Russian Perm refinery fully offline after sustained drone attacks
Severity: WARNING
Detected: 2026-05-13T13:29:58.023Z
Summary
Reuters reports Russia’s Perm refinery has completely halted operations following multiple Ukrainian drone strikes, with repairs potentially lengthy. This compounds earlier damage to Russian refining, tightening diesel/gasoline exports and supporting refined product cracks and crude benchmarks.
Details
Reuters-sourced reporting in item [9] indicates the Perm refinery in Russia has fully stopped operations after a May 7 drone attack, with three primary crude distillation units and some secondary processing units shut. An earlier unit (AVT‑4) was already offline from a prior drone hit on April 30. The language that repair work "may" be required, alongside confirmation of a full shutdown, implies a non-trivial outage duration rather than a brief operational hiccup.
Perm is one of Russia’s significant inland refineries (order of several hundred thousand bpd capacity). Given that a meaningful portion of Russia’s refining capacity has already been degraded by earlier Ukrainian drone strikes this year, another full shutdown at a sizable plant compounds the cumulative impact. Each 100 kbpd of sustained outage can remove roughly 1 million barrels of product per 10-day period. If we assume a 200–300 kbpd effective loss at Perm over even 4–6 weeks, that equates to 6–12 million barrels of gasoline/diesel/other products not reaching domestic or export markets.
The immediate market impact is a bullish bias for European and global diesel and gasoline cracks, and thus for Brent and Urals-linked spreads. Russia has already been trimming diesel exports to manage domestic supply; additional refinery outages heighten the risk of export curbs or informal restrictions, especially into Europe, Africa, and Latin America. This tends to support ICE Gasoil, European gasoline, and regional spreads such as ULSD vs Brent. It also increases the relative value of complex refiners outside Russia that can capture elevated margins.
Historically, extended Russian refinery disruptions (e.g., in early 2024) pushed European diesel and gasoil futures higher by several percent as traders priced in reduced supply. Given that this report confirms a full halt at Perm following multiple attacks, the impact is incremental but material in the context of already tight global diesel balances. The effect is likely to persist as a risk premium for weeks to a few months, depending on repair timelines and any follow-on strikes, rather than a purely one-day headline shock.
AFFECTED ASSETS: Brent Crude, ICE Gasoil Futures, European gasoline cracks, Urals crude differentials, Diesel crack spreads, Russian product export differentials
Sources
- OSINT