Petrol rationing is back across Russia after the peak of the Ukraine-caused fuel crisis seemed to have passed, and this time a governor has admitted his region's refinery will be out of action for six months.

Ukrainian drones struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat refining complex in Bashkortostan on August 13, the second hit on the plant in a month. The same day, the governor of the Orenburg region said the Orsk refinery, attacked overnight on the same day, had shut down completely.

This is a second stage to Russia's fuel crisis since the start of summer, with queues and sales limits back in at least 18 regions and nationwide fuel availability down from 44% to 34% in a week, The Bell reported on August 13.

The first wave, in late June, was worse on paper - 80 regions affected - but it was also treatable. Refineries came back, limits were eased by the end of July, and the official line held that the market was stabilising. What is different now is that the damage is starting to look permanent, or at least Ukraine has had a bit of luck: sanctioned equipment cannot be replaced, an entire region is being written off for the winter, and the businesses at the bottom of the fuel chain have begun to fail rather than merely lose money.

Six months, not six weeks

As IntelliNews has reported, in the drones vs missiles fight between Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine’s drones are simply not powerful enough to destroy a refinery completely, whereas Russia’s missiles are. However, thanks to heavy investment and innovation, Ukraine has improved their accuracy of its long-distance drones and is increasingly targeting the most sensitive equipment.

Bashkortostan's head, Radiy Khabirov, said on Telegram that drone debris had fallen in the Salavat industrial zone and started a fire, without specifying what had been damaged. Sixteen drones were downed over Salavat and five over the Chishminsky district, and two people were injured, The Moscow Times reported. The complex has a design capacity of about 200,000 barrels a day, roughly 2.7% of Russia's total, and a Wildberries logistics hub in the same region was struck in the same wave.

The Orsk plant, Orsknefteorgsintez, runs at about 120,000 b/d. Orenburg governor Yevgeny Solntsev said shrapnel had wrecked key infrastructure that cannot be quickly replaced because of Western sanctions on imported equipment.

"The situation there is difficult [...] We are preparing for the worst-case scenario," he wrote, putting repairs at up to six months.

Russian officials almost never put a timeline on a damaged plant. Solntsev's was a rare exception, and the number he chose means the Orenburg region goes into winter with no refining capacity of its own and fuel trucked in from outside. It is also, awkwardly, the same region that imposed a 30-litre petrol cap on its drivers the day before.

Last month, Ukraine also took out the key Moscow refinery that supplies the capital until at least the start of next year, Reuters reported at the time. However, as the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) switches targets from oil refineries to the warehouse war, some refineries have been affecting repairs and coming back on line in the last month.

Rationing spreads again

The list of restrictions has been growing almost daily since the start of August. Orenburg and Lipetsk have brought back an odd-even system, letting drivers refuel on alternate days according to the first digit of their number plate. Orenburg also capped purchases at 30 litres of petrol and 60 litres of diesel; Lipetsk set a 30-litre cap at Gazprom, Lukoil, Teboil and Rosneft stations.

Crimea and Sevastopol have reintroduced QR-code requirements and a 20-litre limit. Sochi brought in limits on August 11, blaming "logistical disruptions in supply" and asking residents and tourists to leave their cars at home. In Bashkortostan, stations have stopped filling portable canisters.

Krasnodar's municipal control centre has stopped publishing the share of working filling stations altogether. On the evening of August 12, petrol was available at 15 of 34 stations checked along the M-4 Don highway between Krasnodar and Dzhubga, with AI-95 selling for as much as RUB130 ($1.55) a litre. A shortage of AI-95 has now reached Moscow, where there are officially no restrictions at all.

The monitoring service GdeBenz puts the scale of it. The share of stations with fuel in stock fell to 34.9% on August 11, down 5.1 percentage points in a single day and 10.5 points over the week, then to 34.2% on August 12, against 44.1% a week earlier. The spread between regions is close to fivefold, from Vologda on 61.1% to Lipetsk on 12.3%. Orenburg is worst at 23%, down from 39% a week before.

Queues have been reported across Krasnodar Krai, Voronezh, Kaluga, Rostov, Ryazan, Tambov, Tula, Saratov, Smolensk, Penza, Ulyanovsk and Primorsky Krai, as well as Krasnoyarsk Krai and parts of the Moscow region, Meduza reported. Officials have still not formally acknowledged a crisis.

The refining floor keeps dropping

By the end of July, Ukrainian strikes had disabled more than 30% of Russia's actual refining capacity and 45% of its nominal capacity, on a Financial Times analysis, with satellite data showing damaged plants recovering slowly.

Estimates of how far throughput has fallen vary widely. Kpler data put it at 4.1mn barrels a day in June, a multi-year low, rising slightly to 4.2mn in July and possibly hitting a record low of 4mn in August. EA Analytics, via Bloomberg, had it far lower at 3.6mn b/d in July - the weakest since May 2002.

An industry source quoted by Kommersant forecast 3.8mn-4.1mn b/d for August and said supplying the domestic market would become "extremely difficult" below 3.3mn-3.5mn. The same source does not expect the industry back at its usual 5.3mn-5.5mn b/d within this year.

By early July, petrol output was already running at 70% of seasonal consumption, forcing Russia into the position of importing fuel: first from Belarus in July, then Morocco, then India on August 5. It has also had to send emergency supplies to Mongolia, which depends almost entirely on Russian fuel.

Exports are collapsing in step. Seaborne shipments of petroleum products fell 33% month on month and 54.7% year on year in July, to 3.93mn tonnes. Crude exports have slid to their lowest since May, with Novorossiysk and Ust-Luga both running below capacity.

Ukraine hit Russian oil-processing plants, sea infrastructure, tankers and pipelines at least 30 times in July alone, the highest monthly total of the campaign, and at one point managed five refinery strikes in four days. At least 24 of Russia's 34 largest refineries have now been hit.

The independents go under first

The shortage is not falling evenly. Oil companies have redirected supply to their own retail networks, leaving independent operators to buy wholesale at roughly double the exchange benchmark, Delovoy Peterburg reported - even though the mandatory quota for exchange-based petrol sales has been cut from 15% to 10%.

Independent stations have been loss-making since May. Since January, 322 have closed for repairs or rebranding, a 70% increase on the same period last year.

In the Bryansk region it has gone further. Smolensk-based supplier Solventika has filed suit against Derzhava, one of the region's oldest private filling-station chains, over a RUB9.8mn ($117,000) debt, with a hearing set for August 18 - the sector's first bankruptcy case of this crisis.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has told Federal Antimonopoly Service head Maxim Shaskolsky and Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev to deal with the Russian Fuel Union's complaints about distribution, according to the regional outlet Abireg. The current practice runs directly against President Vladimir Putin's own July 8 instruction that vertically integrated companies should not hoard product inside their own networks.

While the federal agencies deliberate, governors are freelancing. Tomsk, Murmansk and Irkutsk have brokered direct contracts between private chains and oil companies; in Irkutsk that cut average waits at the pump from 12-14 hours to about half an hour. In the Voronezh region, Belarusian petrol now accounts for as much as 90% of supply at some private stations.

It ends up in the freight rate

The crisis stopped being about petrol stations some time ago. Market participants told Reuters that fuel costs for hauliers rose 16-18% in a single month, and that freight rates climbed 12-15% on average in July, by up to 50% on some routes. Shipping a container from China to Moscow now costs nearly a third more, at about $14,000.

Road transport carries more than 70% of Russian freight, which makes this a direct feed into consumer prices - and a sticky one. Hauliers do not expect rates to fall back once supply normalises, forecasting a decline of no more than 7-10%.

That lands on a central bank that has already cut rates into rising inflation under political pressure, a budget carrying a refinery subsidy bill of RUB192.8bn ($2.3bn) in July alone, and a government that has already relaxed fuel quality standards until July 2027 to keep the pumps flowing. The wider tit-for-tat war on each other's civilian economy has, in this one respect, produced a clear result: Russia can still pump crude, and increasingly cannot turn it into petrol.