Russia has completely destroyed Ukraine’s oil refining industry: will consumers be left without heat?

Recently, Russia has intensified its attacks on the Ukrainian energy grid, particularly targeting gas plants that are the basis of the country’s heating system.

This is stated in the Washington Post article.

Although Ukrainian officials claim they have enough gas reserves and experience to survive the winter, they are concerned that Russian attacks could eventually destroy much of the energy infrastructure.

As DTEK CEO Maksym Timchenko said, the Russian Federation strikes targets in Ukraine every day, the only question is which targets are under attack and what is the scale of the damage.

“If the Russians manage to launch 600, 700, 800 drones, then no one can guarantee anything. We should all be worried, but worried wisely. Don’t panic, don’t say it’s going to be bad, don’t be overly optimistic. Just do your job, like we’ve been doing for three winters,” he stressed.

However, the most vulnerable sector of Ukraine’s energy system is its gas infrastructure, believes Viktoria Voytsitska, former secretary of the Verkhovna Rada’s energy committee.

According to her, the difficulty is that the Ukrainian gas system consists of a number of different stages – production, processing, storage and distribution – they are all scattered. And protecting the facilities costs billions of dollars, a lot of human resources and time.

At the same time, Serhiy Koretsky, CEO of Naftogaz, noted that Russian shelling, which began to intensify in February, cut about 42% of daily gas production in two months, and during June and July, “oil refining was completely destroyed.”

Some of the damaged facilities have been restored, but Ukraine is preparing for a new wave of attacks.

“Most likely, (Russia – ed.) will now massively attack energy facilities before the heating season and winter. This is terrorism, pure and clear,” Koretsky summed up.

At the same time, he assured that Ukraine has signed contracts that will cover almost 95% of the country’s gas needs after the launch of Ukraine’s centralized heating system on November 1.

It was previously reported that there is a serious threat of disruption of the heating season in certain regions of Ukraine due to massive Russian shelling of energy infrastructure.

Recall that due to Russia’s attacks on gas production facilities, Ukraine will be forced to increase gas imports from abroad .

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