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Aug 17 (Reuters) – Russia's main Black Sea oil port of Novorossiysk resumed operations on Sunday after halting loadings on Friday following a drone attack, two trading sources said.
A Suezmax-class tanker has been loading Kazakh KEBCO crude oil since Sunday and was scheduled to sail on Monday, the sources said. Another tanker is expected to begin loading 80,000 tons of KEBCO crude on Tuesday, one of the sources said on Monday.
Novorossiysk can handle around 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil and loads Russia's Urals and Siberian Light grades, as well as Kazakh KEBCO. Loadings take place at the Sheskharis terminal, the port's primary oil export facility. The port also loads various goods including fuel and grain.
One tanker scheduled to load crude at the port left for open sea early on Friday following the attempted drone attack on the terminal, one of the sources said. As a result of the attempted attack, the port suspended crude loadings and stopped accepting oil into the terminal because storage tanks had reached capacity, the source added.
The brief shutdown underscores the increasing vulnerability of Russian energy infrastructure, which has faced repeated Ukrainian drone attacks in recent months.
The Novorossiysk port including both Sheskharis and Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminals is also a vital transit route for landlocked Kazakhstan, which relies on Russian infrastructure to export its KEBCO and CPC Blend oil grades to global markets.
