It’s Been Burning for Three Days: Russians Can’t Stop the Fire at Novoshakhtinsky Petroleum Plant

Russian emergency services are still unable to extinguish the fire at the Novoshakhtinsky Petroleum Plant in the Rostov region, which was attacked on August 21st, 2025.

The continuation of the fire is evidenced by information from NASA Firms, which last recorded extremely high temperatures at the refinery at 4 a.m. on August 23rd.

On August 21st, the drone strike hit the area where 16 fuel tanks were located.

According to satellite imagery released on August 22nd by AEI Media Communications Director Brady Africk, only two tanks were not affected by the fire, but given the scale of the fire, they may have been destroyed.

As a reminder, during the attack on the refinery, local residents heard about five explosions in the area of the enterprise.

The Novoshakhtinsky Petroleum Plant specializes in the production of fuel oil, diesel fuel and gasoline. The company has a strong infrastructure for refining and transportation of petroleum products.

It has two primary oil refining units, each capable of processing 2.5 million tons of raw materials per year. The bitumen unit, commissioned in 2014, produces 700 thousand tons of bitumen annually.

The plant has tanks with a total volume of 205 thousand cubic meters for product storage: 80 thousand cubic meters for crude oil, 50 thousand cubic meters for light oil products and 75 thousand cubic meters for dark oil products.

Transportation is carried out by the refinery’s own fleet, which includes five river-sea tankers with a total capacity of 1.5 million tons per year, as well as three Aframax tankers for sea transportation.

The plant has its own railroad station, which handles up to 1.7 million tons of cargo per year, and an oil terminal in Rostov-on-Don, which can handle 3.5 million tons of oil products per year.

The total design refining capacity is 7.5 million tons of oil per year.

Novoshakhtinsky Petroleum Plant is the largest supplier of petroleum products in southern Russia. The enterprise is located less than 200 kilometers from the front line in Donbas.