Russia asks Kazakhstan to supply 100,000 tons of gasoline in case of a shortage

Russia asked Kazakhstan to supply 100,000 tons of gasoline in case of a fuel shortage. Reuters writes about this with reference to three sources. One of the interlocutors reported that the deal had already been agreed upon.

Sources of the publication “Vazhney istorii” see the reason for such a request from the Russian authorities in the fact that the strikes of the Armed Forces disabled more than 15% of Russian oil refining facilities.

“Depending on the extent of the damage, repairs may take considerable time and require significant costs,” the publication quoted an anonymous source in NATO.

In Russia, due to attacks by Ukrainian drones on oil refineries, the weekly production of gasoline and diesel continues to decrease. According to Rosstat data, by the end of March, gasoline production in Russia decreased by 14% year-on-year, and diesel production by seven percent.

Due to the risk of a fuel shortage in the domestic market, Russia has sharply increased its purchases of gasoline from Belarus. If in February Russia imported 590 tons of Belarusian gasoline for February, then in March – already three thousand tons.

The Bloomberg agency wrote that Russia plans to reduce the export of marine diesel fuel to a 5-month minimum.

In March, objects such as the Rosneft Ryazan Refinery and the Lukoil plant in Kstovo in the Nizhny Novgorod Region were attacked. Both are among the top 10 largest refineries in Russia and supply gasoline to Moscow. They have damaged primary oil processing installations; how long the repair will last was not reported. The Slavyansky Refinery in the Krasnodar Territory, the Syzran and Kuibyshevskiy Refineries in the Samara Region were also attacked.

• A total of 15 refineries in 10 regions of Russia were attacked since the beginning of the year. Their total processing capacity is 192 million tons of oil per hour. Officially, Kyiv did not take responsibility for the attacks on Russian oil plants.
• The Financial Times, citing three sources, reported that Washington called on Kyiv to stop attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure. The USA points out that strikes on these objects can lead to an increase in world oil prices and provoke retaliatory measures by Moscow in relation to the energy infrastructure.