Russia's oil refining volumes down 14% Y/Y in January-September, according to reports

A double-digit decline in Russian refining volumes of this kind has, in recent episodes, been driven less by demand than by physical disruption: strikes on refinery infrastructure, unplanned outages layered on top of seasonal maintenance, and constraints on equipment and spare parts that stretch repair timelines. The established transmission channel runs in two directions at once. Lower runs free up crude for export, which is crude-price negative at the margin, while cutting product output, which supports diesel and gasoil cracks and tightens product balances in the regions that still take Russian barrels or their re-exported substitutes. The distinction worth drawing is between temporary maintenance-driven weakness, which normalises within a season, and damage-driven outages, which have historically persisted and shifted the crude-versus-products split for longer. The figure covers a nine-month window, so it embeds both episodic attacks and scheduled work rather than signalling a fresh deterioration in the latest month. Worth watching next are Russian crude export loadings, which tend to rise when runs fall, domestic fuel policy responses such as export restrictions on gasoline or diesel, and any confirmation of which facilities account for the lost throughput.