Page 4 - MEOG Week 43

MEOG Commentary MEOG
US military sent to protect
Syrian oilfields, Trump
says “keep the oil”
President Donald Trump has sent US troops back to Syria to protect oilfields, though his rhetoric around the spoils of war undermines the trumpeted news of the demise of the leader of ISIS.
syria
What:
uS solders have been seen returning to eastern Syria, with oilfields in the Deir ez-Zor region seen to be in need of protection, while the leader of ISIS has been killed.
Why:
Syrian oil production has been estimated
at 15,000-40,000 bpd, though capacity was running at around 400,000 bpd before civil war broke out in 2011.
What next:
Trump has fanned the flames of widespread resentment towards
the uS by saying that it should “keep the oil” as a spoil of war.
A convoy of US military personnel has been seen driving southwards towards Deir ez-Zor in east- ern Syria, coinciding with comments from Pres- ident Donald Trump about securing oilfields.
Kurdish daily Rudaw quoted a US defence official as saying that the US had commenced “reinforcing positions in the Deir ez-Zor region, in co-ordination with our [Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)] partners, with additional mili- tary assets to prevent the oilfields from falling back into the hands of ISIS or other destabilising actors.”
The SDF brought the country’s Tanak oilfield back on stream in August 2018, roughly a year after it and the US-backed YPG took the control of the asset from Daesh militants.
Tanak, Syria’s second-largest oilfield, is located east of the River Euphrates in the oil-rich Deir Ezzor province, near the country’s top oil asset, the Omar field.
Tanak’s 150 existing wells are thought to be capable of 40,000 bpd of production, but infor- mation about the asset’s condition has not been forthcoming since the SDF retook the field in November 2017.
Local media outlet Zaman Al Wasl quoted sources at the time as saying that the oil from Tanak was being supplied to the Syrian regime.
The SDF has held control over the country’s largest oilfields, including Omar, the largest, Ward, Kewari, Jafra, Jarnuf, Azrak, Kahar, Afra, Sueytat and Galban.
Omar had been producing around 30,000 bpd prior to the Syrian Civil War, but was in the hands of Daesh from mid-2011 until October 2017.
Trump recently said that US troops would be removed from northern Syria, but last week said some would remain to secure the assets previously “held by ISIS until the United States took them over with the help of the Kurds. We will NEVER let a reconstituted ISIS have those
fields!” he tweeted on October 24.
However, Russian intelligence sources have
accused the US of profiting from smuggling Syr- ian oil.
At the weekend, Russian Defence Minis- try spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: “Tank trucks guarded by US military servicemen and private military companies smuggle oil from fields in eastern Syria to other countries. In the event of any attack on such a convoy, US spe- cial operations forces and combat aviation are immediately used to protect it.”
Konashenkoy added: “To secure such a con- tinuous financial flow free from control and taxes, the top officials at the Pentagon and Lang- ley will be willing to guard and protect oil wells in Syria from the imaginary ‘hidden cells of the Islamic State (ISIS)’ indefinitely.”
Keep the oil
Trump yet again received widespread condem- nation when he called for the US to “keep the oil” in return for bringing stability to Syria.
During a news conference in which he announced the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he said: “What I intend to do, per- haps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly ... and spread out the wealth.”
The comments echo sentiments he tweeted previously about US involvement in the Iraq war. “I said keep the oil. If they are going into Iraq, keep the oil. They never did,” he said.
Of course with Trump, such sound bites are usually little more then rhetoric. However, with him being in a position of power, the interna- tional community has at least taken it seriously enough to voice condemnation.
A move to take control of Syrian oilfields would challenge the country’s sovereignty, fur- ther staining the reputation of the US in the region.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 43 29•October•2019