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.
Big whoop. The article isn’t talking about oil production and it isn’t “oil” that matters; it’s what that oil is refined into that matters and the US doesn’t have the capacity to create much more in the way of refined products like Diesel, Gasoline, Kerosene, etc than it already does. In fact we’ve been importing a LOT of refined petroleum for years now to make up for our lack of refining capacity and pre-invasion much of it was imported from Russia itself!
So when Russian oil refineries suddenly explode and those refined petroleum products are no longer available on the world market the prices go up. This is exactly how you can end up with low oil prices but high gasoline prices. If Russia can’t refine the oil they’ll try and dump it on the market for whatever price they can get but that low cost oil is headed into a refinery system that’s already working at capacity and can’t make anything more than it already does.