Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries have some Russian regions running on empty

Wholesale prices on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange for A-95 gas — the highest octane — spiked to record highs last week, soaring to about 50% higher than in January, as demand soared from farmers seeking to bring in the harvest and Russians hitting the roads for their last big vacation of the summer.Media outlets in the Primorye region, which borders North Korea, reported long lines and prices of about 78 rubles per liter (approximately $3.58 per gallon) at gas stations in the area, where the average monthly wage is about $1,200.

Journalists at local news outlet Primpress found other drivers trying to sell gas online for as much as 220 rubles per liter (about $10.12 per gallon).Ukraine has targeted energy infrastructure before, but the recent strikes have been more successful, with more drones targeting a more concentrated group of facilities.

“The Ukrainians are attacking an arc of refineries, starting from Ryazan, which is south of Moscow, all the way to Volgograd. That region is where people are driving through on their way to (resorts on) the Black Sea. That’s the region where most of the harvest operations are going on. And that’s also a rather densely populated region,” Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told The AssociatedBetween Aug. 2 and Aug. 24, Ukraine attacked oil infrastructure at least 12 times, according to media reports. Of those attacks, at least 10 were targeting sites in the Ryazan-Volgograd arc in southwestern Russia.

These attacks have damaged many oil refineries but have not destroyed them outright, Vakulenko said, adding that most of the facilities are extremely resilient against fires.But they can slow refinery activity, as shown by a fall in the intake of crude oil to be turned into diesel, gasoline or other products by roughly 200,000 to 250,000 barrels per day, said Gary Peach, oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence.

“That’s just enough to make their gasoline industry feel some pain, especially during the high consumption months in the summer,” he told AP. Gasoline production fell 8.6% in the first 19 days of August, compared with a year earlier, and diesel production was