Systematic destruction of russian oil refineries continues with the 13th publicly known effective strike since the beginning of 2024 landing onto the Slavyansk ECO facility in the city of Slavyansk-on-Kuban. Drone attack was reported on Sunday morning, March 17th.
Similarly to the strike a few days prior on the Pervy Zavod refinery in Kaluga Oblast, this one can hardly be called a large plant by modern standards: the capacity of the Slavyansk ECO facility was 3 to 5 million tons (in different sources) of crude oil per year. For comparison, one of the larger enterprises attacked by Ukrainian forces earlier this month was the LLC Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez plant processing 15 million tons of raw resource a year.
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Suspilne media reports with reference to sources in the Ukrainian military, that the drone attack was coordinated by the Security Service, Special Operations Forces, and the newly established Unmanned Systems Forces of Ukraine.
Local russian authorities claim that all the Ukrainian UAVs were shot down, and the fire seen in photos and videos shared on social media is the result of one of the downed drones falling on the territory of the plant, located around 300 km from the Ukrainian border, while the Ukrainian sources state the drones managed to reach the intended target, namely, the fractionating column.
Still, a complete and long-term disabling of such a facility is impossible without destroying all its elements. Nonetheless, even a temporary disruption results in serious financial losses, not to mention the need to pay for repairs of sophisticated refining equipment.
For reference, in just one year of 2022, Slavyansk ECO gained a profit of RUB 162 billion (approx. USD 1.75 billion), generating $130 million of net income. Note, these are official figures for the tax office, while we should also take into account that since 2021, significant funds have been invested in modernization of the plant. According to the 2021–2025 plan the investment amounts to a total of 21 billion rubles ($227 million). The cornerstone of this project was supposed to be a new unit for the production of high-octane gasoline, it was due for introduction in 2024, potentially scaling up the volumes of product by 80%.
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