Black Sea oil routes hit
Russia’s Black Sea oil export network has been directly disrupted by recent drone strikes, forcing terminals to pause and then cautiously restart loadings. The port of Novorossiysk partially resumed oil and fuel loadings after a drone attack had suspended operations at the Sheskharis terminal, signaling spotty recovery rather than full normalisation. (reuters.com) Ukrainian drones also struck infrastructure in Russia’s Krasnodar region that is linked to Black Sea oil exports, underlining that the logistics arteries that finance the war remain contested. (kyivpost.com)
Ukraine’s drones did not just hit a refinery this week. They hit the plumbing that moves crude to tankers on the Black Sea, and Russia had to stop loadings at Novorossiysk before bringing some of them back in a limited way. (reuters.com) The stoppage centered on the Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk, where Reuters reported crude loading was suspended after a large drone attack and fire. By April 10, only partial oil and fuel loadings had resumed, which is a repair job, not a return to routine. (reuters.com) Sheskharis matters because it is not a minor pier. Reuters reported the terminal can load about 700,000 barrels of crude a day, making it one of Russia’s biggest export outlets on the Black Sea. (reuters.com) Ukraine’s military said on April 6 that it had struck oil-loading infrastructure at Sheskharis and that a large fire was recorded at the site. Russian regional officials confirmed a mass drone attack on Novorossiysk that same night, though Moscow’s public statements were more cautious about the exact damage. (themoscowtimes.com) Then the strikes moved inland along the same export chain. Kyiv Post reported that drones hit infrastructure in Krasnodar region, including the Krymsk area, where a pumping station feeds oil toward Novorossiysk on the coast. (kyivpost.com) That is the key relationship in this story: Sheskharis is the seaward nozzle where tankers load, and Krymsk is part of the pressure system that keeps oil moving toward that nozzle. Hitting both is like damaging a gas station’s pumps and the road that supplies its fuel trucks in the same week. (kyivpost.com) (reuters.com) Novorossiysk is also bigger than one Russian terminal. The nearby Caspian Pipeline Consortium marine terminal ships crude from Kazakhstan to world markets, and Reuters said Russia claimed a separate April 6 drone attack damaged one of its offshore loading points and storage infrastructure. (usnews.com) (cpc.ru) The Caspian Pipeline Consortium says its pipeline runs more than 1,500 kilometers from western Kazakhstan to the Black Sea, and it is one of the main export arteries for Tengiz crude. Reuters, via U.S. News, said the terminal handles about 1.5 percent of global oil supply, which is why every disruption there gets watched far beyond Russia and Ukraine. (cpc.ru) (usnews.com) So the immediate effect is not that Russian oil exports vanish overnight. The immediate effect is that every berth, buoy, pumping station, and storage tank on this coast now looks more vulnerable, and traders have to price in delays, rerouting, and reduced loading windows. (reuters.com) (usnews.com) Russia got some barrels moving again at Novorossiysk on April 10. The larger message from the week’s strikes is that the Black Sea export system is no longer just a backdrop to the war; it is one of the front lines. (reuters.com) (kyivpost.com)
