Gasoline Shortage In Russia May Become Chronic

Repairs to the drone-affected refineries will stretch until mid-2026.

Russian oil companies will feel the consequences of drone strikes on oil refineries for almost a year, which have affected every third refinery in the country since the beginning of August, experts of the International Energy Agency believe.

The IEA forecasts that oil companies will not be able to resume oil refining in the previous volumes until June 2026. After the UAV raids, which managed to hit more than 20 major refineries in Russia, oil refining volumes fell by about 10%, to 5 million barrels per day, the agency estimates.

This led to disruptions in gasoline supplies, which were first recorded in the Far East and Crimea, and by October covered 57 regions of Russia. "Initially we believed refining volumes would normalize by the end of the year, but we are now sticking to more cautious estimates," Bloomberg quoted the IEA report as saying.

"Ukraine's increasingly large and significant drone campaign against Russian refineries and infrastructure" has deprived oil producers of refining capacity by 500,000 barrels per day, the agency's experts wrote. According to their forecast, refining volumes will increase to 5.4 million barrels per day only in the second half of 2026.

To put out the fire in the fuel market, the authorities imposed a complete ban on the export of gasoline from Russia, relaxed environmental requirements for refineries, quadrupled fuel purchases in Belarus, and zeroed import duties to start supplies from China, South Korea and Singapore.

The domestic market's gasoline deficit in September reached 20% of consumption, a Kommersant source familiar with the supply-demand balance estimated earlier. Due to the shortage of supplies, wholesale gasoline prices have jumped by 40-50% since the beginning of the year and have rewritten historical highs, and then gasoline began to rise sharply in retail.

In September, average prices at gas stations, according to Rosstat, rose by 2.48% - the highest since 2018, while annual growth reached 12.73% and became a record for the last 14 years.

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