MOSCOW, April 28 (Reuters) – A Ukrainian drone attack has caused a “large-scale fire” at Russia’s Tuapse oil refinery on the Black Sea, forcing the evacuation of nearby buildings, local officials said on Tuesday.
The Rosneft-owned refinery delivers oil products mainly for exports but operations have been halted since April 16 following an earlier drone attack, industry sources said.
Ukraine did not immediately comment on the reports. Kyiv has stepped up strikes on Russia since March, with U.S.-brokered talks on the war in Ukraine on pause and Washington mainly focusing on the Iran war.
“Another serious incident has occurred in Tuapse. A large-scale fire broke out at an oil refinery after a drone attack,” Veniamin Kondratiev, the governor of the wider Krasnodar region, said on Telegram on Tuesday.
The head of the Tuapse district, Sergei Boyko, ordered the evacuation of streets near the refinery because of the danger of the fire spreading.
One of the recent attacks on the Tuapse refinery and the port of Tuapse led to an oil spill at sea and a blaze that took several days to put out.
Last week, local residents were urged to stay indoors, keep windows shut and wipe down surfaces after byproducts from fires caused by earlier drone attacks mixed with rainfall to create a “black coating” in areas around the terminal, local authorities have said.
The Tuapse refinery has annual production capacity of about 12 million metric tons, or 240,000 barrels per day, turning out naphtha, diesel, fuel oil and vacuum gasoil.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Clarence Fernandez and Timothy Heritage)
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