Sulphur 421 Nov-Dec 2025
21 November 2025
Fuel exports suspended following drone attacks
Ukraine has mounted several strikes on the Russian Black Sea port of Tuapse, hitting oil infrastructure with airborne and seagoing drones and missiles. Tuapse is a tanker loading terminal, one of two main oil export facilities on Russia’s Black Sea coast, with the capacity to transship around 17 million t/a of oil products. A raid on November 2nd reportedly damaged two tankers, halted fuel exports and refinery operations for days, caused an oil spill and forced tankers to abandon the port. Russia’s national rail company has halted rail shipments to Tuapse port, citing insufficient train car handling capacity.
Ukrainian drones also hit rail infrastructure in the Russian port city Rostov, on the north-eastern shore of the adjacent Sea of Azov. The strikes are part of a coordinated Ukrainian campaign which began in July targeting Russian oil processing and transport capacity, and later expanding to rail infrastructure and power grid nodes, with the official objective of reducing Russian state income from overseas oil sales. Independent estimates of total Russian oil processing capacity lost so far amount to around 20-40% of total national capacity.
