Drone strikes near Novorossiysk to temporarily halt ~700 kbd in Sheskaris oil loadings

Ukrainian drone strikes have hit Russia’s Novorossiysk port in the Black Sea, though the impact appears to be limited to the Sheskharis terminal, with the CPC loadings reportedly resuming from the Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka terminal. The full extent of the damage near Sheskaris remains unclear, but similar incidents in recent months have resulted in outages lasting only a few days to a week.

Market & trading calls

• Expecting loadings of crude from the Sheskaris terminal to remain constrained for up to a week, removing ~700 kbd of Urals, KEBCO and SBL supply, mainly to India and Turkey.
• Bullish on medium sour crude differentials from the Middle East, WAF or US in case the Black Sea port outage persists.
• Bullish on Brent and Dubai timespreads due to uncertainty around near-term supply.

Following a series of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian downstream infrastructure throughout November, the latest incident is posing a threat to global crude markets. Overnight from Thursday to Friday, Ukrainian drone strikes hit the oil storage facility and two oil berths at Sheskharis (Reuters; Argus Media). As a result, Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk has suspended oil exports, with Transneft halting crude supplies to the terminal. Supply concerns pushed front-month ICE Brent up from Thursday’s settlement price of $63.01/bbl to above $64.5/bbl in intraday trading today.

In the past few hours, reports have indicated that the CPC has resumed oil loadings from the Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka terminal near Novorossiysk, suggesting that only the Sheskharis terminal remains affected. Crude oil exports from Novorossiysk averaged 2.3 Mbd in October and of this volume, 36%, around 830 kbd, was shipped via the Sheskharis terminal, including 600 kbd of Urals, 130 kbd of KEBCO, and 100 kbd of SBL. These flows are primarily destined for India, with smaller volumes going to Turkey, Romania, and Italy.

Sheskharis crude exports by destination, kbd

Source: Kpler

Currently, there is no clarity on when export operations will resume, as the damage assessment is still ongoing. Our data indicates that the last tanker to depart the Sheskharis terminal was the Suezmax  Arlan on 13 November. However, previous strikes combined with bad weather had already largely impacted Sheskaris loadings, which fully stopped between 4th and 8th November. The most recent strikes on Russian oil-export infrastructure prior to this were in early November, when the Tuapse oil terminal was hit, and on 12 September 2025, when Ukrainian drones targeted the port of Primorsk. In both cases, loading operations were suspended for only a few days.

Sheskaris daily oil loadings by grade, kbd

Source: Kpler

If the outage at the Sheskharis terminal proves prolonged, we expect the resulting crude supply disruption to lift Brent by $1–2/bbl and strengthen medium-sour markets globally. With India sourcing some 400-600 kbd of its Urals volumes from Sheskharis, the country would likely shift to comparable grades such as Basrah Medium, Arab Medium, Kuwaiti crude, Mars, or Angola’s Dalia.

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