The Russian government intends to reduce daily diesel exports from key western ports to a five-month low amid regular Ukrainian drone attacks on enemy refineries.
Russia is forced to reduce the export of diesel fuel
As Bloomberg has learned, loading diesel fuel from the country's three main ports on the Black and Baltic seas during April can decrease to approximately 2.29 million tons.
What is essential to understand is that this is just over 569,000 barrels per day, down 21% from the actual daily exports of around 724,000 barrels from these ports in March.
Russia is cutting back on seaborne diesel shipments after weekly oil refining rates fell to a 10-month low due to Ukrainian drone strikes.
In addition, it said that seasonal maintenance, which will last until the summer and temporarily reduce oil processing at some Russian refineries, is also putting pressure on diesel flows in the country.
The diesel export plan for April shows only flows arriving at three key domestic ports via pipeline.
Importantly, it does not include smaller volumes sent to export terminals by rail and outside the pipeline system.
How Russia plans to protect its refineries from Ukrainian drone attacks
According to "ATESH" data, Russia began to actively purchase EW systems for refineries to protect against attacks by Ukrainian drones.
The leading choice fell on mobile complexes of the Shpak type. The Russian army actively uses these EW systems in the war against Ukraine.
It is also essential to understand that EW systems cannot intercept all types of drones.
There is information that some factories already had such systems at the time of the attacks, but they did not help them.
