The radar hunt continued into another night — strikes on aircraft, radars and drone crews reported across Rostov Oblast and occupied Crimea — and Russia answered with 150 drones and two missiles against Ukraine, of which 124 were downed or jammed by morning. [1][4] No new refinery hit was claimed in the latest cycle. The margin story compounds anyway, because it was never about single fires.

Ukraine's campaign has already pushed Russian crude processing to levels unseen since 2005 — an average of 3.91 million barrels per day in early July, more than 1.4 million below the prior year, with 24 of 34 large refineries struck across roughly 50 attacks. Moscow's countermeasure remains its own export book turned inside out: gasoline exports banned since April, jet fuel since June, diesel since July 8 — now extended to producers refining their own crude — while the country imports fuel from India and Belarus and shops abroad for around 400,000 tonnes of gasoline a month. [2]

The pricing residue lands elsewhere. European diesel cracks surged above $60 per barrel after the ban, a record, U.S. diesel futures posted their largest one-day gain in four years, and June seaborne diesel shipments ran near 426,000 barrels per day, the weakest since 2017, with Turkey and Brazil absorbing half the remaining cargoes. [2][3]

Blind the radars, burn the stills, keep the diesel. Three weeks in, the trade is still compounding.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco