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Russia says drone attack hasn’t affected Bashneft refinery work
Russian authorities say a fire at the Bashneft PJSC complex, caused by a Ukrainian drone attack, is extinguished and the plant will continue to operate.
Russian authorities say a fire at the Bashneft PJSC complex, caused by a Ukrainian drone attack on Saturday, is extinguished and the plant will continue to operate as usual.
Radiy Khabirov, head of Russia’s Bashkortostan region, said late Saturday on Telegram that a fire at the Bashneft complex caused by the strike was quickly extinguished. The attack hasn’t affected production and the plant will continue to operate as usual, he added.
Ukraine’s military intelligence unit struck Bashneft’s Novoil oil refinery in Ufa, Bashkortostan, on Saturday, according to a person familiar with the operation. Preliminary information shows that a “vacuum column for primary oil refining” was damaged, said the person, who declined to be named because the information isn’t public.
Khabirov said earlier that a drone attacked the Bashneft complex in Ufa, but didn’t say which of the three oil processing facilities had been hit.
According to the Rosneft PJSC website, its Bashneft unit has three oil processing facilities in Ufa — the Novoil, Ufimsky and Ufaneftekhim refineries — with a total processing capacity of 23.5 million tons of oil per year.
The press service for Rosneft didn’t respond to a WhatsApp message seeking comment outside normal business hours.
Ufa is located about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) east of Moscow and about 1,400 kilometers northeast of the front lines in Ukraine. It’s further east than Samara, where Ukraine conducted a series of strikes in late August.
Ukraine has recently intensified attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, including targeting multiple refineries. On Friday, Ukraine claimed to have struck facilities handling almost half of Russia’s seaborne crude exports.
