Russian refineries increase runs ahead of autumn maintenance: report

Russian refineries have increased their processing in August ahead of the start of September maintenance, Kommersant daily reported.

The increase has been attributed mostly to the return from maintenance of Gazprom's gas condensate processing plants Astrakhan and Surgut.

Astrakhan and Surgut resumed sales of gasoline and diesel on the St. Petersburg exchange at the end of July as their maintenance was drawing to a close. Russia's energy ministry had previously said the two facilities would restart in the third decade of July, which would lead to increased gasoline output and supply on the exchange floor. Astrakhan began maintenance on May 10 and was originally due back by the end of June. Separately, the Surgut gas condensate processing plant underwent staggered maintenance in July.

As a result of the restart of the two facilities, daily throughput in the first half of August rose 2% from July to 760,000 metric tons per day, Kommersant also reported. In August 2023 throughput amounted to 758,000 t/d, it said.

Refineries have been ramping up their processing as a host of plants are set to undergo maintenance in September and October, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data. Those include plants in the refinery hubs of Ufa and Samara, as well as in central and northern Russia and in Siberia.

Meanwhile, the newspaper noted that refineries could not increase runs earlier in the year due to Ukrainian drone attacks and unplanned outages.

Furthermore, railway delays have eased, allowing refineries to increase throughput, the report said.

In July, shipments of oil products rose 0.6% year on year. Overall, 121.5 MMt of oil products have been transported by rail over January-July, down 0.9% year on year, Kommersant reported, citing data from Russian Railways.

Delays along the railways have plagued shipments of oil products since 2022 as Russia redirected its export shipments of not only oil products but also of coal and other goods since the start of the war in Ukraine.

As a result, delays rose to more than 60 days in the direction of the Far East and delivery times in central and southern Russia have doubled to around 20 days from seven to 10 days previously.

Meanwhile, earlier this year oil products were granted a higher priority and moved to group three from group six after delays along the railways had resulted in shortages and subsequently pushed prices higher.

Recently, the priority status of oil product rail shipments was extended until the end of the year, rather than being suspended in September, according to media reports.

Plans were to lower the priority back to group six from Sept. 1 but the decision has been overturned due to authorities' concerns about domestic supply during the peak agricultural demand and ongoing strong gasoline demand.