Drones hit two oil tankers at a Black Sea terminal on July 19, forcing the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to suspend all loading operations at its Novorossiysk port. The pipeline moves roughly 1.58 million barrels of oil per day.
The CPC confirmed that the tankers ASIA and NISSOS IOS were struck during active loading operations at moorings 1 and 3. The ASIA caught fire, though crews extinguished it without injuries, fatalities, or oil spills. Both vessels remained afloat.
A pattern, not an anomaly
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Just two days earlier, on July 17, a drone strike targeted the Nordic Zenith, a tanker chartered by ExxonMobil. That attack fit neatly into a pattern of escalating assaults on CPC infrastructure stretching back to November 2025, with additional incidents reported in January and April 2026.
The attacks are widely linked to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Ukrainian forces frequently suspected of carrying out the strikes. The CPC itself has not formally assigned blame for any of the incidents.
