Drone Strikes Shut Down Oil Pumping Station In Russia

In Kuban, the Russian Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station was decommissioned after a massive attack by attack drones.

The Russian edition of Interfax reported on this.

On Monday, February 17, the largest oil pumping station of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium in Russia, Kropotkinskaya, was attacked by drones.

“Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station has been decommissioned. Oil is being transported through the Tengiz-Novorossiysk pipeline system at reduced pumping rates, bypassing the oil pumping station,” the consortium said in a statement.

The facility, located in Krasnodar Krai, was struck by seven drones with high-explosive warheads, which attacked with a significant time interval.

“The attack was carried out with a time interval to not only disrupt the operation of the facility, but also to cause casualties among the station’s operational staff. There were no casualties among the personnel of the oil pumping station. The consortium employees managed to prevent the threat of an oil spill by coordinated actions,” said representatives of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).

Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station

Kropotkinskaya is a 16.5-hectare oil pumping station with a tank farm of 140 thousand cubic meters. The facility was commissioned in 2002.

The oil pumping station is part of an international trunk pipeline that transports oil from large fields in Western Kazakhstan and Russian offshore Caspian to the Novorossiysk sea terminal.

The 1,511-kilometer-long pipeline starts at the Tengiz field, passes through the Atyrau region of Kazakhstan, then four regions of the Russian Federation – the Astrakhan region, the Republic of Kalmykia, Stavropol and Krasnodar Krai. The pipeline leads to the Black Sea coast, where oil is loaded onto tankers and exported to other countries at the sea terminal near Novorossiysk.

The system is the main export route for Kazakh oil. It accounts for more than 80% of the volumes pumped through the pipeline from Kazakhstan. It is known that in 2024, the CPC had transported 63.01 million tons of oil through the system.

On the same night, strike drones attacked an oil refinery near the village of Ilsky, the Seversky District, Krasnodar Krai.

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced the interception of 24 drones over Krasnodar Krai and the destruction of a Neptune-MD guided missile over the Sea of Azov.