That sceeching you hear is the Syrian economy coming to a halt. The cheap smuggled Iraqi oil boosted the Syrian economy for years.
The reshaping of the Middle East has begun…
Iraq oil exports to Syria stop
CAIRO - Syria has advised its oil clients to expect much lower loadings this month, an indication that its oil imports from Iraq via pipeline have stopped, New York’s Energy Intelligence Group (EIG) reports.
“Syria’s state oil marketer Sytrol told its clients that, effective immediately, export volumes for full-year 2003 would be cut by 40%,” reported the Energy Intelligence Briefing, a publication of the authoritative EIG.
“Sytrol’s decision is the result of US troops in Iraq closing down the pipeline that fed Syrian refiners with Iraq’s Basra (southern Iraqi fields) blend crude, freeing up Syria’s own oil production for export,” it added.
Syria’s own oil export capacity is estimated at about 200,000 barrels per day (bpd), but it had been selling until last March nearly twice the amount, thanks to cheap crude supply from Iraq that started in November 2000 without UN authorisation.
Syria never confirmed this trade and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime kept on denying it. Damascus came several times under fire from Washington for importing Iraqi oil without the approval of the United Nations.
Iraq is only authorized to sell crude under the UN-supervised “oil-for-food” program that channels oil export revenue to the purchase of humanitarian and basic goods.
Oil exported under the program was loaded from Iraq’s Gulf terminal of Mina al-Bakr and from the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, to which Iraq was linked through pipeline.
“At its peak, last year, Iraq smuggled some 450,000 bpd outside the UN oil-for-food program,” the Energy Intelligence Briefing said.
According to the publication, Syria was the “largest taker of smuggled crude from Iraq, which, until last month, also sent 100,000 bpd to Jordan, and, until recently, also 50,000 bpd to Turkey."
Shipments to Jordan and Turkey were ferried by trucks.
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