On 5 November, I told Kanal24, Kyiv that a US-Ukraine campaign to disable the Russian petrostate’s oil sector is underway. I stressed that this is a multi-spectral campaign combining (i) severe USA sanctions and secondary tariffs on Russian oil exports in parallel with (ii) Ukrainian military action on oil refineries and export-terminal ports. These attacks are known to be conducted and planned in close cooperation with USA military intelligence (FT,12 Oct.).
This means that an assessment of either aspect of this campaign on its own is inadequate. The synergy of sanctions plus military hits is the issue.
Secondary Sanctions. It has been widely recognized that the USA would need to, as promised, vigorously impose secondary tariffs on any entities that violated its recent tariff announcement. Indeed, on Sunday, President Trump lent support to a bill being drafted in Congress to hit any entity “doing business with Russia.”, not only buying its oil (i.e., “Trump says Republicans drafting bill to sanction countries that trade with Russia, Reuters. November 17). This sounds similar to the Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Richard Blumenthal’s (D Conn) so-called “bone-crushing sanctions” bill (Politico, 7 June) endorsed by 83 senators on 3 June.
The apparent aim of the port drone and missile attacks is to slash oil exports from Russia’s three or four biggest westward facing terminals. The focus thus far is on Black Sea terminals:
- Tupase oil export terminal has been hit three times by Ukrainian drones, and reportedly (i.e., unconfirmed) a Ukrainian cruise missile. Consider:
- 24 September, for the first time, Ukraine hit the oil export infrastructure in the ports of Novorossiya and Tuapse with naval drones, interrupting both Russian and Kazakhstan exports there for a time.
- According to the Kyiv Post (10 Nov), “Ukrainian robot boats … attacked Tuapse [following the earlier attack] on Sept. 24 … overnight on Nov. 1-2. The latter raid damaged two tankers, halted fuel exports and refinery operations for days, caused an oil spill and forced tankers to abandon the port.”
- 10-days later, Ukrainian robot boats again hit the oil terminal: “… a follow-up strike to a damaging attack hitting Tuapse 10 days ago. There are unconfirmed reports Ukraine also launched its big Flamingo cruise missile at the port.”
- The huge Novorossiya oil export terminal was hit hard. According to Reuters (14 Nov): “Ukrainian attack halts oil exports from Russia’s Novo, affecting 2% of global supply, sources say,” and further (Reuters, 14 Nov), “… Russian port suspends oil exports after Ukrainian attack” with drones and Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles closing the port plus (apparently on caution) the nearby CPC pipeline exports carrying Kazakhstan oil on Friday 14 November. “The intensity of these attacks has increased; it’s much more often. Eventually, they could hit something that causes lasting disruption,” said Giovanni Staunovo, commodity analyst at UBS. (ibid)
- Early this morning, Monday, (Reuters, 17 Nov) it was reported that the port and CPC pipeline had been shut two days, opening on Sunday, having lost 2.2 million barrels of exports per each day. This shows also the resilience of export terminals against attacks., although some experts predicted more damaging shutdowns are possible.
This is a new type of oil war, unknown since perhaps WW2.
Aside: It is important to note that, although Ukraine has had the capacity to hit oil export terminal ports since at least early 2024, it never did until about September 2025 An example of the Ukrainian hits on ports stopping Russian crude exports. Under the now-de-facto-dead oil price cap strategy of the Biden and early Trump administrations, Russian oil was to be kept on the market but its selling price restricted. This US-G7-NATO strategy was a big failure and wasted valuable time. The more rational strategy now is to actually take Russian barrels offline while working to keep global prices steady. This means that Ukraine can now hit these oil export terminals that they had previously not touched “out of deference to the Americans” and their oil-price cap strategy.
However, as I have said for several months, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil-producing allies of the USA, especially the UAE and Kuwait, have heeded the call of Trump to increase oil supplies, putting downward pressure on oil price. While these OPEC states have their own reasons to do this, to take back market share, this also de facto helped drive the present global oil glut, which is now aiding in replacing most of Russian seaborne barrels taken offline, avoiding any large oil price spikes thus far.
Reports indicate the Saudis and UAE in recent days have offered India significant discounts as an inducement to replace sanctioned Russia oil with Gulf oil – this from a meeting on the sidelines of the recent AIDIP meeting in Dubai. To wit:
- “Saudi Arabia cuts December oil prices for Asia as OPEC+ boosts output.” Reuters, November 6
- “Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait increase supplies to India in December, sources say.” Reuters, Nidhi Verma, November 11.
As always, critiques and comments are welcomed and solicited, either in comments or via email to twod[at}umich.edu. Presentations for your group or firm, consults, or reports can be provided.
Best, Tom O’Donnell (in Berlin)
The Global Barrel 