MOSCOW, April 2 (Reuters) - Russia's Astrakhan gas processing plant, controlled by energy giant Gazprom, halted production of diesel and gasoline on March 31 due to an unplanned maintenance, two industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
One of the sources said the plant, located on the shores of the Caspian Sea, will try to restart production on Sunday.
Though the capacity of the plant is not hugely significant for Russia, its stoppage will likely add to Moscow's worries amid wide-scale outage of refinery capacity due to Ukrainian drone attacks.
The reason and the details of the outage were not immediately clear. Gazprom officials were not available for immediate comment.
Two traders said that they got notification from St Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange about suspension of diesel and gasoline sales from the plant due to an unplanned stoppage of oil product output.
The plant is capable of processing around 8,340 metric tons of gas condensate per day.
In 2023 it produced 703,000 tons of gasoline, or 1.6% of Russia's total, as well as 492,000 tons of diesel (0.6%) and 299,000 tons of fuel oil (0.7%). (Reporting by Reuters; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin, editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
