A Ukrainian drone has struck a pumping station on Kazakhstan’s main oil export pipeline in Russia.

Its operator, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), said oil flows to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk were reduced following the February 17 attack on the Kropotkinskaya station in the southern Krasnodar region. Work was halted to investigate the damage, it added.

Reuters quoted a source at Ukraine's SBU security service as stating that Kyiv hit the pumping station and the nearby Ilsky oil refinery using drones. Both facilities were supporting Russia's military action in Ukraine, they added.

The attack came on the same day that Kazakhstan aligned with Hungary in backing the idea of talks on the Ukraine conflict between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US counterpart Donald Trump as well as between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and top US diplomat Marco Rubio. The joint standpoint was outlined by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto who was paying a visit to Kazakhstan.

"Today, we talked about the war in Ukraine in great detail. As a result of this war, our countries incurred damage, so it’s in our mutual interest for the war in Ukraine to end as soon as possible. [...] We applaud dialogue between Russia and the US at the highest level, we are glad that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were discussing pressing issues for a while and we are also very pleased that, as a continuation of these talks, foreign ministers Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov also held talks and discussed the potential resolution of the Ukraine conflict," Szijjarto told reporters after talks with Kazakh Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu, Tass reported.

Ukrainian drones have in recent months repeatedly attacked Russian energy infrastructure.

The CPC pipeline’s shareholders include US energy majors Chevron and ExxonMobil.

The infrastructure handles around four-fifths of Kazakhstan's oil exports. The Central Asian’s oil shipments account for around 1% of global daily supply.

The pipeline route was exempted from sanctions introduced against Russia by the outgoing US Biden administration on January 10.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kazakhstan, jittery over its huge oil export reliance on the CPC given the expanding theatre of war and Moscow’s de facto control over the pipeline, has looked to diversify its oil shipment routes.

The country is attempting to develop trans-Caspian Sea oil exports that could make their way to world markets via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean coast via Georgia.

In late January, Kazakhstan announced that it had shipped its first batch of oil from the Kashagan oil and gas field to the Azeri port of Baku. However, Kazakhstan has so far had to curb its Caspian Sea oil export ambitions given a lack of tankers and Azerbaijan’s statement late last year that the BTC can only accommodate 2.2mn tonnes per year (tpy) of Kazakhstan's oil because of the high sulphur content of Kazakh crude that erodes pipes. Kazakhstan had expressed an intention to build up its BTC flows to 20mn tpy.

The country has commissioned the building of additional oil tankers to work the trans-Caspian route.