Turkey Eyes Role in Syrian Oil and Gas Production

Turkey has signaled it wants to take part in the revival of oil and gas production in Syria, Bloomberg has reported, citing a statement by Turkey’s energy minister.

Speaking to the media, Alparslan Bayraktar said that Turkey was working to help Syria with its electricity supply, adding that expanding this role into oil and gas was also on the table.

“We are also studying the use of crude oil and natural gas for reconstruction of Syria,” Bayraktar said. “We plan to tell our counterparts how we can make contributions in that sense. Our objective is to develop these projects.”

Bayraktar also said there were plans for new oil and gas pipelines between Syria and Turkey.

Syria has been struggling with its own oil and gas production under U.S. sanctions and amid continued fighting with rebel groups. Its biggest suppliers of crude were Iran and Iraq. However, following the insurgence that toppled the Assad government earlier this month, supplies of crude oil from Iran have ended, with one tanker even making a U-turn en route to the Syrian coast following the news of the change in power in Syria.

Iran was exporting some 60,000 barrels of oil daily to Syria. The country’s own oil production is to the tune of some 80,000 barrels daily, all from eastern Syria, which is under the control of the Kurdish-affiliated Syrian Democratic Forces.

Iraq has also suspended oil deliveries to Syria, starting at the beginning of December, an Iraqi member of parliament told media earlier this week. Syria had been importing some 120,000 barrels of crude daily from Iraq and now faces a supply squeeze as a result of the Iraqi authorities’ decision.

The situation will be aggravated by the halt to internal deliveries of crude from eastern Syria, controlled by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, to the rest of Syria, which is under the control of the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham group, formerly considered a terrorist group by the international community, which was supported by Al Qaeda during the Syrian civil war.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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