Le Monde: Before the war Syria was exporting oil and now it’s experiencing the worst fuel crisis
The economic crisis in Syria, and the fuel crisis in particular, has become a topic for discussion in the Arab and foreign media, after it reached an unprecedented stage since the beginning of the Syrian war until now, at a time when Syria was reaching the stage of sufficiency and searching for gates for export.
In this regard, the French Le Monde newspaper published an article in which it indicated that “this is the worst crisis the country has ever witnessed, more than it was during the war years, when there were informal supply sources,” noting that before the war, Syria used to export part of its estimated reserves of about 2.5 billion barrels of oil.
Le Monde article added that most of the hydrocarbon deposits are located in areas outside the control of Damascus now, in the east of the country that is under the Kurdish administration.
One thousand barrels per day.
Most of the oil is imported from Iran, which renewed the line of credit to the Syrian state for this purpose last May.
Before the outbreak of the war in 2011, Syria was producing about 380,000 barrels of oil per day, and 250,000 barrels of it were consumed locally, and the rest was exported.
Now production has decreased, as the largest Syrian oil fields are located in the east of the country and are controlled by the Kurdish forces supported by the United States.
The most prominent factor in the fuel shortage in Syria is the departure of the most important oil fields from the control of the Syrian government, as the Syrian Foreign Ministry recently confirmed that the latest statistics estimate the direct losses of US forces’ attacks on Syrian territory at a value of $25.9 billion, and the Syrian Ministry of oil has previously confirmed that, there is a shortage of oil supplies that reach Syria, as the Syrian Oil Minister Bassam Tohme previously said: “There must be regularity in supply for the crisis to be resolved,” indicating that oil production amounted to about 14.5 million barrels, with an average daily production of 80.3 thousand barrels, of which 14.2 are handed over.
Thousand barrels per day to the refineries and the theft of up to 66 thousand barrels per day from the US forces from the oil fields under their control in the eastern region of Syria.
