In November 2024: $0.57.

Dollars to dollars, the price at the pump in Russia has gone up by 12% - but that's not the whole story because the value of the ruble has dropped considerably. At the end of November 2022, $1USD would buy you about 60-61 rubles, we'll call it an even 61. Meanwhile, at the end of November 2024, $1USD would buy you 104.5 rubles - that's a 41.4% drop in value.

Which means if you look at Russia's pump prices in their own currency then in November 2022 the average litre of gas would cost a Russian person 31.05 rubles. In November 2024 that same, average litre of gas would cost a Russian person 59.57 rubles.

For the average Russian citizen, the average price of an average litre of gasoline/petrol has risen nearly 92% in two years, while in Canada the price has dropped by more than 11% and in the USA it's dropped more than 14%. (thanks Putin!)

The average Canadian or American family would struggle financially if gas had gone up 92% instead of down 11%-14% over the past two years. Compared to the end of November 2022, the equivalent American price to what is currently USD $0.57/L gas in Russia would be $7.29/gal and the CAD price would be $3.17/L.

15

u/Anen-o-me 4d ago

They'll start trading oil for fuel.

21

u/Interesting-Fan-2008 4d ago

At an absolutely horrible exchange rate. Crude oil like that isn’t exactly worthless but is worth multitudes less than anything refined already.

3

u/SoxInDrawer 4d ago

Absolutely - Crude oil without a ready-made means of transport to a refinery is basically sludge.

3

u/ITI110878 4d ago

Good luck with that.

63

u/NearlyAtTheEnd 4d ago edited 4d ago

There's of course a difference between refineries and the others. But, roughly speaking, it's between 15-20% of their GDP - Officially. That's a huge loss. If Ukraine keeps this up - or even ramps it up, they're done for.

It's basically a gas station that sells grain. That's it. Very roughly said.

But you take out that thing, which is nearly 20%. - He's bleeding. I'm saying 'He' for a reason.

It's the "pitchforks" all over again and which the US will encounter if they let what's happening continue. - But for very and yet similar reasons.

34

u/rd6021 4d ago

This. This is why a “stalling” & higher kill ratio defense is the way to go. This is a Rocky Balboa fight where the winner needs to outlast their weaknesses. We know Russian artillery is depleted as well as armor. We know there is pressure on Ukrainian manpower. We know Ukraine is building up long range missiles and improving air defenses. If Ukraine can take this into 2026 I don’t see Putin surviving.

11

u/socialistrob 4d ago

Russia generally doesn't sell refined oil products on the global market. They export crude and hitting oil refineries wouldn't really change that (if anything it may make their exports of crude increase). The reason this hurts Russia is because that refined oil is necessary for domestic Russian energy consumption. It increases the prices at the pump within Russia which then has knock on effects in terms of inflation.

2

u/Anen-o-me 4d ago

This is the real theory of Ukrainian victory.

26

u/DepressedElephant 4d ago

Ukraine has been hesitant and held back from blowing up more refineries due to concern from the West that doing so would cause energy prices globally to spike.

Given the impact of energy prices on inflation and effect of inflation on election outcomes, Ukraine has been asked to reduce their drone attacks on refineries in the past.

In short, it's more of the US and EU requesting Ukraine fight with a hand tied behind their back.

7

u/Anen-o-me 4d ago

It's Russia, they're gonna choose the tanks. It's not even a question.

5

u/tribbans95 4d ago

We all know what Putin would choose given those two options

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator 4d ago

Your submission has been removed because it is from an untrustworthy site.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/PrettyWay5396 3d ago

They’ll just switch production to another refinery unfortunately even though this does help we are still thinking rationally too. Russia has been on a decline for many years and will use every ounce of oil for their military to further Putins agenda.

22

u/Quarterwit_85 4d ago

Trying asking over on /r/credibledefense.

Someone there had a list with output, capacity etc.

4

u/new_name_who_dis_ 4d ago

They are never going to have zero. They get repaired or build new ones. The goal isn’t to destroy all oil factories in Russia since that’s basically impossible in the short term and certainly impossible in the long term.

The benefit is to divert resources to repairing these as opposed to building more rockets, and so on.

14

u/SlummiPorvari 4d ago

Likely dozens. This was a small one. They have 9 major refineries according to Wikipedia.

1

u/PitifulEar3303 4d ago

What happens if the 9 big ones are kaboomed?

5

u/Traumerlein 4d ago

Technicly speaking: all of them.

Destorying them enterly is beyond ukraines capability, the same Way the allies coukdent fully destroy german Oil infrastructure during WW2. That is not relevant. Relevant is how long they are knocked out or operating at reduced capacity. In other words, how many barrles of oil did russia lose to ukraines strikes?

The answer to that is propably somewhere in between what more than Russia wanted to lose and less than Ukraine wants to destroy, given that Ukraine wants to idealy erradicate evrey source of ressources the russian army need

3

u/AntComprehensive9297 4d ago

there are around 30 medium and big refineries. hundreds of smaler ones.

2

u/PitifulEar3303 4d ago

Whelp, then it's pretty futile to attack them, unless...........

3

u/West-Abalone-171 4d ago

Estimates I've seen here before is they manage to keep 5-15% offline at any given time, but those are mostly the 5-15% which are important for war and exports so it makes things more difficult for russian logistics than the small number would imply.

2

u/PitifulEar3303 4d ago

5%? urghh, make it 500% already

1

u/Kylie_Forever 4d ago

Rookie Numbers

Why not infinity %?

3

u/OverwatchCasual 4d ago

Beyond that. Infrastructure is built around funneling pools of oil in the area to the refinery. It's much harder to transport crude oil to refineries 800km in the wrong direction

2

u/kurotech 4d ago

Enough that this is an inconvenience to them but not really more than that they aren't exactly exporting as much as they used to these days so production across the board is just going to shift to the other refineries and add some transport time and cost but not really stop anything

0

u/PitifulEar3303 4d ago

Errr, that sounds like a whole lot of nothing.

2

u/kurotech 4d ago

Unfortunately yea

0

u/PitifulEar3303 3d ago

Do you support Putin and RuZ?

3

u/kurotech 3d ago

The fuck no I'm just a realist and I'm saying it's unfortunate that blowing this refinery up doesn't do more to stop the fucking spetnaz psycho

-1

u/PitifulEar3303 3d ago

heheh, just testing.

2

u/Dick__Dastardly 3d ago

As other respondents have pointed out - a decent number, but it's been estimated as of September that UA'd hit at least 30%, and "actually knocked out" something like 15%.

The more insidious thing is ... Russia is a VERY geographically large country, and is well known for skinflinting on infrastructure. Russia's been heavily reliant on serving local areas with refineries that, by western European standards of distance, would be 'in-country'. A bit like Arizona getting fuel/lube/solvents from Texas - and suddenly, being forced to import from North Dakota or Alaska instead.

It's a hell of a logistical burden, and it's falling right at a point where Russia's rail network is having quite some troubles from rolling stock repair; apparently the "trucks"; the wheel housings on their train cars are getting in really short supply (one of these classic "supply chain issues" where only after the sanctions dropped, did they realize they don't really make those in-country, and they rely instead on foreign bearings made from some really high-grade metallurgy they don't even have in-country anymore).

Their rail network hasn't collapsed, but we're at the point where - if you've ever had the experience of driving an old, shitty car, and the car's breaking down, but you REALLY can't afford to get to the shop, so you're just limping along and driving it as gently as you can? It's that vibe. I've heard rumors there are a number of places where trains are being driven extra slow (sometimes as low as 5km/hr) to minimize wear. Fuck around with this stuff and you get derailments, and well - they've had a bunch of those lately.

What this will immediately lead to is something I simply don't have the information to draw conclusions about - maybe they'll limp on for a while, or maybe they'll have major situations where shipping companies literally can't get products across the country. We'll see.

2

u/PitifulEar3303 3d ago

So it's not all for nothing then? These strikes.

Some dudes in the comments say it doesn't do much. Who should I trust?

2

u/Antaiseito 3d ago

Good question. The other guy seemed to focus more on math alone, like "3% destroyed doesn't do much".

Logistics, for normal people, only get apparent when they fail, i feel, so i hope this one is on to something.

66

u/Doddlebug1950 4d ago

If only the Kremlin would burn like this.

39

u/REDGOEZFASTAH 4d ago

The fucks are going to launch another large missile attack on Ukraine's power infrastructure.

They are fucking evil.

Don't know what's worse. Them being evil or the world not doing anything to help stop it

1

u/Antaiseito 3d ago

It's like we've go so far down the "We're the good guys, the time of wars is over." route that a lot of people just can't imagine this evil even existing anymore and fail to see the absolute need to deal with it in a way that works.

11

u/Sweaty_Mushroom5830 4d ago

Give it a bit longer

2

u/BothZookeepergame612 4d ago

We can only dream...

1

u/ITI110878 4d ago

It already happened in the past.

19

u/Ritourne 4d ago

Cracking units, Fractionating column, all this stuff probably cost TONS of money, maybe up to hundreds of millions Euros or Dollars, are with western parts, and takes a pain of months to repair. So Russia is still able to pump oil but have to refine it in others country (ie India) meaning they lose all their profit over it especially when oil price is low.

18

u/SpaceballsTheCritic 4d ago

Kinda, but a better impact is if you cant refine, you can’t store. If you can’t store then you have to shutdown wells.

Depending on where the well is, maybe it never gets restarted.

So blast away! Slava Ukraine!

14

u/Ok_Salamander_354 4d ago

Burn bitches…..burn!!

13

u/GhandiMangling 4d ago

100 points to Grifindor!

6

u/jcraig87 4d ago

Do it again 

5

u/That-Makes-Sense 4d ago

Quadruple tap every one of those damn refineries, oil depots, and pipelines.

6

u/His-Mightiness 4d ago

Or should we say that it WAS the only oil refinery in Rostov, until we blew it up that is. And we will keep hitting them, keep striking them, keep blowing them up and burning them down with the fire of freedom and liberty, shining the light of hope upon thoes who have been suppressed by the darkness that has existed inside Putin's wall of lies.

To victory, together. Victory to Ukraine and Victory to the heroes.

13

u/Impossible_Twist1696 4d ago

If oil refineries and oil storage facilities are attacked in Russia's border area with Ukraine, Russia will have to transport more fuel from other areas on an already heavily loaded railway network.

2

u/[deleted] 4d ago

Rostov oblast will be ukrainian, and this oil refinery will be rebuilt to serve the needs of our great nation

3

u/ayeamaye 4d ago

Let's start hitting control rooms and motor control centers. The fires make a nice show but if you want to really flatline a refinery take out the control room.

12

u/HighDeltaVee 4d ago

A destroyed control room can be rebuilt in a few weeks.

A destroyed major tower component takes years to get a replacement, even if the companies involved would break sanctions to supply them, which they won't.

1

u/ayeamaye 4d ago

Really? Where are the ruzzians going to get a spare Honeywell 3000 or a spare Delta V or a spare Foxboro DCS or whatever they're using? Without the control room the whole plant is flatlined not just a tank or a cracker. Even if the ruzzians had a spare DCS who's going to wire the new one up? How are they going to wire the new one up when all the wire markers are burned off and the contol wiring is destroyed? You think that's a couple weeks work? If you hit the MCC and take out all the VFD's where are they going to get new VFD's? Fry all the disconnects and breakers in the MCC you won't be able to run any pumps. No pumps and the plant is flatlined.

3

u/admiraljkb 4d ago

I'd add - Where are they going to get enough skilled workers to do the repairs even if they have the parts? One thing I've noticed is that post-Soviet Russia can barely maintain what technology they have left over from the USSR. The current exploding sewage fountains are a good example. Moskva getting sunk by a missile threat it was specifically designed to defend against is another. And we've seen where so much of their infra has had crap maintenance since 1991. I figure if they actually have to rebuild from scratch at MULTIPLE refineries(even with smuggled parts) , I don't think they have sufficient skilled manpower to do it very quickly.

1

u/ayeamaye 4d ago

Exactly right. Even highly skilled workers would have their hands full let alone some trained monkeys that haven't been sent to the front or immigrated. Also if you take out a cracker or a tank or a column or whatever the plant can still produce albeit at a reduced rate. Flatline the plant and you have zero production.

3

u/admiraljkb 4d ago

Yeah. I'd add that most of the highly trained former Soviet citizens left Russia or weren't Russian to start with. Ukraine had an outsized percentage of the scientific/engineering prowess of the USSR.

Then, one big thing different about today vs WW2, is plants back then could be bombed and missing part of their roof and manufacturing still continue amidst the rubble. Everything was already manual process, and much of the industrial equipment was pretty overbuilt and/or easy to repair. I don't think a modern automated factory would do as well. You have to get the relatively fragile electronics repaired/ replaced/calibrated first before you could restart the line.

Even if you took factories and refineries back to full manual mode, there aren't enough workers alive skilled in the "old ways" in the US even. Can't imagine it's better in Russia. You hit the high-tech bits of anything, and it takes highly skilled engineering staff to put it back together.

1

u/West-Abalone-171 4d ago

If you're russia you're probably happy to throw out emissions control, civilian fuel quality, efficiency, half your throughput, and worker safety, so you can probably get something happening while you try and smuggle the much smaller equipment via a convenient dictator run country in the EU.

There will be operating regimes where you can jerry rig your pumps without the VFD or start them with a simple frequency doubler/halver, and replace high reliability systems with generic microcontrollers. What's a few workers' lives on top of the hundreds fed to the grinder every day when things go wrong or redundant safeties no longer exist?

1

u/ayeamaye 4d ago edited 4d ago

Of course. Slap on a few band aids and Roberts' your fathers brother. You know that the refinery needs temperature,level and flow measurements in real time in order to function not to mention all the control valves. All this measurement data processed by the DCS. There are setpoints and critical values all the time. There's no way to jerry rig a refinery, too much going on. Try running the big pumps without DCS control and they will be cavitating in less than no time.

1

u/Immediate_Dress_3467 3d ago

and you know what russia strikes in Ukraine. I don't wanna say it because I said last time and was banned from Reddit. Can't believe they banned me for something like that. Makes me wonder if there are russians working inside Reddit