26 August 2026
Lukoil’s Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery (NORSI) has halted oil refining and petroleum product production due to a fire caused by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attack on August 26, three industry sources told Reuters.
On Wednesday, the region’s governor, Gleb Nikitin, reported a drone attack in the Nizhny Novgorod region that caused damage to an industrial facility, without naming the facility.
According to Reuters sources, the drone attack damaged individual units, inter-plant communications, and utility facilities. Sources were unable to provide a timeline for repairing the drone strike and resuming processing at NORSI.
Taking into account NORSI, Lukoil has shut down all its major oil refineries in Russia, Reuters notes: Permnefteorgsintez (August 21) and the Volgograd Oil Refinery (July 31) previously stopped processing raw materials.
NORSI, the fourth-largest refinery in Russia by oil refining volume and second-largest by gasoline production, has a capacity of over 15 million tons of feedstock per year. The plant is capable of producing approximately 5 million tons of motor gasoline, over 5 million tons of diesel fuel, over 2 million tons of fuel oil, and approximately 0.5 million tons of road bitumen.
Due to the consequences of UAV attacks, NORSI stopped processing on July 2, June 24, May 20, and April 5.
Amid the production shutdown, Lukoil did not offer wholesale quantities of gasoline, diesel fuel, and other petroleum products produced by NORSI for sale on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday.
Good! But more refineries must be made to shut down. All of them!