The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Ukraine Strikes Hit Baltic Export Facilities || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

The global energy trade has been taking hit after hit, and things might be getting worse. Ukraine launched a large drone attack on oil export facilities in the Baltic, proving they can disrupt Russian exports.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4c4bHRw

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The Ukrainians launched a fleet of drones into Leningrad Province. That's where St. Petersburg is. Targeting specifically the Pramorsk and the Ust Luga oil loading facilities. Now, combined, those two facilities can handle about 1.7 million. barrels of crude today of exports and another 300,000 barrels sit per day of refined oil products primarily diesel. There are multiple reports of fires throughout the loading and tanker areas on the Pormorsk port specifically and at this point about 24 hours after the attacks happened that port remains offline. Now this is significant for two very very very big reasons.

Number one, the Persian Gulf is offline. It's probably not coming back. That's 20 million barrels per that we're probably just not going to see again, and the world has yet to accept that that is where this is ultimately going to lead. Second, there are really only three major sources of crude for the global economy. One is the Persian Gulf. One is North America, specifically the American shale sector, primarily in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, and North Dakota. That one's fine.

And the third one is the former Soviet Union, most notably Russia. Now, Russia has three major ways to ship its crewed out. One goes to the Black Sea, and those have been under persistent attacks by the Ukrainians for a couple of years now. One goes out to the far east near the city of Vladivostok. Those are well out of range of anything the Ukrainians can do. And the third one is this one here in the Baltic Sea with Pramorskan Us Luga. The thing is, these have typically been just out of range for Ukrainian attacks as a rule. and this is a rule made to be broken.

Any infrastructure that is within about 600 miles of a hostile actor is now completely vulnerable to ongoing cheap drone attacks like the Shaheds that the Iranians are using against the United States and the Gulf right now, like the Russians have been using against Ukraine since the beginning of the war. And now the Ukrainians have joined the club and they're threatening the Leningrad region. But the Leningrad region is about 700 miles away. So not only have the Ukrainians developed a new battle platform with better range, they've been able to generate enough drones to throw a volley of 60 of them at these two ports to the point that they are able to shut down one of the largest facilities that the Russians have. So we now need to pencil in in the not too distant future that not only we're going to use the Gulf, not only we're going to use the Black Sea,

we are also going to lose the crew that's coming out of the St. Petersburg region as well. And from the Russian point of view, that adds up to about another 4 million barrels a day. Probably there's a limited degree for the Russians to shift crude around, but really not all that much. The Ukrainians have now demonstrated that this is, if not easy for them, well within their capabilities. And we should see attack after attack after attack in the days and weeks to come.