Dr. Ahmad Yousef
The United States added more ambiguity to its already ambiguous policies in the Syrian file when its president took the decision of the sudden withdrawal U.S. troops from many of its bases in north and east of Syria, where it had entered as part of the Global Coalition to fight the Islamic State terrorist organization (ISIS), leaving the region vulnerable to various regional and international attractions. The most important attraction was the multilateral consensus which paved the way for direct Turkish invasion in a part of the geography which was under the control of the Autonomous Administration, a local ally of the Global Coalition to fight ISIS, and the latter’s call for the Syrian government forces to enter the bordering areas from Kobani to Derik, in an attempt to stop the Turkish expansion and its affiliated armed groups to the new geography of Syria, as this expansion implies real concerns of those groups of committing the crimes of ethnic cleansing against the peoples of the region and their diverse components.
The Syrian forces deployed with the support of the Russian military police, and got some points on the borders and the areas adjacent to the area caused by the Turkish invasion between the towns of Gre Spi (Tal Abyad) and Sere-Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) at a depth of 32 km, in a consensual operation with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) aimed to protect Syrian territories from a new occupation, and to stop the genocide in the Autonomous Administration regions on the Turkish borders.
Rapid field developments and international reactions to the U.S. policies towards its local allies led to changes in those policies and halted the process of the full withdrawal from the Syrian territories to prevent leaving the area for forces perceived by U.S. decision-making positions as hostile to their interests to protect the oil fields which located eastern Syria in cooperation with the SDF to continue its battle to fight ISIS and to prevent those fields from falling under the control of the Syrian government, Iran and Russia.
The U.S. administration publicly declares that, it will keep its forces in Syria to ensure that, the Syrian government and its allies don’t benefit from oil located in the geographical area between the northern bank of the Euphrates River and the Iraqi borders in the east and the Turkish borders in the north. The question we ask here is: Does the Syrian oil fields have a real attraction for the United States, or are there other goals which the latter seeks to achieve without announcing them in the current stage at least?
Syrian oil is an attraction
The oil map in northeastern Syria can be a factor for the international powers’ interest, due to the availability of reserves in commercial quantities and scalable within a record time. The reality of the oil energy in this region can be shown as follows:
The Oil
Although Syria isn’t floating on a sea of oil and gas, but it is still producing them in quantities which can contribute to the support of its GDP, where the quantity of the Syrian oil production exceeded 400,000 barrels per day in 2010, of which Syria exported 150,000 barrels per day. More than 90% of its oil exports were destined for some EU countries, such as Italy, France and Germany. Oil’s contribution to Syria’s GDP in the same year was US $3,2 billion. While most of the fields and wells stopped producing in light of the crisis, and the production of oil was in the following basins:
1. The Mesopotamian Basin, which extends from southeastern Turkey to the Arabian Gulf, with a length of 2,000 km and a width of about 350 km. The fields of Karachok, Swediyeh and Rumailan are the most important fields of this basin, where there were 1,255 wells working in these fields in 2010. The National Interest magazine reported in February 2013 that, the undiscovered oil reserves estimated at 315 billion barrels in addition to 69 billion barrels of discovered reserves. There are also some fields in this basin south of Hasakah and Tal Hamis.
2. The Euphrates Basin is characterized by its light oil production. Al-Omar field which lies to the east of Deir ez-Zor city is considered to be one of the largest oil fields in this basin, in addition to another group of fields such as al-Tank field in the deserts of al-She’eitat, al-Ward, al-Tim and al-Jafra fields, in addition to Konico gas plant, which was supplying the two gas stations of Jandar and Deir Ali with gas to generate electric power, and distributing gas to various Syrian governorates, as this plant has great strategic importance to various Syrian authorities.
3. Palmyra basin, which is considered the largest gas basin, and al-Shaer field is the most important fields in this basin, which is completely under the control of the Syrian government.
The SDF controls oil fields with a daily production quantity of 400,000 barrels, in case of operating its regular capacity and the rehabilitation of the extracting facilities, while the Syrian regime forces control oil fields which don’t exceed 35,000 barrels per day. These figures indicate the great importance of oil’s role in shaping the Syrian political balances, where oil cannot be ruled out or neglected in any political negotiations regarding the future of Syria, and oil can play a role in consolidating the rights of the various Syrian components in the future Syria.
Natural gas
During the last century, gas production in Syria has been limited to the gas associated with oil extraction in the known oil fields in northeastern Syria, despite the new discoveries in the governorates of Raqqa and Homs, and some exploratory studies which indicate the existence of large reserves in the coast. Syrian gas production, which reached 8.7 billion cubic meters in 2011, has been almost confined to the geography extending from the far northeast of Hasakah to Deir ez-Zor and the fields between the governorates of Raqqa and Homs. The gas produced was used for domestic and industrial consuming purposes and for the supply of electric power generating plants with the needed power for operation.
Gas production declined from 8.7 billion cubic meters per year in 2011 to 7.6 billion cubic meters in 2012, to about 5.9 billion cubic meters in 2013, to about 5.4 billion cubic meters in 2014, and declined to 3.65 billion before the fall of Palmyra to ISIS, where ISIS destroyed the gas supply line of the Syrian government in the region of Furuglus to deprive the government of gas sources which enables it to generate electricity through the generating stations operating in areas under its control, in order to force the government to deal with it by obtaining gas from ISIS in exchange for electricity. The supply of gas to Jandar station, which supplies Damascus, Homs and major Syrian cities with electric power by the gas coming from Koniko plant in Deir ez-Zor, which was controlled by various groups such Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic Shura Council and ISIS didn’t stop only after it was damaged as a result of the coalition forces bombing in March 2016. Those forces carried out an aerial landing operation in September 2017.
Natural gas production in Syria is currently distributed between the Syrian regime forces in the south and west areas of the Euphrates River, and the SDF in the north and east of the river. By following the production power of the gas fields, it can be seen that, there is a relative superiority of the Syrian regime than the SDF concerning the matter of gas production quantity, where the quantity of gas fields production which are under the control of the Syrian regime is 7.45 million cubic meters per day, which is equivalent to 57% of the total production capacity of the Syrian gas fields. While the production capacity of the fields under the control of the SDF is 5.6 million cubic meters per day, which is equivalent to 43% of the total production capacity of gas fields.
Despite the relative superiority of the government over the SDF in the quantity of natural gas production, the facilities built in the SDF areas play a vital role in the provision of electric power, as well as the domestic gas at the level of Syria, and we cannot also neglect the role of Konico plant in Deir ez-Zor and Swediyeh plant in Hasakah.
Syrian government adopts eastern investments
An important point in the map of the distribution of the fossorial energy in Syria, as it is noted that, the oil investments dating back to the last century are mostly located in the governorates of Hasaka and Deir ez-Zor, and it was relied in extraction on Western companies, led by the British-Dutch Shell company, while most modern investments in this area are located to the south and west of the Euphrates River, and in areas extending from the western and southern countryside of Deir ez-Zor and south of Raqqa to the desert (Badiya) of Palmyra and the surrounding of Homs, while the excavating and extracting working were being done by Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Venezuelan and Malawian companies. This means that, the Syrian government and after Bashar al-Assad took power in Syria has taken refuge to the oil investment companies in the eastern countries, despite the fact that, his oil exports to the European Union countries reached 90% of the total oil exports.
What is noticeable in the strategy of investing fossorial fuels for the Syrian government in the current century is to build strong economic relations based on granting oil concessions to partners competing with the Western policies in the Middle East, and thus working to get out of the circle of the Western control, not only at this point, but exceeded to build strong and unequal relations with neighboring Turkey. The Syrian government envisioned that, this would give it an advanced diplomatic status in light of the global changes, and thought that, it would be able to play through the axes to create a global rift in the Middle East, and Syria will become the country which everyone competes to win. Of course, this has happened, but in another way and in calculations which were completely different from the perceptions of the Syrian government.
This movement by the Syrian government led to the almost complete cessation of oil investments in the southern and western regions of the Euphrates River, and painted a new phase which restored for the West a key role in the Syrian investment map in general. It has made its northern part an important crossing project starting from Minor and East Asia and ending on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. So it can be said that, oil can be an attractive factor for the United States to stay in Syria.
Not only oil kept U.S. troops
The U.S. announcement of staying in the oil areas in eastern Syria carries multiple U.S. messages addressed to all actors in the Syrian geography, including the impossibility of achieving any political solution to the Syrian killing outside the U.S. dictates, to impose its legitimacy in staying on the ground on those actors and to control the joints of solutions, as it controls the joints of chaos where the components of northern Syria may be one of the most damaged.
It has been confirmed from the field data in the past few days, the spread of political chaos among all actors in the Syrian equation because of the partial shift in U.S. policies, and stability remains linked to its return largely, albeit through the oil fields.