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MEOG Commentary MEOG Syria’s key oil and
However, for Trump, this would not appear to be an issue. In an April 2011 interview, he told the Wall Street Journal: “I would take the oil. I wouldnotleaveIraqandletIrantaketheoil.”The same month, he told ABC: “In the old days, you know, when you had a war, to the victor belong the spoils. You go in. You win the war and you take it.”
The circumstances, though, are quite dif- ferent. Iraq is home to 145bn barrels of oil and 3.7tn cubic metres of gas, while Syria has proven reserves of 2.5bn barrels of oil and 241bn cubic metres of gas. Indeed, the spoils of Syrian hydro- carbon resources did not prove sufficient for Western forces to intervene in its civil war for more than three years.
The result of this was a broad deal signed between President Bashar al-Assad and the Rus- sian government for companies from the latter to build out Syria’s energy industry, though pro- gress on this has not yet been forthcoming.
This may be Trump’s real reason for talking up American involvement in Syria, just as he has sought to stifle Russian plans elsewhere.
Either way, the main driver is unlikely to be Syrian hydrocarbon output. Estimates for
current oil production range between 15,000 bpd and 40,000 bpd.
In mid-2011, before the outbreak of war, output was running at around 400,000 bpd of oil, and this had previously been up at around 600,000 bpd.
Numbers for gas are less clear, but the most recent verified data, from 2011, showed output of 8.95 mcm per day of dry natural gas, and more recent estimates are just 3.4 mcm per day.
Unintended consequences
The irony will not lost on ISIS that this type of approach is precisely what brought numerous provincial groups together to declare a caliphate across Syria and Iraq.
Followers of Middle East geopolitics will recall that among the first of the group’s mes- sages to the world was that it was tearing up the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, which delineated the spheres of influence of European powers in the Middle East.
Far from Trump’s intention, much like the second Gulf War, such forays into an already combustible region are susceptible to stoke the already billowing flames of resentment.™
gas infrastructure
Week 43 29•October•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P5