New evacuation to the East: about the initiative to move a number of Russian refineries beyond the Urals

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented on the initiative to transfer a number of Russian refineries to the East to the Novye Izvestia Internet portal.

— We must understand that since 2011 we have had a refinery modernization program. At first, these were quadripartite agreements, then agreements between the Ministry of Energy and companies. As part of these programs, the bulk of Russian refineries were upgraded before the sanctions were imposed. Now we have 85% — 90% modernized refineries, — Alexey Gromov reminds.

The new plants were built in the expectation that the world would remain global, and Russia would supply everyone with both oil and petroleum products. In conditions where the framework is narrowing, the existing infrastructure is even redundant for domestic consumption and for export volumes in 2022 and 2023. However, the plants have been under construction for 4-5 years, and when the world changes again, Russia will be ready to supply those markets from which it has been cut off.

Moving the refinery anywhere is impossible not only because there is not enough money in the country to finance such an undertaking, but also because each plant is built as a unique production. A pipeline infrastructure has been built for each one, which supplies oil of a certain quality from certain fields of certain companies, the expert says. And the plant itself is a colossal object.

Most of the equipment that was supplied for modernization is foreign. It is impossible to replace it with a domestic one under any circumstances. In fact, each refinery is a unique project, therefore, equipment for it was ordered, and sometimes developed only for this particular refinery.

— Lukoil's NORSI refinery has been modernized. But the accident just happened on those units that were purchased as part of the modernization, they were imported. Therefore, it was not possible to eliminate this accident in the shortest possible time precisely because the company does not have the opportunity to carry out an operational replacement of the equipment that failed there, Alexey Gromov recalls.