Washington’s criticism is misplaced: attacks on oil refineries will not have the effect on global energy markets that U.S. officials fear. These strikes reduce Russia’s ability to turn its oil into usable products; they do not affect the volume of oil it can extract or export. In fact, with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up. Indeed, Russian firms have already started selling more unrefined oil overseas. As long as they remain restricted to Russian refineries, the attacks are unlikely to raise the price of oil for Western consumers.
Why is everyone in here discussing “oil” when the article is talking about oil refining.
Russia was / is a big player in the refined petroleum market and exported a LOT of Diesel, Gasoline, Kerosene and other petroleum distillates.
This distinction is important because oil refineries are multi-billion dollar multi-year projects, they are not built quickly or easily. Most of the world is also refinery constrained, meaning that their existing refineries are already working at or near capacity.
Here’s the capacity utilization data for the United States. As you can see the US has very little slack in its refinery capability so any dip in the ability to import refined petroleum products will, and does, lead to sharp price rises.
So yes, Ukraine blowing up an oil refinery in Russia will absolutely cause global price hikes for refined petroleum products…and I fully support them doing it.
tl;dr Y’all are discussing the wrong thing and “oil” is absolutely not a synonym for the refined petroleum products that come of out of an oil refinery.