Russian oil refinery runs at 21-year lows after drone attacks, Kpler says

Damage caused by Ukrainian drone strikes has reduced Russia's oil refining volumes to 21-year lows, commodities data and analytics firm Kpler said on Tuesday.

Russian refinery crude runs have fallen to around 3.80 million barrels per day to date, the lowest level in well over two decades.

Refinery downtime and attacked capacity stands at around 4.3 million bpd in July-to-date.

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Kpler expects Russian refinery runs to remain largely subdued through the third quarter, with only a limited recovery, as continued drone strikes and ongoing repairs constrain refinery operations.

It said that since August 2025, at least 25 Russian refineries had been affected by drone strikes, with attacks impacting crude distillation units, secondary processing units — including FCCs, hydrocrackers, catalytic reformers and hydrotreaters — as well as storage tanks, pipelines and other critical logistics infrastructure.

It said the cumulative impact had been a sharp increase in refinery outages. As of mid-July, refinery downtime and attacked capacity stood at around 4.3 million bpd, representing roughly 58 percent of Russia's refining capacity, with an estimated 1.5–2.0 million bpd of processing capacity effectively offline.

Kpler expects runs to recover modestly to around 4.3 million bpd in August as maintenance eases, although continued drone strikes leave risks firmly skewed to the downside.

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