Ukraine hits major oil terminal in southern Russia: Moscow

MOSCOW: Ukrainian drones attacked the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s marine terminal in southern Russia early Monday, damaging part of a mooring point and setting four oil tanks ablaze, Russia’s defense ministry said on Monday.
The Ukrainian army said it had attacked a different terminal in the port of Novorossiysk, without mentioning the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).
The CPC pipeline — which had not commented — handles around one percent of the world’s oil supplies, as well as around 80 percent of Kazakhstan’s exports.
During the night, Ukraine “attacked facilities at the marine transshipment complex in Novorossiysk using fixed-wing attack drones,” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement on Telegram.
“As a result of the Ukrainian drone strikes, the pipeline of a single mooring point, as well as a loading and unloading terminal, were damaged, and four oil product storage tanks caught fire,” the ministry added.
It accused Ukraine of attempting to “destabilize the global hydrocarbon market and cut off oil supplies to European consumers.”
The Russian defense ministry did not provide any immediate visual evidence of the strikes.
Among the CPC’s shareholders are US oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil.
The Ukrainian army said it had struck the Sheskharis oil terminal, a key Russian oil hub in the port of Novorossiysk — where the CPC is also located — but did not mention the CPC itself.
“Direct hits on the target and a large-scale fire on the territory of the terminal were recorded,” it said on Telegram.
Ukraine has targeted the CPC multiple times throughout the four-year war, including a naval drone strike last November that led to a temporary halt in the terminal’s operations.
The US State Department told Ukraine to stop targeting its interests at the port following those attacks last year, according to US media reports.
The attacks have also drawn frustration from Kazakhstan, which transports the bulk of its oil exports through the CPC.
The Ukrainian military says the strikes help drain the energy revenues Moscow uses to fund the war and are a justified response to Moscow’s missile and drone attacks.