This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Read original →One Percent of Consumption: What Belarusian Refining Can Actually Cover in the Russian Market
At a meeting with Sverdlovsk Governor Denis Pasler in Minsk on May 18, Alexander Lukashenko proposed to "lend a shoulder" to Russian oil refining through two modernized Belarusian refineries. The channel has actually been operating for two years, but its capacity amounts to roughly 1% of Russia's monthly gasoline consumption.
Gasoline is 90% domestic market-oriented. So when 10% of capacity goes down for maintenance, we're already on the brink of shortage
The key statement from Alexander Lukashenko at his meeting with Sverdlovsk Region Governor Denis Pasler wasn't about the $2 billion trade turnover, or even about Sverdlovsk Region being a "Russia-forming" region. Though the trade figures are impressive in their own right—by the end of 2025, Belarus climbed from 5th-7th place to 3rd place among Sverdlovsk Region's trading partners, with turnover approaching $930 million, and in Q1 2026 another $223.8 million with 2.6% growth. The substantive part of the statement was about oil refining.
The trigger wasn't trade statistics, but the campaign of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries. From January through October 2025, Ukrainian drones attacked at least 17 major Russian plants, according to Reuters. Between August and October, attacks and scheduled maintenance combined took out up to 20% of capacity. In May 2026, refining collapsed to 4.69 million barrels per day (bpd)—the lowest level since 2009.
The paradox is that Russia produces and exports crude oil with capacity to spare, but the bottleneck is precisely gasoline. Igor Yushkov, an analyst at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, explained this asymmetry to Argument Media.
Historically, about 50% of our diesel production goes to the domestic market and 50% is exported in a normal year when everything's operating properly. And in such a normal year, 90% of gasoline production went to the domestic market with only 10% exported. So if 10% of gasoline production goes down for maintenance, we're already on the edge of deficit.
In other words, a strike on one major refinery barely affects oil exports, but instantly shrinks the gasoline reserve. Diesel has far more cushion—half the output goes abroad anyway, so that portion can be redirected to the domestic market. Gasoline has no such buffer.
A tolling scheme that's been running for two years
Lukashenko's statement isn't a one-off political gesture but rather the legitimization of an already functioning scheme. Since late 2022, the Mozyr refinery and Naftan (Novopolotsk) have been supplying fuel to the Russian exchange SPbMTSB through the state trader Promsyryeimport, which receives damper payments from the budget—initially as a replacement for the closed Ukrainian market. In 2025, the channel was reoriented toward a different objective: compensating for the drop in domestic supply.
