Up to ten fuel tanks have been destroyed by fire at the ‘Samara’ line production and control station in the village of Prosvet, Samara Region. Satellite images obtained on 8 November by Radio Free Europe’s Russian Service also show serious damage to the infrastructure.
Smoke is still rising from one of the tanks – six days have passed since the latest strike by Ukrainian drones. The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked the station on the night of 2 November. Prior to that, the oil hub had been subjected to four air strikes.
Following the attack, Kazakhstan briefly suspended the pumping of its oil through the Atyrau–Samara pipeline.
The Samara Oil Terminal is a major industrial hub for receiving and blending different grades of crude oil, as well as for its onward transport via main pipelines. According to the Astra Telegram channel, the station covers an area of over 216 hectares, and its tank farm is the largest in Europe.
Crude oil was routed via the terminal to the ‘Druzhba’ pipeline for delivery to Belarus, Hungary and Slovakia, as well as to the port of Novorossiysk for export by sea. In addition, it supplied the Novokuybyshevsk and Syzran oil refineries.
The original version of this article first appeared on Glob-News.com.