A tanker due to take on crude at Novorossiysk turned around and left empty. The reason was a drone alert, one industry source told Reuters, and by then the port had already stopped loading oil altogether.
Reuters reported on Aug. 14, citing three industry sources, that Russia had halted crude exports from the Sheskharis terminal on the Black Sea. The terminal could not take in more oil either, because its storage tanks were full.
Two nights of pressure
The shutdown followed a large Ukrainian drone attack on the port overnight on Aug. 12. Monitoring channels said the strike damaged Sheskharis. Local authorities issued a fresh drone warning on Aug. 14, and work at the terminal stopped.
Sheskharis is Russia’s main oil export facility on the Black Sea, handling around 700,000 barrels per day of crude.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described the Aug. 12 attack as a “unique operation.” Ukrainian forces used Palianytsia jet-powered drones, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles and naval drones, he said, and hit air-defense positions, piers and other port infrastructure.
The human cost was local. Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of Krasnodar Krai, said an 8-year-old boy died in the attack and eight other people were hurt, a child among them.
Strong loadings, now at risk
Novorossiysk hosts a naval base used by the Black Sea Fleet as well as a large commercial port. One of Reuters’ sources put July loadings at nearly 1 million barrels of Russian crude per day. June had come in lower, at about 800,000 barrels per day.
That pace may be hard to hold if Ukrainian strikes keep coming. Zelensky said after the Aug. 12 attack that Kyiv would go on hitting Russian ports, in answer to Russian ballistic missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. “The occupation fleet and all the infrastructure supporting it will not be safe as long as Russian aggression continues,” he said.
No truce at sea
Also on Aug. 14, Moscow turned down Kyiv’s offer of a Black Sea truce, which supporters say could head off a global food crisis. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakaharova called the idea of reviving the 2022-2023 Black Sea grain initiative “ill-advised.”
