Gazprom Neft's Moscow Refinery Halts After Drone Strike, Pushing AI-95 Petrol to 95 Roubles
The Moscow Oil Refinery supplies up to 40% of the capital's petrol; its halt extends a campaign that has already forced Russia to import gasoline from Asia.
The Moscow Oil Refinery, operated by Gazprom Neft, has halted operations following a Ukrainian drone attack, Reuters reported, taking offline a plant that processes roughly 230,000 barrels of crude per day and supplies up to 40% of the Russian capital's petrol and a significant share of the region's diesel.4,1
The shutdown is not an isolated strike. Industry sources told Reuters that Gazprom Neft's Omsk refinery, a 440,000-barrel-per-day facility, also halted operations after a separate drone strike damaged key processing units. Russia, a major fuel exporter under normal conditions, has been forced to import gasoline from Asia to prevent shortages at domestic filling stations, a reversal confirmed by reporting that followed the first round of Moscow strikes.5,3
The damage to the Moscow plant spans several processing units struck in overlapping attacks. Reuters reported that the Euro+ unit, handling about 140,000 barrels per day and roughly 47% of the refinery's total throughput, was struck in a second attack within a week of an earlier hit on CDU-6, which handles around 53% of the plant's capacity. Industry sources also confirmed a strike on CDU-10, which accounts for approximately 38% of processing capacity.4,5
The cumulative damage has already reached the pump. Neftmagistral, a Moscow fuel retailer, raised the price of AI-95 petrol by around 19% in a single week, from approximately 80 to 95 roubles per litre, according to reports from the period following the strikes. Given the refinery's share of local supply, retail prices had limited room to absorb the shortfall before moving.4
Ukraine resumed long-range attacks on Russian refining infrastructure on September 7 (2026-09-07), with Kyiv's military claiming strikes on oil-processing plants in Russia's Perm region and Tatarstan. Kyiv said the operations followed visits by US envoys to Moscow that same weekend.7
The initial Moscow attacks were preceded by a record drone assault on the capital. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin confirmed that 194 drones were downed over the city in a single overnight operation that also forced the suspension of flights at Moscow airports. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy separately confirmed the strikes.1,2
The targeting approach has grown more precise. Nikhil Dubey, a senior research analyst at Kpler, said some drones appeared to have been directed at hydrocracker units, components that process heavier crude fractions and are harder to replace or bypass through imported semi-finished products.3
ICE Brent crude front-month was at $101.44 a barrel as of 07:46 UTC on Tuesday (2026-09-22), down 0.68% in that session, with NYMEX heating oil front-month at $4.88 per gallon. The crude market's response has been modest. Russia's crude export capacity, not its domestic refining throughput, is what most directly drives international benchmark pricing — and export flows have not been confirmed as affected. The disruption is falling on Russia's domestic fuel market, not on global crude supply.4
With attacks reaching plants in Tatarstan and the Perm region on September 7 (2026-09-07), Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to threaten refining infrastructure across a wide stretch of Russia's interior. NORSI, Russia's second-largest gasoline producer with around 320,000 barrels per day of capacity, lies within the operational range Ukraine has now shown it can cover, according to data published by The Independent. Russia's fuel imports from Asia have served as the main buffer so far. Whether repair capacity can keep pace with the frequency of strikes on multiple facilities simultaneously is the unresolved variable for Russian domestic fuel supply through autumn.6,7