Drones Strike Salavat Oil Refinery in Russia

On the morning of August 13, Ukrainian UAVs struck the Salavat Oil Refinery in Bashkortostan, Russia.

A fire has broken out on the enterprises’ premises. Footage from the site was posted by news outlets, including Exilenova+.

Militarnyi’s OSINT analysis confirmed that the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat facility, located 1,400 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, had been hit.

A drone alert was announced in Bashkortostan prior to the strike. Footage from the scene shows that the Ukrainian Defense Forces used Liutyi drones for the strike.

Later, the region’s governor, Radiy Khabirov, confirmed the UAV attack and stated that ‘debris’ from one of them had fallen in the Salavat industrial zone, causing a fire.

Damaged oil refinery

Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat is one of Russia’s largest oil refining and petrochemical production complexes.

The refinery specializes in the production of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, bitumen, lubricants, polyethylene, ammonia, methanol, and other petrochemical products.

The enterprises’ design capacity is 10 million tons per year, and its actual processing volume for 2022 was 6.8 million tons. The company’s structure includes an oil refinery, a gas chemical plant, and the Monomer factory.

However, the current capacity may be different, as the facility has been attacked by Ukrainian drones on multiple occasions, including on July 14.

The strike damaged the AVT-6 and AVT-4 primary oil refining installations. Each unit has a processing capacity of 6 million and 4 million tons of oil per year, respectively.

The technical overpasses and pipelines that support the operation of the production lines also sustained significant damage.

In addition, significant damage to the roof of the logistics and production building of Shop № 20—where various grades of high-density polyethylene pellets are produced—has been reported.