"Oil refining in Russia has been halted — sanctions are working," the message reads.
“Three Russian oil refineries — Volgograd, Ilsky, and Yaisky — have partially stopped operations because they could not complete planned maintenance in October.”
Intelligence officials note that the shutdown of the refineries will negatively impact domestic oil refining volumes, the fulfillment of export obligations, the supply of fuel to the domestic market, and increase costs for technical maintenance and modernization of enterprises. It is expected that the volume of oil refining capacities during the shutdown will be 1.8 to 2 million tons per month.
"The real reasons for the shutdown of oil refineries in Russia are limited access to Western equipment and components due to international sanctions and the inability to replace foreign spare parts needed for technical maintenance and modernization of the refineries," the spies added.
According to their data, Russian manufacturers of equipment provide only about 30-45% of the market's needs and only for some components.
Russia has also failed to use China as an alternative supplier of equipment because Chinese technologies are not always compatible with Russian equipment, which sometimes requires a complete replacement of the equipment and significantly increases the costs of repair and maintenance, the Foreign Intelligence Service added.