What percentage of Russian seaborne crude oil export loading capacity will be offline at end of June 2026 due to Ukrainian strikes (vs the H2 2025 baseline)?

TL;DR

My final forecast is 18% mean and 19% median of H2-2025 Russian seaborne crude loading capacity offline for 1–28 June 2026. The physical outage is lower, around 5–10%, because Reuters-sourced June data show the main western crude ports expected to load 2.7–2.8 mb/d in June, above May and far above the early-June plan (Reuters via Baird Maritime, 24 Jun 2026). The resolved value is higher because the fallback rule turns June seaborne crude exports near 4.0 mb/d into about 20% against the 5.0 mb/d denominator.

Context

The late-March outage was a real capacity shock. Reuters reported on 25 March 2026 that Ukrainian attacks had halted about 2.0 mb/d, or roughly 40%, of Russia’s oil export capacity, with Primorsk and Ust-Luga suspended and Novorossiysk behind schedule (Reuters via The Moscow Times, 25 Mar 2026). A week later, Reuters sources put the remaining impairment at about 1.0 mb/d, or one-fifth of total export capacity, showing that part of the March outage was already being worked around (Reuters via Global Banking & Finance Review, 2 Apr 2026).

By late June, the main public story had shifted from closed crude terminals to damaged refineries and fuel shortages. Ukraine was still hitting energy infrastructure, including the Grushovaya/Sheskharis storage chain near Novorossiysk on 7–8 June and refineries on 28 June, but Reuters and Bloomberg flow data showed high crude loadings rather than a March-scale terminal shutdown (Ukrainska Pravda, 8 Jun 2026; AP, 28 Jun 2026; Bloomberg via The Moscow Times, 2 Jun 2026). That distinction matters because the question’s primary path asks for physical loading capacity offline, while the fallback path mechanically compares June exports with a 5.0 mb/d capacity denominator.

Evidence

The historical backbone is that actual Russian seaborne crude exports normally run well below 5.0 mb/d even when loading capacity is available. The full current-vintage IEA/Kpler/Argus series I use is below; units are mb/d of Russian seaborne crude exports, and the publication vintage is 13 May 2026 (IEA Oil Market Report, 13 May 2026).

The terminal concentration is why March mattered. KSE’s Kpler-based assessment, using data accessed on 7 April 2026, put 2025 oil export volumes at 1.26 mb/d from Primorsk, 1.15 mb/d from Ust-Luga, 0.97 mb/d from Novorossiysk, 1.00 mb/d from Nakhodka/Far East, and 0.30 mb/d from Murmansk; it also found Ust-Luga crude loadings fell from 725 kb/d in the week of 16–22 March to 101 and 155 kb/d in the next two weeks, while Primorsk crude stayed near 780–848 kb/d (KSE Institute, 9 Apr 2026). The IEA later described the late-March and early-April port disruptions as temporary: Black Sea Urals exports from Sheskharis fell to 160 kb/d in the week of 6 April and needed one week to recover, while Baltic loadings briefly dropped from 1.5 mb/d to 760 kb/d in the week of 30 March before recovering later in April (IEA Oil Market Report, 13 May 2026).

The June flow checks point the same way. They do not prove zero damage, but they are hard to reconcile with 30–45% of crude loading capacity offline for the whole 1–28 June window.

The main physical counterweight is Novorossiysk. Drones hit the Grushovaya tank farm feeding the Sheskharis terminal on 7–8 June, and local reports described at least 50 blasts, a fire, and pipelines/tunnels connecting the storage site to tanker-loading quays (Ukrainska Pravda, 8 Jun 2026). That supports a nonzero offline-capacity estimate for the Black Sea chain, but Reuters still found 2.3 mb/d from the three western crude outlets in the first half of June and then 2.7–2.8 mb/d expected for the full month (Baird Maritime/Reuters, 17 Jun 2026; Baird Maritime/Reuters, 24 Jun 2026). I read the physical-capacity branch as centered near 6–8%, with a right shoulder if a resolver counts residual Novorossiysk storage loss, short precautionary closures, Volna-area terminal damage, or tanker disruptions.

My resolution model is source-driven. I assign 75% to the fallback formula, because the current Reuters/Bloomberg coverage near the resolution date is about flows and refinery outages rather than an explicit “mb/d of crude loading capacity offline” stocktake. On that path I model June average seaborne crude exports around 4.0 mb/d, with a plausible range of about 3.7–4.3 mb/d from the Bloomberg, S&P, Reuters, and Vortexa signals (SFG Media/Bloomberg, 23 Jun 2026; S&P Global, 16 Jun 2026; Breakwave/Vortexa, 17 Jun 2026). The fallback calculation is:

$$Y = \max\left(0, \left(1 - \frac{E_J}{5.0}\right) \times 100\right)$$

where $E_J$ is June 2026 average Russian seaborne crude exports in mb/d. If $E_J=3.9$, the result is 22%; if $E_J=4.0$, it is 20%; if $E_J=4.2$, it is 16%. I assign 20% to a direct primary-source capacity stocktake that resolves near the physical estimate, centered around 6–8%, and 5% to a higher-outage or adverse-definition path. The combined distribution has a mean of 18%, median of 19%, a 10th–90th percentile range of 7–27%, and a 5th–95th percentile range of 4–32%.

What's non-obvious

The March 40% headline is not the right anchor for June. Ukraine’s refinery campaign reduced domestic processing and pushed crude toward export channels, so crude exports rose while fuel supplies worsened; Bloomberg said refinery strikes helped lift seaborne crude exports to wartime highs by late May, and Reuters said refinery outages were pushing record June volumes through the western crude ports (Bloomberg via The Moscow Times, 2 Jun 2026; Baird Maritime/Reuters, 24 Jun 2026).

The fallback path also does not measure the same thing as the numerator. The numerator asks for loading capacity unavailable because of Ukrainian operations, but the fallback compares actual exports with 5.0 mb/d; the IEA series shows actual seaborne crude exports averaged only 3.25–3.52 mb/d in 2022–2025 even before the March 2026 terminal shock (IEA Oil Market Report, 13 May 2026). That is why a true physical outage near 5–10% can still resolve near 20%.

Limitations

I did not find a qualifying end-June Reuters or Bloomberg stocktake, as of 28 June 2026 at 19:07 UTC, that explicitly quantifies Russian seaborne crude loading capacity offline due to Ukrainian operations. The closest current Reuters piece is the 24 June western-port loading article, and it reports expected June flows rather than offline capacity (Baird Maritime/Reuters, 24 Jun 2026).

The June fallback value is still source-sensitive. Bloomberg’s four-week average to 21 June was 3.89 mb/d, while S&P Global’s first-two-weeks-of-June figure was 4.5 mb/d; these series can differ because of origin definitions, inclusion of some Russian-port non-Russian grades, timing of loading versus departure, and later revisions (SFG Media/Bloomberg, 23 Jun 2026; S&P Global, 16 Jun 2026). A 0.2 mb/d difference in the June export average moves the fallback result by 4 percentage points.

Attribution remains thin around Black Sea infrastructure. Grushovaya/Sheskharis is clearly export-related, and AP also reported damage at a Black Sea sea terminal in Volna on 13 June, but public reporting has not translated those incidents into average daily mb/d of unavailable crude loading capacity for June (Ukrainska Pravda, 8 Jun 2026; AP, 13 Jun 2026). This is the main reason I keep a right tail above 30% while making 30–45% a minority outcome.