Drone Campaign Pushes Russian Gas To $9 A Gallon, When There Is Any

Drone strike on a Russian oil refinery

Noelreports via X/Twitter

Russia is facing gas shortages, as refinery after refinery goes up in flames under a growing onslaught from Ukrainian drones.

Evidence for the problem comes from multiple sources. It is illegal for Russians to share images of drone attacks on social media, but people still post videos of exploding refineries. And we are beginning to hear the first rumblings on Russian social media about the impact the strikes having on everyday life. Putin’s war is coming home, and it will affect everyone.

Price Of War Hits The Pumps

According to Russian official statistics, gas is now at an average of $2.66 per gallon. Nobody believes those statistics, which show a rise of almost 3% in the last month. The real figure for the average is undoubtedly significantly higher, but it is starting to be irrelevant. Because gas is getting harder to find.

According to reports on Russian social media two weeks ago in the Sokolsky District of Nizhny Novgorod a few hundred miles east of Moscow, gas stations had been completely out of gas for several days. Locals were driving to neighboring cities to fill up cars and fuel cans.

Since then the shortages have spread. Visioner, writing on Twitter/X, notes that shortages had spread across ten other areas — Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Samara, Ulyanovsk, Penza, Rostov, Astrakhan, Kalmykia and Tatarstan.

The Institute for the Study of War says that Russian state media starting to discuss gasoline shortages openly, though often playing them down and suggesting routine causes. At the end of July, Russia imposed an export ban on gasoline, supposedly because of demands from “summer travel and grain harvesting” according to Reuters.

The export ban did not work. Fuel queues are growing, and gas is often only available on the black market with prices now reportedly reaching $9 a gallon. Filling up at that price would be painful enough in U.S., and worse in Russia where the median salary is around $1200 a month.

There are still plenty of takers even at that rate. Because, although they may only get a filtered view of the news, Russians can see what is happening to the supply. If they do not buy as much as they can this month, next month the prices will be even higher and finding gas will be harder. Some refineries have not shipped gasoline for weeks, and the problem is spreading.

Burning Down The House

Ukraine has been setting Russian oil facilities ablaze for almost three years. These have included many spectacular and costly strikes on storage tanks and other sites, but the small scale of the attacks means that the refineries have escaped major damage. Where refineries were damaged, they were soon repaired, so while the attacks were costing Russia money, their effects were not felt widely. That is now changing.

In August, a report from the Carnegie Endowment bluntly entitled Can Russia Weather a Fuel Crisis Caused by Ukrainian Drone Attacks? Noted the scale of Russia’s industry. The report noted that all the attacks to that date had only damaged 20% of Russia’s refining capacity. Even if those refineries could not be repaired, Russia has sufficient excess capacity to make up the shortfall. Further damage could also be offset by imports from Belarus.

The Russian government has other options too, including relaxing standards and allowing refineries to sell off-grade products as motor fuel. Put together, these measures show how much slack there is in the system and why hits on refineries have not previously had much effect at the pumps.

But the attacks have stepped up considerably. Analyst Special Kherson Cat counted a total of 13 hits in August on targets with a combined capacity of over 110 million tons.

Writing on Sept 14^th Igor Sushko listed 17 strikes over the previous 45 days affecting 42% of Russia’s total refining capacity. These included high-profile efforts like the one which struck the Novo-Ufa Oil Refinery – 20 million tons capacity – on September 13^th.

On August 29^th, Robert ‘Magyar’ Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s unmanned forces, stated that they had cut Russia’s fuel output by 20% in just two weeks. The damage might be repaired and the interruption might not be permanent. But follow-up strikes will do more damage. And while fuel tanks can easily be replaced, much of the refining equipment is important and may be impossible to replace due to sanctions.

More worryingly for the Russians, as the pace of attacks increases, air defence seems to be getting less effective.

“What Air Defence Doing?”

To hit the Ulfa refinery, Ukrainian AJ-22 Foxbats – converted light aircraft packed with explosives – must have traversed at least 900 miles of Russian airspace before diving into the refinery. This is not a high-speed jet, and it has no stealth capability. But it seems to have been able to get all the way to the target without being challenged.

“What air defence doing?” – a plaintive cry turned into a mocking meme when Ukrainian drones showed they could hit targets at will in occupied Crimea is again key question.

Radiy Khabirov, the regional governor, made a statement about the drone attack on Ulfa, claiming the site was in fact defended and that defenders had fired more than a thousand machine gun rounds (presumably small caliber) and 200 heavy machinegun rounds (presumably 12.7mm/14.5mm caliber) at the attacking drones. So one of the largest oil refineries in Russia is protected by perhaps a couple of infantry squads without a single Igla shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile between them.

Unfortunately for Khabirov, Russia is a vast country and there are many strategic installations to defend. Air defenses have already been depleted by three years of war; moving them to refineries would leave gaping holes elsewhere. Railways, power stations and other sites, as well as air bases and military targets need protecting.

Meanwhile Ukrainian makers Fire Point say that they are producing 100 long-range FP-1 strike drone per day, or 3,000 a month. Expect far more drone attacks going forward.

Smart Russian entrepreneurs will be stockpiling all the gas they can buy ahead of more shortages and price rises. Moscow and St Petersburg will be shielded for the time being; as one commenter put it, Putin will have the rest of the country traveling by donkey and cart before he starts rationing fuel in the capital. For the rest of Russia, the problem is real and getting worse fast.