Russia expects 2025 oil refining to be flat versus 2024

Russian oil refining, gas and coal production will remain broadly unchanged in 2025 compared to 2024 levels, the energy ministry said on Thursday, despite repeated waves of Ukrainian drone attacks on energy facilities.

Russia is the world's third largest oil producer after the United States and Saudi Arabia, and holds the world's largest proven reserves of natural gas.

Since August, Ukraine resumed drone attacks deep inside Russia, aiming to knock out oil refineries, depots and pipelines and cripple Moscow's biggest source of funding for the conflict in Ukraine.

Ukrainian drones struck at least 17 major refineries in total, forcing Russia, the world's second-largest crude exporter, to curb fuel exports and order extra drone defences.

"For 2025, we expect oil refining, gas production, and coal production to remain at 2024 levels," Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev was cited as saying by the energy ministry's press service. He did not provide any figures.

Industry sources told Reuters last month that Russian refineries were running well below full capacity before the attacks and were able to mitigate their impact by restarting spare units at both damaged and unaffected plants as well as putting back into operation the attacked units after repairs.

According to Reuters estimates, from January to October, oil processing fell to around 220 million metric tons (5.2 million bpd), down 3% from last year.

Russia has total refining capacity of around 6.6 million bpd, but industry sources say it is rarely fully utilised.

Russian gas exports have been undermined by the rupture of ties with the West, once Russia's largest gas buyer and a major source of revenue.

Vedomosti newspaper last moth cited data from the Russian pricing agency, the Center of the pricing indexes, according to which Russia's natural gas output was seen declining by 2% in 2025 to 673 billion cubic metres after a 7% rise in 2024.

-Marina Bobrova, Olesya Astakhova and Vladimir Soldatkin