Russia's Biggest Black Sea Oil Port Goes Quiet as Drone Threat Grows

Russia’s largest Black Sea oil export terminal at Novorossiysk has effectively gone offline after drone threats and attacks disrupted nearby export infrastructure, including the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal. The shutdown has removed a major outlet for crude, with Sheskharis normally loading about 650,000 barrels per day in the first half of the year. The disruption is already forcing upstream cuts in Kazakhstan, where oil production was reduced after CPC suspended tanker loadings and storage filled. The article frames the outage as another supply shock in an already tight global oil market, alongside risks in the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea. With inventories no longer providing much of a cushion and refining margins still elevated, the loss of Black Sea export capacity is bullish for crude prices and supportive of broader energy-market tightness.