Russian oil product exports from the Black Sea port of Tuapse are set to fall by 59.1% in February to 0.416 million metric tons, from 1.086 million tons scheduled for January, two traders said on Thursday after the city’s oil refinery suffered an outage because of a fire.

Russia has been beset in the past month by a number of refinery outages triggered by fires or suspected drone attacks, prompting authorities to reduce fuel exports to safeguard the domestic market.

Market sources said there are no oil products from Rosneft’s ROSN.MM Tuapse refinery in the loading schedule for February.

The port tranships oil products from the Tuapse refinery, as well as fuel from other Rosneft refineries delivered to the port by rail.

A fire broke out last week at the export-oriented Tuapse refinery, which has an annual capacity of 12 million metric tons (240,000 barrels per day).

It produces naphtha, fuel oil, vacuum gasoil and high-sulphur diesel, supplying fuel mainly to Turkey, China, Malaysia and Singapore.

Oil processing and output were halted at the refinery after the fire.

Rosneft plans to redirect around 100,000 tons of fuel oil from its Achinsk refinery to Tuapse port in February, industry sources said.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Reuters, Editing by David Goodman)