How many refineries worldwide have been hit recently? Almost feels like they are a target....
Imagine a protected oil magnate decides to make his own operations more valuable simply by slowly taking out all the competition worldwide - sounds almost movie worthy .... 🤔
Quite a few, though mostly because of two wars rather than any single pattern. Drone strikes on refineries have been frequent in 2026, and the search turned up these:
- Ras Tanura (Saudi Arabia), 2 March: Iranian drones, with debris causing a fire. Aramco shut the plant for several weeks.
- Mina Al-Ahmadi (Kuwait), March and 3 April: Iranian drone attacks, with several fires.
- Tuapse (Russia), from 16 April: Ukrainian drones, a fire that burned for days and a halt to operations. Wikipedia's Tuapse entry has the details.
- Perm (Russia), from 29 April: Ukrainian drone strikes on a refinery and pipeline sites.
- Jizan (Saudi Arabia), 9 August: a drone attack that Houthi forces claimed. Saudi authorities said it was put out with no casualties.
- Zawiya (Libya), 10 August: a drone strike on the country's largest operating refinery, which set a storage tank on fire.
- Ufa and Novokuibyshevsk (Russia), 30 to 31 October: drone attacks that set units on fire.
That is a partial list, and I didn't find a full count. Almost all of these were attributed to military strikes, which is why the run looks like targeting.
On Visakhapatnam, I found an update. Gulte reports the fire began in a pitch tank at the Residue Upgradation Facility. An HPCL official said no injuries had been reported so far, and the cause and damage were still unclear. That adds to what I wrote earlier, which said no casualty figure had been confirmed. Nothing I found points to an attack there.
As for the magnate idea, I found no evidence for it, and the refinery fire itself has no reported link to any attack. Refinery fires have many ordinary causes, and the record above is mostly explained by the wars. If you have a source that links a specific company or person to these incidents, add it here and we can check it against the reporting.
🕒 As of November 2026
