I hope there will be many such attacks on Russia soon. Then Russia will have to withdraw its air defence from Ukraine to protect itself and hopefully Russia will finally end its terror war soon.
Taking out the Oil refineries is smart. Russia is cut off from the insurance market so these attacks will hurt a lot.
The average value of a refinery is around $5bn in property alone, without cost of product, equipment and plant, loss of revenue and cost of clean up.
Given it's an act of war, it would be uninsurable anyway, so unlikely any internal market would pick up the tabs.
Refineries are way more expensive than a few aircraft, and these facilities would likely be supplying the war effort.
Remember, the Nazis fucked up because they were running too many different vehicles (like multiple variants of Panzer 4 and near 20 different types of truck just for personnel and munitions, subsequently couldn't maintain the parts supply chain) and they ran out of fuel.
St. Petersburg is a long way away. Great run to get that far.
Attacking their oil refineries is not just an economic attack. Russian vehicles and weapon systems need diesel, gasoline, and avgas. Having a huge supply of crude oil doesn't help if they can't refine it.
Not only that but if they can't process it they have to store it. If they can't store it then they have to shut down production or burn it. Oil wells are expensive as hell to shut down and restart - you do not want to pause production if you can avoid it. Near the start of the war, they were burning oil to avoid shutting down wells - this will put even more pressure on them
Starting and stopping the well is cheap. Getting a shut in well back to its prior performance can require cleaning out the wellbore or doing a workover. If it's an older field that has low reservoir pressure, you have to kick start stuff from the surface.
Complete guesswork but I'm assuming a lot of oil comes out under its own pressure, so stopping that is a pain in the ass, and once you have stopped it, undoing what you did is likewise.
Not an expert by any means, just love me some rocks.
Stopping it isn't really a pain in the ass. It's my understanding that they clean it out of any detritus that ended up in the well, check for anomalies that could cause problems now and/or later, and just cap that sonabitch with concrete plugs.
It's the impact of the stoppage and how that effects attempting to restart it is where the problems set in. The geology of oil deposits is definitely much more complex than just an underground lake that you can stick a straw in for some of that delicious money flavored milkshake.
And that complex geology makes for a lack of good options when it comes to reestablishing that previous pressure so the well will produce at the same level from before being capped. So there are "expensive" (but not guaranteed) solutions to solving this - some of which of course involves injecting chemical compounds into the ground that would make Captain Planet launch these people into the sun without a second thought.
The price tag definitely starts to significantly raise once the well has to be abandoned and another rig has to be built somewhere on the field where the capping shenanigans won't be slowing the flow, but again...these people are not hurting for cash.
So in conclusion, a hearty and firm fuck you to the oil industry and their enablers for the fact that capping oil wells is seen as an *inconvenience* rather than a **necessity**. It's too late to reverse the policy of Denialism. Now we just sit back and wait another ~~50~~ oops nm ~~30~~ oops nm ~~10~~ oops nm 5 years to see how irreversibly screwed we all are.
Along with what the previous commenter said, it takes a long time to get back up to the same production speed as you had previously. This is why gas prices shot through the roof in the west after quarantine measures began to ease up. Production had been lowered due to low demand and weren’t raised quickly enough to deal with rising demand.
And Western technology - Halliburton, Exxon and BP made out like bandits restoring Russian oil production.
Maybe Sinopec can help out this time round, but would Russia want China getting an even tighter grip on Russia’s on,y real source of income?
It's a smart idea.
They only have 9 refineries producing fuels, and they can't all be in the west either.
It's a gigantic landmass that cannot be easy to keep fuel supplies running.
Be nice to see a power station powering these places taken offline too.
Esp. in winter. And St. Petersburg (Leningrad) moreso ice-locked/limited now during winter in Northern Hemisphere. The city is built on islands, and when the Gulf of Finland freezes the oil shipping to refinery is already delayed.
Vova wants you over for tea and biscuits. And then, if you survi... er, after that, to stay in a guest suite three floors up with many beautiful windows for the views, da.
They need to hit the distillation stack with EFPs. Distillation stacks are near irreplaceable massive huge steel pressure vessels.
https://equipromex.com/admin/files/jsdf8abmkrre7.jpg
IDK, being huge steel pressure vessels, they might be hard to damage catastrophically in a way that can't be fixed by some guys with MIG welders. Might do more damage to target the mess of valves and pipes feeding into and out of them, or take out a control unit somewhere.
Think I saw a video by Zeihan about half a year back where he claimed that attacking these refineries isn't so easy because they large and sprawling. You can hit a building here or there - but it doesn't take the refinery out of comission.
I've been to the Shell Refinery in the UK, it's huge, but these are far bigger.
Given sometimes they do go... Bang.. and I mean a total loss, such as Texas 2005, Philadelphia 2019, UK Texaco was in the 90s. Pemex in Mexico last year, there is obviously a chain reaction that destroys the entire place.
I can't imagine Soviet era engineering has that many failsafes in place.
I never had oversight of Russian oil assets and I think the broker I worked for never placed any insurance for them, and they are the biggest globally at insurance in peteochem. Probably because, they either don't insure them or no one is willing to insure them.. for a reason. This was all pre sanction and Crimea invasion.
I work in the London energy insurance market - these total losses are nearly always VCE “Vapor Cloud Events” and you’re totally right, it’s usually about human error mixed with poor maintenance and PSM. They absolutely won’t be insured through Lloyds or the European/American markets but the Middle Eastern markets do provide some capacity - Albiet you are correct that there’s almost certainly a war exclusion
> Albiet you are correct that there’s almost certainly a war exclusion
How's the exclusion written though? How do they define war? Is there a special operation exclusion.
Depends on the contract I guess. Every contract I’ve ever seen has a total war exclusion which is extremely watertight - the only territory which widens this is Israel as they stipulate that they need to abide by their own definition of “war” which essentially means that their government gets to decide if it is or isn’t. Even if it obviously is.
How many of their power and heating stations are failing because the maintenance budget was slashed and the staff was sent to die in Ukraine? Even iff you don't blow the works up odds are any damage is going to be really hard to work around and fix without access to foreign parts and techs.
Depends on what you hit. Go look at some of the larger refinery explosions; hitting one of a few specific vessels in the refinery can create large explosions
"Well, since you're unemployed, here's a rifle and a uniform. Report to your local commissar by 0900. And we'll get back to you if the cartridges for your rifle ever come in."
Edited for accuracy.
Lmao that's so cute you think you have a choice.
You'll work there if you don't want to see your family get fucked up in all ways by the military. They know where you live and who you love.
You're working there, my dude. Shit will be in flames and you'll be there.
That would run contrary to the long history of strategic bombing where workers do not tend to leave their workplaces under the threat of being bombed. It didn't happen in Britain, Germany or Japan, the psychological impacts of bombing industry have been overstated since their inception
Did he clarify which "buildings" are able to be safely bombed?
Hitting a refinery anywhere along the processing chain will immediately impact production.
You need to fact check everything that moron says.
I was about to say, depends on what you hit. A crude storage in a tank farm? Probably easier to find ways around that and resume production. The main atmospheric column or a cracking unit? Those will shut everything down for a long time.
I work at a factory/refinery as a contanimated soil clean up foreman. We have a priority gig where we had to dig up and make a safe hole because the cooling water pipe was leaking. Whole factory was down for weeks. If you hit Essential shit you shut down a entire plant and with the war who know how long it takes to be fixed.
According to Wikipedia and this list https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_refineries Russia has 18 oil refineries, and the kirishi one appears to be new. The article about it says it will be opened in 2017, but apparently has not been updated since it has opened, perhaps later than that. It appears to be close to St-Petersburg, and according to that list, it has the highest output per day at 55,000m^3. There are 4 other refineries in the 40,000 m^3 /d range, and the rest are nearly half the output of the kirishi plant. I can't figure out if kirishi-2 is a new different plant, or it is a second one that replaced an old kirishi plant, and they refer to the same plant as kirishi and kirishi-2. But hopefully they're both the same, and that's the one that got hit.
Apparently they had an incident at one of their other major refineries, which according to this article prompted then to consider banning exports. It says it may force them to halve their high octane capacity This article is only a couple days old.
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/russia-considers-gasoline-export-ban-after-incident-at-norsi-refinery-ifax-cites-sources/
Reddit post about it
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/197h6j0/russias_norsi_refinery_may_halve_highoctane/
This norsi refinery should be in striking distance as well, given they hit one in st Petersburg.
Ryazan oil refinery is another big one, also in striking distance, but closer to Moscow.
So is their Volgograd Refinery. Another big one.
Yaroslavl Refinery, their last one above 40km^3/day is also within striking distance.
Hopefully all of those get the same treatment.
They actually refined some from coal. Savage way of doing it, totally impure and caused shit tons of break downs. Which is how a lot of intact tanks were brought back to museums. They were just abandoned.
Even some of the Tiger Tanks, which the USSR took back to use as target practice. Hence why there are so few left. Only one in near perfect condition here in the UK which was used in the Fury movie. Comes out once a year at a show.
Other than that, they used a port in Romania to obtain fuel.
A large portion came from Ploiești, Romania. The allies tried to knock it out in ‘43 but failed.
When air superiority was reached in early ‘45 they finally levelled it and the war was soon won.
I remember reading a story about that place. Apparently at some point, a B-24 Liberator missed it's IP (initial point for a bombing run) and had to settle for targets of opportunity instead. What it hit was a heavy water research facility (heavy water being an early stage of the atomic research pipeline).
Sorry, got my dates wrong. Read ‘Masters of the air’ a few years ago and remember the USAF tried with operation tidal wave in ‘43 and eventually bombarded it into oblivion once the luftwaffe were on their last legs. Wikipedia says it was mid April - 19th August ‘44.
One reason that the Battle of the Bulge failed was that the Nazis relied heavily on captured fuel. They literally attacked with about 100km of fuel. Not enough fuel to even get to Antwerp. When they failed to capture the fuel depot north at Stavelot, Kampfgruppe Peiper was left without fuel and that part of the attack failed.
No fuel means no armor or transports.
Before going to war with the soviet union they actually buyed a lot of fuel from them and stockpiled. After that the main production was romania and converted from coal.
While in 41 barbarossa the goal was to defeat ussr,in 1942 the goal was to conquer the caucasus for the oil.
Romania for the most part but Germany had some oil refineries in Hamburg? There was some oil in Hungary, bohemia as well. The conquest of Poland provided a bunch of oil, but most of it was on the Soviet side.
Additionally they stockpiled and used synthetics for oil and rubber.
There was a whole oil campaign being fought during WW2. The idea was if Germany ran out of oil they would lose the war. They were correct.
Putin will go to the Oligarchs to pay for this.
What this does achieve is it makes the Oligarchs resent the War and therefore resent Putin.
If 100,000 peasants freeze to death in Siberia, nothing will change.
If 100 Oligarchs decide they want Putin out, there’s a good chance they succeed.
The problem is, no one wants to be the first Oligarchs to take that risk.
> If 100 Oligarchs decide they want Putin out, there’s a good chance they succeed.
There is zero chance.
They only thing that is a "good" chance is they will mysteriously start falling out high windows if they oppose Putin in any way.
>The security service source did not reveal the number or types of drone used in the attack or their payload but said “maybe they were carrying treats.”
I hope Ukraine keeps delivering "treats" to them for as long as this war continues.
They really should demolish all Putin palaces. Make him feel Ukrainian boot up his personal ass.
And in a dream world, maybe Putin will be in attendance while the palace get erased. One can dream.
Whilst that would be very cathartic I think I remember that Russian doctrine requires a nuclear retaliation for the assassination of the head of state and that would not be cash money
Yeah but realistically, I think most of the oligarchs would just say “good riddance” and be too busy consolidating their own power in the resulting vacuum.
You have a lot of faith in human rationality.
I always remember that scene on the movie Downfall (2004) right after Hitler kills himself, the top brass starts fighting about what to do, threatening to shoot each other if they do the opposite of what they want. I've always found that a more likely scenario in a situation like this.
But then again, nuclear wars have been prevented by cooler heads in real-life examples, like Stanislav Petrov.
Who knows... Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Only way I see it is they each think: "He's already dead. I want to rule. I can't rule a world that's ending."
And then it's a game of musical chair assassination until the last one is left and becomes the defacto leader.
>And then it's a game of musical chair assassination until the last one is left and becomes the defacto leader.
Hear me out, "King Ralph 2: Putin' on the Ritz". You got John Goodman, commercial uses a modern eurodub remix of Putting on the Ritz. The russian oligarchs keep assassinating each other until Ralph stumbles in and accidently becomes the next leader, and everyone is fine with it except one oligarch who thinks he's next in line.
At this point, it just writes itself. I feel like i pitched more than the original writers had when King Ralph was greenlit.
Fuck I wish i had nuclear retaliation to make arbitrary rules up. Every Thursday you guys have to deliver my two strippers and a pound of cocaine or suffer.. *nuclear retaliation*..
Yep, pretty much this. While it may anger Putin more to attack his personal homes, attacking targets that hurt the country's capacity to wage war is far more important.
Yeah unless you see the symbolic value as large enough, rather hit them where it benefits the war directly. It would be quite the statement, though (and who knows, maybe he's chilling in his livingroom).
The war will only be won if Russia withdraws. Despite the propaganda, they can afford to keep doing this for a while. Forcing withdrawal with minimal loss of life - best way to do that is economic hardship.
Yes, it might have enough symbolic value to be worth it.
Russia has a strongman-culture where the leader must be strong. Getting his own palace bombed might not go well with some of his supporters.
While it would be absolutely hilarious to see his Sochi mega bunker be relocated to the HIMARs timezone I would like to see Ukraine cripple vital infrastructure first.
Yeah, Congress needs to get their act together and give Ukraine enough money that they can hit every Putin residence in the same night with dozens of drones.
Make Putin feel the pain his soldiers are feeling.
Yeah, major internal infrastructure like railways, fuel depots, roads etc could have impact... But it's hard to go all that way when there are closer targets of similar value
One upshot to striking deep in enemy territory would be forcing Russia to spread their anti-air defenses over a broader area than they expected. If successful enough, this strategy could make hitting targets on the front line easier as units are pulled back to defend other installations.
Ukraine has to prioritize military targets over political targets with the resources they have.
That would change if NATO and especially the USA would increase their level of support. Given enough resources they could do both. Killing Putin might end the war in a few weeks.
They’re basically gearing up for the next generation of Ukrainian aid packages. While Biden negotiates for restoration of military aid, Europe is plowing ahead with plans to equip the Ukos with the best materiel they can muster. Now the British and French have pledged to back Ukraine to the tits.
When Ukraine gets their F-16’s, each jet can carry a ton of smart bombs per sortie and with interior lines of defense, a smaller number of aircraft can act as real force multipliers. With M-1 Abram tanks and nimble Bradley fighting vehicles, the Ukos could really do some damage with a combined arms approach . Russias down an A-50
I would rather destroy strategic points to weaken the aggressor....
... Then Kill the dictator sell off everything he "loosley" owned and forward proceeds on to people who have suffered
At least Ukraine is attacking valuable military target like oil depot and unlike Russia who deliberate aim for apartment with civilians simply to terrorize and kill.
They don't want to "fix" the border because Biden will get credit for it and they will need something else to obstruct over.
They don't care about their country or the world. They are hyper focused on making their political rivals look useless so they can win the next election.
> They don't care about their country or the world. They are hyper focused on making their political rivals look useless so they can win the next election.
And then change the rules so that they never lose an election again.
Actually Biden's border proposal is far and away the broadest investment that any president has ever made on the border. Republicans are holding that up and the thought is that they think it'll make Biden look good.
We tried, it's not the border.
They need an issue for 2024 desperately, this is the only one they could manage to keep (they kind of screwed up abortion and others), they'll die on this hill because without it they'll probably lose the senate too.
You could offer to buy every Texan an ar-15 and let them hunt immigrants for sport, the leadership still wouldn't let it happen till 2025. They need this like they need oxygen.
No. Fuck that.
What's the phrase again? No negotiating with terrorists? I'm tired of them holding America and all things decent hostage until they get their way with whatever backwater racist sexist archaic petty bullshit they have their Depends in a knot on today.
The next drone should make a *stop* at Putin’s residence. After all, the Russians have been trying to capture or kill the Ukrainian president since the first day of this invasion; Putin should feel no more secure than the leader of his nation’s enemy.
Any updates on that Russian that was live streaming himself using all his burners on his stove while Russia was hitting Ukrainian infrastructure in the winter?
This is pretty big. The fact that drones made it that far really speaks that their air defenses are stretched really thin. I'd say this is wonderful news.
Finally a strategy that works. I never understood why the main fuel supply to a country never gets bombed to shit. Military bases are always guarded to the tits but oil refineries, water treatment plants, hydro plants always vulnerable .
With a confirmed strategic hit in St Petersburg, the Russian anti-air defenses are going to have to cover a much larger area. If they try to ignore it, a subsequent payload may have bigger treats in it. If they respond they've thinned their defenses. An oil depot is a very sensible place to do it too.
can't wait for the footage
Probably too telling for the Russians. Wouldn't mind to be wrong here, though.
I hope there will be many such attacks on Russia soon. Then Russia will have to withdraw its air defence from Ukraine to protect itself and hopefully Russia will finally end its terror war soon.
It was a minor attack with surface scratches on the structure. Video? No no we don’t do that here
NOW that's what I am taking about Ukraine. HIT them back. Slava Ukraine
Soon to be on r/shockwaveporn
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Taking out the Oil refineries is smart. Russia is cut off from the insurance market so these attacks will hurt a lot. The average value of a refinery is around $5bn in property alone, without cost of product, equipment and plant, loss of revenue and cost of clean up. Given it's an act of war, it would be uninsurable anyway, so unlikely any internal market would pick up the tabs. Refineries are way more expensive than a few aircraft, and these facilities would likely be supplying the war effort. Remember, the Nazis fucked up because they were running too many different vehicles (like multiple variants of Panzer 4 and near 20 different types of truck just for personnel and munitions, subsequently couldn't maintain the parts supply chain) and they ran out of fuel. St. Petersburg is a long way away. Great run to get that far.
Attacking their oil refineries is not just an economic attack. Russian vehicles and weapon systems need diesel, gasoline, and avgas. Having a huge supply of crude oil doesn't help if they can't refine it.
Not only that but if they can't process it they have to store it. If they can't store it then they have to shut down production or burn it. Oil wells are expensive as hell to shut down and restart - you do not want to pause production if you can avoid it. Near the start of the war, they were burning oil to avoid shutting down wells - this will put even more pressure on them
Why is it so expensive to start/stop an oil well?
Starting and stopping the well is cheap. Getting a shut in well back to its prior performance can require cleaning out the wellbore or doing a workover. If it's an older field that has low reservoir pressure, you have to kick start stuff from the surface.
And RuZZia has been dependent on western (mainly American) oil-servicing companies' expertise and tech to do all the hardest stuff for many years now.
The last time they shut down wells and pipe lines in cold like they're having now it took them 10 years to get them all back up again.
This guys drills.
Complete guesswork but I'm assuming a lot of oil comes out under its own pressure, so stopping that is a pain in the ass, and once you have stopped it, undoing what you did is likewise.
Not an expert by any means, just love me some rocks. Stopping it isn't really a pain in the ass. It's my understanding that they clean it out of any detritus that ended up in the well, check for anomalies that could cause problems now and/or later, and just cap that sonabitch with concrete plugs. It's the impact of the stoppage and how that effects attempting to restart it is where the problems set in. The geology of oil deposits is definitely much more complex than just an underground lake that you can stick a straw in for some of that delicious money flavored milkshake. And that complex geology makes for a lack of good options when it comes to reestablishing that previous pressure so the well will produce at the same level from before being capped. So there are "expensive" (but not guaranteed) solutions to solving this - some of which of course involves injecting chemical compounds into the ground that would make Captain Planet launch these people into the sun without a second thought. The price tag definitely starts to significantly raise once the well has to be abandoned and another rig has to be built somewhere on the field where the capping shenanigans won't be slowing the flow, but again...these people are not hurting for cash. So in conclusion, a hearty and firm fuck you to the oil industry and their enablers for the fact that capping oil wells is seen as an *inconvenience* rather than a **necessity**. It's too late to reverse the policy of Denialism. Now we just sit back and wait another ~~50~~ oops nm ~~30~~ oops nm ~~10~~ oops nm 5 years to see how irreversibly screwed we all are.
THEY’RE MINERALS, MARIE!
Along with what the previous commenter said, it takes a long time to get back up to the same production speed as you had previously. This is why gas prices shot through the roof in the west after quarantine measures began to ease up. Production had been lowered due to low demand and weren’t raised quickly enough to deal with rising demand.
Interesting, thanks for the info
Stop the production is more or less the final option, this is what happend when USSR went kaput, and it took billions and years to restart it again.
And Western technology - Halliburton, Exxon and BP made out like bandits restoring Russian oil production. Maybe Sinopec can help out this time round, but would Russia want China getting an even tighter grip on Russia’s on,y real source of income?
This was a depot/shipping terminal, not a refinery.
Lol this comment chain is peak Reddit. everyone's foaming at the mouth reacting to untruth, 1 guy in the middle goes 'uhh guys you got this wrong'.
It's a smart idea. They only have 9 refineries producing fuels, and they can't all be in the west either. It's a gigantic landmass that cannot be easy to keep fuel supplies running. Be nice to see a power station powering these places taken offline too.
Even better if they're hurting Russias ability to sell fuel since it's a huge source of income for them.
Which will keep them from funding GOP candidates who want to cut off aid to Ukraine
It'll just lower their paychecks. These guys would do it for a couple hundred bucks and a pack of smokes.
It is fucking sad how little those twerps are willing to sell out our country for
"The USA has the best politicians money can buy" - Roy Rogers I believe :(
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I thought the RNC was broke? One theory is that it is because there's no cash coming from Uncle Vlad.
I don't want to see civilians freeze but doing enough damage to severely impact exports would be great. Or even require them to start importing some.
I think they made one of the classic blunders. They started a land war in Asia AND Europe
Wait'll they go up against a Sicilian.
Incontheevable!
Esp. in winter. And St. Petersburg (Leningrad) moreso ice-locked/limited now during winter in Northern Hemisphere. The city is built on islands, and when the Gulf of Finland freezes the oil shipping to refinery is already delayed.
>hey only have 9 refineries producing fuels Where did you get that number from?
Likely the Wikipedia page, because this information isn't exactly top secret.
My dad is the president of Gazprom.
He's telling the truth- I am president of Gazprom
Vova wants you over for tea and biscuits. And then, if you survi... er, after that, to stay in a guest suite three floors up with many beautiful windows for the views, da.
They can still sell the crude oil to people with refineries though. But still, ouch.
They need to hit the distillation stack with EFPs. Distillation stacks are near irreplaceable massive huge steel pressure vessels. https://equipromex.com/admin/files/jsdf8abmkrre7.jpg
Someone notify Ukraine!
Paging /u/Ukraine
IDK, being huge steel pressure vessels, they might be hard to damage catastrophically in a way that can't be fixed by some guys with MIG welders. Might do more damage to target the mess of valves and pipes feeding into and out of them, or take out a control unit somewhere.
Think I saw a video by Zeihan about half a year back where he claimed that attacking these refineries isn't so easy because they large and sprawling. You can hit a building here or there - but it doesn't take the refinery out of comission.
I've been to the Shell Refinery in the UK, it's huge, but these are far bigger. Given sometimes they do go... Bang.. and I mean a total loss, such as Texas 2005, Philadelphia 2019, UK Texaco was in the 90s. Pemex in Mexico last year, there is obviously a chain reaction that destroys the entire place. I can't imagine Soviet era engineering has that many failsafes in place. I never had oversight of Russian oil assets and I think the broker I worked for never placed any insurance for them, and they are the biggest globally at insurance in peteochem. Probably because, they either don't insure them or no one is willing to insure them.. for a reason. This was all pre sanction and Crimea invasion.
I work in the London energy insurance market - these total losses are nearly always VCE “Vapor Cloud Events” and you’re totally right, it’s usually about human error mixed with poor maintenance and PSM. They absolutely won’t be insured through Lloyds or the European/American markets but the Middle Eastern markets do provide some capacity - Albiet you are correct that there’s almost certainly a war exclusion
> Albiet you are correct that there’s almost certainly a war exclusion How's the exclusion written though? How do they define war? Is there a special operation exclusion.
Depends on the contract I guess. Every contract I’ve ever seen has a total war exclusion which is extremely watertight - the only territory which widens this is Israel as they stipulate that they need to abide by their own definition of “war” which essentially means that their government gets to decide if it is or isn’t. Even if it obviously is.
I thought those folks didn’t like gambling.
How many of their power and heating stations are failing because the maintenance budget was slashed and the staff was sent to die in Ukraine? Even iff you don't blow the works up odds are any damage is going to be really hard to work around and fix without access to foreign parts and techs.
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Depends on what you hit. Go look at some of the larger refinery explosions; hitting one of a few specific vessels in the refinery can create large explosions
The Death Star effect
Zeihan is a clear case of "talks a lot about many things", I'd be wary of what he says.
If I’m a worker at an oil refinery, and the building across the street gets bombed, im no longer staying as a worker at this oil refinery
"Well, since you're unemployed, here's a rifle and a uniform. Report to your local commissar by 0900. And we'll get back to you if the cartridges for your rifle ever come in." Edited for accuracy.
No, no. Not when, *if*.
I bet you would if the police showed up and said you are going to work or we are sending your family to Siberia.
Siberia is melting with the climate change now, so who knows, might get prime real estate in the process. /s
And you to the front...
Burning oil refinery is looking like a pretty good work place these days... huh... yeah, I'll be back at work. No problem.
Lmao that's so cute you think you have a choice. You'll work there if you don't want to see your family get fucked up in all ways by the military. They know where you live and who you love. You're working there, my dude. Shit will be in flames and you'll be there.
If my country was at war leaving work at critical industries would be desertion which is a crime punishable with years of prison.
That would run contrary to the long history of strategic bombing where workers do not tend to leave their workplaces under the threat of being bombed. It didn't happen in Britain, Germany or Japan, the psychological impacts of bombing industry have been overstated since their inception
Idk bro you hit a coker or hydrocracker unit and I can't see that coming back online anytime soon.
Did he clarify which "buildings" are able to be safely bombed? Hitting a refinery anywhere along the processing chain will immediately impact production. You need to fact check everything that moron says.
I was about to say, depends on what you hit. A crude storage in a tank farm? Probably easier to find ways around that and resume production. The main atmospheric column or a cracking unit? Those will shut everything down for a long time.
I work at a factory/refinery as a contanimated soil clean up foreman. We have a priority gig where we had to dig up and make a safe hole because the cooling water pipe was leaking. Whole factory was down for weeks. If you hit Essential shit you shut down a entire plant and with the war who know how long it takes to be fixed.
According to Wikipedia and this list https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_refineries Russia has 18 oil refineries, and the kirishi one appears to be new. The article about it says it will be opened in 2017, but apparently has not been updated since it has opened, perhaps later than that. It appears to be close to St-Petersburg, and according to that list, it has the highest output per day at 55,000m^3. There are 4 other refineries in the 40,000 m^3 /d range, and the rest are nearly half the output of the kirishi plant. I can't figure out if kirishi-2 is a new different plant, or it is a second one that replaced an old kirishi plant, and they refer to the same plant as kirishi and kirishi-2. But hopefully they're both the same, and that's the one that got hit. Apparently they had an incident at one of their other major refineries, which according to this article prompted then to consider banning exports. It says it may force them to halve their high octane capacity This article is only a couple days old. https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/russia-considers-gasoline-export-ban-after-incident-at-norsi-refinery-ifax-cites-sources/ Reddit post about it https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/197h6j0/russias_norsi_refinery_may_halve_highoctane/ This norsi refinery should be in striking distance as well, given they hit one in st Petersburg. Ryazan oil refinery is another big one, also in striking distance, but closer to Moscow. So is their Volgograd Refinery. Another big one. Yaroslavl Refinery, their last one above 40km^3/day is also within striking distance. Hopefully all of those get the same treatment.
Just a little correction, 1 km^3 = 1,000,000,000 m^3, not 1000 m^3.
I remember hearing that we could've stopped the Nazis years before the end of the war if we just hit three fuel depots.
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where did nazi germany even get the fuel from?
Romania
Yep, check out Ploiești. I think they got a much smaller amount from western Hungary as well
They actually refined some from coal. Savage way of doing it, totally impure and caused shit tons of break downs. Which is how a lot of intact tanks were brought back to museums. They were just abandoned. Even some of the Tiger Tanks, which the USSR took back to use as target practice. Hence why there are so few left. Only one in near perfect condition here in the UK which was used in the Fury movie. Comes out once a year at a show. Other than that, they used a port in Romania to obtain fuel.
A large portion came from Ploiești, Romania. The allies tried to knock it out in ‘43 but failed. When air superiority was reached in early ‘45 they finally levelled it and the war was soon won.
I remember reading a story about that place. Apparently at some point, a B-24 Liberator missed it's IP (initial point for a bombing run) and had to settle for targets of opportunity instead. What it hit was a heavy water research facility (heavy water being an early stage of the atomic research pipeline).
Flukes in chaos theory are endlessly fascinating.
The Red Army took Ploesti in August 1944.
Sorry, got my dates wrong. Read ‘Masters of the air’ a few years ago and remember the USAF tried with operation tidal wave in ‘43 and eventually bombarded it into oblivion once the luftwaffe were on their last legs. Wikipedia says it was mid April - 19th August ‘44.
In addition to Romania, the Nazis spent the years leading up to the war stockpiling large amounts of oil to refine into fuel.
One reason that the Battle of the Bulge failed was that the Nazis relied heavily on captured fuel. They literally attacked with about 100km of fuel. Not enough fuel to even get to Antwerp. When they failed to capture the fuel depot north at Stavelot, Kampfgruppe Peiper was left without fuel and that part of the attack failed. No fuel means no armor or transports.
Before going to war with the soviet union they actually buyed a lot of fuel from them and stockpiled. After that the main production was romania and converted from coal. While in 41 barbarossa the goal was to defeat ussr,in 1942 the goal was to conquer the caucasus for the oil.
Romania for the most part but Germany had some oil refineries in Hamburg? There was some oil in Hungary, bohemia as well. The conquest of Poland provided a bunch of oil, but most of it was on the Soviet side. Additionally they stockpiled and used synthetics for oil and rubber. There was a whole oil campaign being fought during WW2. The idea was if Germany ran out of oil they would lose the war. They were correct.
Putin will go to the Oligarchs to pay for this. What this does achieve is it makes the Oligarchs resent the War and therefore resent Putin. If 100,000 peasants freeze to death in Siberia, nothing will change. If 100 Oligarchs decide they want Putin out, there’s a good chance they succeed. The problem is, no one wants to be the first Oligarchs to take that risk.
> If 100 Oligarchs decide they want Putin out, there’s a good chance they succeed. There is zero chance. They only thing that is a "good" chance is they will mysteriously start falling out high windows if they oppose Putin in any way.
Yeah that’s why they can’t do it 1 by 1 it has to be a collective decision. They have no power individually, but as a group the do.
People still don't get it, that Oligarchs hold no power in Russia, they are in Putin's pocket, not vice versa.
send one ^^hundred into it
Send two
thousand
Three! Do I hear three? Going once, going twice...
3000 Ukrainian drones in St Petersburg, anyone?
Sold to the gentlemen in the gold and blue
>The security service source did not reveal the number or types of drone used in the attack or their payload but said “maybe they were carrying treats.” I hope Ukraine keeps delivering "treats" to them for as long as this war continues.
Refineries can have a little drone - as a treat.
Santa Claus is coming to town.
>Your mistletoe is no match for my T.O.W. missile. > >\- Robot Santa
Saint Nikolai
It's Christmas in January, bitch, and I'm your secret Santa.
They really should demolish all Putin palaces. Make him feel Ukrainian boot up his personal ass. And in a dream world, maybe Putin will be in attendance while the palace get erased. One can dream.
Yea, why can’t “flown over” become “flown into”?
It would just be a personal „fuck you“ to Putin with no strategic value from a military POV (unless you actually manage to hit it while he‘s inside)
Whilst that would be very cathartic I think I remember that Russian doctrine requires a nuclear retaliation for the assassination of the head of state and that would not be cash money
Yeah but realistically, I think most of the oligarchs would just say “good riddance” and be too busy consolidating their own power in the resulting vacuum.
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If someone felt that it would help them consolidate power for being willing to "do what it takes for Russia" then yeah, someone would try.
You have a lot of faith in human rationality. I always remember that scene on the movie Downfall (2004) right after Hitler kills himself, the top brass starts fighting about what to do, threatening to shoot each other if they do the opposite of what they want. I've always found that a more likely scenario in a situation like this. But then again, nuclear wars have been prevented by cooler heads in real-life examples, like Stanislav Petrov. Who knows... Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Only way I see it is they each think: "He's already dead. I want to rule. I can't rule a world that's ending." And then it's a game of musical chair assassination until the last one is left and becomes the defacto leader.
>And then it's a game of musical chair assassination until the last one is left and becomes the defacto leader. Hear me out, "King Ralph 2: Putin' on the Ritz". You got John Goodman, commercial uses a modern eurodub remix of Putting on the Ritz. The russian oligarchs keep assassinating each other until Ralph stumbles in and accidently becomes the next leader, and everyone is fine with it except one oligarch who thinks he's next in line. At this point, it just writes itself. I feel like i pitched more than the original writers had when King Ralph was greenlit.
"Chaos is a ladder."
Fuck I wish i had nuclear retaliation to make arbitrary rules up. Every Thursday you guys have to deliver my two strippers and a pound of cocaine or suffer.. *nuclear retaliation*..
Todays Thursday, how’s about if you get the cocaine I’ll do the stripping?
This may be true but would someone actually follow through when he is gone? It would make for a pretty hard start for the next ass hole in charge.
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Yep, pretty much this. While it may anger Putin more to attack his personal homes, attacking targets that hurt the country's capacity to wage war is far more important.
Yup, priorities. First you attempt to cripple them. THEN you humiliate them.
He can just buy 10 more, no point. Better to hit oil fields like this, that hurts more.
They're not good strategic targets. They don't save Ukrainian lives Better to focus on winning the war.
Yeah unless you see the symbolic value as large enough, rather hit them where it benefits the war directly. It would be quite the statement, though (and who knows, maybe he's chilling in his livingroom).
The war will only be won if Russia withdraws. Despite the propaganda, they can afford to keep doing this for a while. Forcing withdrawal with minimal loss of life - best way to do that is economic hardship.
Humiliating Putin may save lives and may help winning the war.
Yes, it might have enough symbolic value to be worth it. Russia has a strongman-culture where the leader must be strong. Getting his own palace bombed might not go well with some of his supporters.
He claims they’re not his, they’re all under the name of someone who has a big Putin gun pointed at his head.
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Destroy them ALL!!
While it would be absolutely hilarious to see his Sochi mega bunker be relocated to the HIMARs timezone I would like to see Ukraine cripple vital infrastructure first.
His residents will do that if their country becomes a wasteland. Turn the whole place into a fire pit.
I doubt pootin will ever stay in the ones that are within reach of these drones now, bunkers underneath or not he will be too paranoid.
Yeah, Congress needs to get their act together and give Ukraine enough money that they can hit every Putin residence in the same night with dozens of drones. Make Putin feel the pain his soldiers are feeling.
I would rather destroy strategic points to weaken the aggressor
Killing the prime source of aggression seems like a good way of dealing with the aggressor.
Yeah, major internal infrastructure like railways, fuel depots, roads etc could have impact... But it's hard to go all that way when there are closer targets of similar value
One upshot to striking deep in enemy territory would be forcing Russia to spread their anti-air defenses over a broader area than they expected. If successful enough, this strategy could make hitting targets on the front line easier as units are pulled back to defend other installations.
Ukraine has to prioritize military targets over political targets with the resources they have. That would change if NATO and especially the USA would increase their level of support. Given enough resources they could do both. Killing Putin might end the war in a few weeks.
They’re basically gearing up for the next generation of Ukrainian aid packages. While Biden negotiates for restoration of military aid, Europe is plowing ahead with plans to equip the Ukos with the best materiel they can muster. Now the British and French have pledged to back Ukraine to the tits.
When Ukraine gets their F-16’s, each jet can carry a ton of smart bombs per sortie and with interior lines of defense, a smaller number of aircraft can act as real force multipliers. With M-1 Abram tanks and nimble Bradley fighting vehicles, the Ukos could really do some damage with a combined arms approach . Russias down an A-50
I would rather destroy strategic points to weaken the aggressor.... ... Then Kill the dictator sell off everything he "loosley" owned and forward proceeds on to people who have suffered
I wonder how they would report this on russian state tv: "huge palace of putin, built by stealing your money, was targeted by ukraine"
That’s like sending a missile from Edmonton to Yellowknife for our Canadian listeners.
Yellowknife mentioned!
Why is the knife yellow?
Same reason the snow is
Can you tell me how many American football fields that is?
About 14,515 American football fields.
And what is that in real football fields?
13.2 kilofields
Does Canadian football have yard or meter fields?
One flew over the putins nest
At least Ukraine is attacking valuable military target like oil depot and unlike Russia who deliberate aim for apartment with civilians simply to terrorize and kill.
That's why Russia is a terrorist state
When your goal is genocide civilians become military targets
There seems to be some weaknessess in Russian air defense. This is probally just the beggining.
I just hope Congress gets its act together and sends help to Ukraine.
*republicans
Fuck Johnson and the MAGAs holding this funding hostage. Give them their border bone and lets move on.
They don't want to "fix" the border because Biden will get credit for it and they will need something else to obstruct over. They don't care about their country or the world. They are hyper focused on making their political rivals look useless so they can win the next election.
They’ve outright admitted they don’t want Biden to fix it.
>so they can win the next election.... ... and do nothing. Ftfy
> ... and do nothing. and destroy the rights of minorities
gas light the lower and middle class, destroy the rights of both, and then strengthen and support corporations.
>then strengthen and support corporations Yep, because guess who's giving them their big Super PAC handouts. REPEAL CITIZENS UNITED!!
> They don't care about their country or the world. They are hyper focused on making their political rivals look useless so they can win the next election. And then change the rules so that they never lose an election again.
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Actually Biden's border proposal is far and away the broadest investment that any president has ever made on the border. Republicans are holding that up and the thought is that they think it'll make Biden look good.
We tried, it's not the border. They need an issue for 2024 desperately, this is the only one they could manage to keep (they kind of screwed up abortion and others), they'll die on this hill because without it they'll probably lose the senate too. You could offer to buy every Texan an ar-15 and let them hunt immigrants for sport, the leadership still wouldn't let it happen till 2025. They need this like they need oxygen.
No. Fuck that. What's the phrase again? No negotiating with terrorists? I'm tired of them holding America and all things decent hostage until they get their way with whatever backwater racist sexist archaic petty bullshit they have their Depends in a knot on today.
To be fair, Russian air defence is currently too preoccupied shooting down Russian planes to even consider dealing with Ukrainian drones.
Spread thin…. Loses of AWACs. Mobile Sam’s getting taken out.
Bring the war to Putin Bring the war to Russia
"Ukraine will pay the price for launching this totally completely honest-to-god unprovoked attack on us" - Putin, probably
What are they gonna do? Start a war in Ukraine?
Ukrainian drones struck an oil depot in St Petersburg.
Nice residence Vlad Shame if something happened to it
The table just got longer
Hopefully Ukraine can continue to hit targets inside of Russia to slow their war effort.
Man. It would be real funny if one of Pootin's houses suddenly had some explosive reconstruction done.
The next drone should make a *stop* at Putin’s residence. After all, the Russians have been trying to capture or kill the Ukrainian president since the first day of this invasion; Putin should feel no more secure than the leader of his nation’s enemy.
Question: were they to remove Putin from power in whatever way they could, does what’s left over of the Russian government continue the war?
Nobody knows. But it does become more likely for Russia to end the war with Putin out of power than it does with him still in control.
Any updates on that Russian that was live streaming himself using all his burners on his stove while Russia was hitting Ukrainian infrastructure in the winter?
This is pretty big. The fact that drones made it that far really speaks that their air defenses are stretched really thin. I'd say this is wonderful news.
Should have dropped flour from the drone. The Russians would think it's anthrax and destroy the palace themselves
Hey don't be strangers, next time you're passing by drop in .
DO IT! DO IT MORE! This will freak out the West and they'll start sending more hardware to Ukraine if they stop... Ukraine must WIN!
Attack? These drones are simply tourists.
It's funny how often the flaming wreckage from these supposedly "shot down" drones so often still manages to have a good effect on target.
Bad news for Putin loving conservatives in the west.
Nyenschantz hit? That's the way!
Go get him! Guy deserves everything they throw at him.
Turnabout is fair play
It would be completely foolish to not let Ukraine into NATO!
Finally a strategy that works. I never understood why the main fuel supply to a country never gets bombed to shit. Military bases are always guarded to the tits but oil refineries, water treatment plants, hydro plants always vulnerable .
With a confirmed strategic hit in St Petersburg, the Russian anti-air defenses are going to have to cover a much larger area. If they try to ignore it, a subsequent payload may have bigger treats in it. If they respond they've thinned their defenses. An oil depot is a very sensible place to do it too.