Mr. Ernst and Mr. Krutikhin noted that, unlike in other oil infrastructure such as pipelines, a lot of complex machinery and sophisticated engineering goes into refineries, and they can take several months to fix. Some analysts say the repairs could take longer than usual because sanctions prohibit Western sales of certain components to Russia.
Burning an oil well directly burns oil which people would otherwise burned, while raising prices and encouraging additional extraction. I’ll also note that Saddam Hussein had people light the oil wells on fire before the US moved in.
An attack on a refinery prevents oil from being burned, and can’t burn oil that’s not there. I’d prefer to see them shut down in a planned matter, but this is better than keeping them going.
Different things are different. Deal with it.
Burning oil to prevent people from burning fossil fuels is certainly a take.
Carbon is carbon. Burning crude oil puts carbon in the air just like burning petroleum does. The difference is now you’ve driven energy costs up while wasting the resource.
Edited to add: so if Saddam burning oil fields in Kuwait was bad, are we also going to admit that Ukraine burning oil refineries in Russia is also bad? Or is it only bad when our enemies do it?
An attack on the midstream is fundamentally different from burning oil at the well in terms of how it affects how much carbon goes into the atmosphere; it results in oil not being extracted and burned.