Fuel leaked at Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, while NORSI oil refinery caught fire following a drone attack, Russian authorities said on Sunday. Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in the past month in an effort to inflict damage on Russia’s key source of revenue and undercut its military might. The governor of north-western Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, initially said a pipeline was damaged at Primorsk, one of Russia’s main oil-exporting outlets.
He later said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that the pipeline was not damaged, but a fuel reservoir in the port area leaked when it was hit by shrapnel. Primorsk, one of the country’s largest export gateways, which can handle 1 million barrels per day, lost at least 40% of its storage facilities in Ukrainian drone attacks last month, US commercial satellite images seen by Reuters showed on Thursday.