A fire caused by a Ukrainian drone strike at Russia’s oil refinery in the Black Sea city of Tuapse has forced management to shut down the refinery immediately, two sources familiar with the matter said.

The fire at the refinery, owned by the Rosneft oil company, has been extinguished, Russian state news agency TASS reported today.

Russian air defenses and the Black Sea Fleet destroyed 102 Ukrainian drones and six unmanned vessels overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Rosneft has not commented on the attack.

According to a source, the drones hit the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) unit at the Tuapse refinery, while the crude oil distillation unit (CDU) remained intact.

“There was no black smoke during the fire. This means that only gas (LPG) is being burnt,” said a source.

He added that, from a technical point of view, it is possible to bypass the LPG plant and restart the refinery relatively soon.

The Tuapse refinery had halted oil processing and production following a fire following a drone attack on January 25 and remained closed for about 3 months before resuming operations at the end of April.

The refinery’s annual capacity is 12 million metric tons (240,000 barrels per day). It produces naphtha, fuel oil, gas, vacuum gas oil and high sulfur diesel and supplies fuel mainly to Turkey, China, Malaysia and Singapore.

In 2023, the plant processed 9.378 million tons of crude oil, producing 3.306 million tons of gas oil and 3.123 million tons of fuel oil.