Russia’s Kirishi oil refinery was set on fire after a Ukrainian drone attack on the region on Monday, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said, in a Reuters report that gave no assessment of damage or of any effect on refinery operations. The strike is the latest in the campaign against Russian refining capacity and landed on a day when crude futures were falling on diplomacy rather than on supply loss.
Lila Global, the shipowning arm of GMS, has added a third vintage LNG carrier since September, Splash247 reported. The 17-year-old, dual-fuel diesel-electric Diamond, formerly Kmarin Diamond, changed hands for a broker-reported 65 million dollars, more than double the 30 million dollars paid for the steam-powered Tangguh Batur, renamed Eagle M, earlier this month. The first vessel in the buying run, the 2003-built Castillo de Villalba, was renamed Carla, and all three ships are now listed on Lila Global’s website.
The Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers confirmed that the seafarer killed in the November 5 explosion aboard the MT Velos Sapphire in the Persian Gulf was Filipino, and that the other 21 Filipino crew members were unharmed. The death itself was already confirmed by the ship’s manager, Velos Tankers, on November 6 and is covered in this site’s November 6 story, which has been updated with the department’s statement; the cause of the blast remains unverified, with the manager citing a likely projectile strike on the port quarter and the department citing initial reports of a possible drone attack.