The Race Is On Between West And East For Control In Syria

Following the surprise removal on 8 December of President Bashar al-Assad after 53 years of his family’s rule in Syria, long-dormant plans in the U.S. are being dusted off about what will happen next there and who will control it.

The plans were drawn up in anticipation that Bashar al-Assad would fall soon after July 2011, a senior energy security source who worked closely with the administration of then-U.S. President Barack Obama exclusively told OilPrice.com. “At that point [when defectors from the Syrian army formed the Free Syrian Army and began an armed conflict across the country], Washington was certain that he [al-Assad] would fall in a matter of weeks, so they expedited the existing planning for that contingency, as did Russia and Iran, and the European Union too,” he said.

“The plans for each included options to support its [Syria’s] production of oil and gas as this was a key source of its revenues,” he said. “These were to run in parallel with, and support, whichever group finally came out on top after he [al-Assad] was removed from the picture,” he added.

At the time of the outbreak of hostilities in 2011, Syria had been producing around 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from proved reserves of 2.5 billion barrels. For a long period before that – prior to the recovery rate dropping off due to a lack of enhanced oil recovery techniques being employed at the major fields — it had been producing nearly 600,000 bpd. Europe imported at least US$3 billion worth of oil per year from Syria up to the beginning of 2011, and many European refineries were configured to process the heavy, sour ‘Souedie’ crude oil that makes up much of Syria’s output, with the remainder being the sweet and lighter ‘Syrian Light’ grade.

Most of this – some 150,000-bpd combined – went to Germany, Italy, and France, from one of Syria’s three Mediterranean export terminals: Banias, Tartus, and Latakia. As an adjunct to this, a multitude of international oil companies were operating in Syria’s energy sector, including the UK’s Shell, Petrofac and Gulfsands Petroleum, France’s then-Total, the China National Petroleum Corporation, India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp, Canada’s Suncor Energy, and Russia’s Tatneft and Stroytransgaz. Syria’s gas sector was at least as vibrant as its oil one, with proved reserves of 8.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, and around 316 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) of dry natural gas produced.

After the fighting began in earnest in 2011, the first of the three major options to support the Syrian energy and financial infrastructure for whichever group took over was from the U.S. This involved moving gas from Qatar through Saudi Arabia and Jordan, then through Syria whereupon it could be moved into Turkey and sold on in the rest of Europe, if resources allowed.

The European option involved United Nations peace-keeping monitors in Syria, bringing in hydrocarbons industry experts from the UN Security Council member states, and letting the Qatar-Syria-Turkey, and Iran-Iraq-Syria-Turkey, pipelines develop organically over time. The Russian option focused on resuscitating the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, moving Iranian, and later Iraqi and Syrian gas into Europe.

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However, as al-Assad survived the initial phases of the uprising – crucially supported by the Russian military — he went with the Russian energy and financial option focusing long term on the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plans shorter-term on the build-out of Syria’s oil and gas infrastructure.

In 2017 this was formalised in a memorandum of understanding that encompassed 40 energy projects, plus the full reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Aleppo thermal plant, the installation of the Deir Ezzor power plant, and the expansion of capacity of the Mharda and Tishreen plants, with a view to re-energising Syria’s power grid and restoring the main control centre for the grid back to Damascus.

Consequently, it was little surprise that early on after al-Assad fled to Moscow a month ago, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov confirmed that his country had been in direct contact with the radical Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), about the future of its energy projects, and of its key military bases across Syria as well. These comprise the naval base at Tartus – Russia’s only Mediterranean port, its Khmeimim air force base near Latakia, and its huge listening station nearby.

Aside from these prized assets, there are three other reasons why Syria remains so crucial to Russia’s core geopolitical strategy in the Middle East and globally, as fully analysed in my latest book on the new global oil market order.

First, it is the biggest country on the western side of the Shia Crescent of Power that Russia had been meticulously developing for years as a counterpoint to the U.S.’s own sphere of influence centred then on Saudi Arabia (for hydrocarbons supplies) and Israel (for military and intelligence assets).

Second, it offers a long Mediterranean coastline from which Russia can send oil and gas products – or anything else it wanted – from itself or from its allies (notably Iran) for export into major oil and gas hubs in Turkey, Greece and Italy or into Africa.

And third, it highlighted to other countries in the Middle East and beyond Russia’s willingness and ability to act decisively on the side of the autocratic dynasties across the region.

Aside from denying Russia all these direct benefits (and doing the same for China indirectly) – which has enormous value in itself — the U.S. and its allies also understand the key role that Syria was to play logistically for Russia’s plans to expedite Iran’s long-desired ‘Land Bridge’ and for China’s broader ambitions for its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI).

The Land Bridge – running from Iran across Iraq, and into Syria — was close to being operational by the time al-Assad was removed and would have provided and Russia to exponentially increase weapons delivery into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria.

This would have dramatically increased the ability of Iran and its proxies to launch attacks on Israel as part of a broader rolling plan to further destabilise the Middle East. China would also have benefited from the same advantages inherent in a Syrian presence as Russia, particularly as the two countries include the dual-use of airports and seaports by both its civilians and its militaries as part of their standard cooperation agreements across the Middle East, most notably for Iran, Iraq and al-Assad’s Syria.

Additionally complementary to Russia’s previous plans for Syria was the recent announcement of the China-backed US$17 billion Strategic Development Road (SDR) which will create a major transport corridor from Basra in Iraq to southern Turkey (close to the Syrian border), and link in with China’s BRI.

The planned linkages between the SDR and China’s BRI would allow Beijing to further build up its own ‘security’ presence across the region and also open the way for synergies with plans for the Land Bridge.

That said, shortly after Russia established contact with the HTS rebel group after al-Assad was removed last month, NATO member Turkey sent its own delegation to Damascus to discuss supplying Syria with electricity and rebuilding its oil and gas sector.

Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said his country is studying how to use Syria’s oil and natural gas resources for reconstruction. Given the country’s huge geopolitical importance, it is not surprising that several formerly impeccable senior security and energy sources in Washington, London, and Brussels exclusively told OilPrice.com just after al-Assad’s removal that the sudden – and otherwise inexplicable – success of the Syrian rebels led by HTS was in no small part connected to a massive surge in U.S. and U.K. support for them in the run-up to the coup.

“The U.S. wanted to put Moscow’s and Tehran’s leadership on notice that Washington can easily redraw and restructure borders and regimes in not just the Middle East but also in Eastern Europe, if it wants to,” a senior security source in the European Union (E.U.) told OilPrice.com. “As he’s [al-Assad] gone now, I can’t see either Washington sitting back and allowing anyone to benefit from this other than the U.S., and if the reconstruction is done in a gradual and inclusive [with Syria’s principal former rebel groups], the outcome may be better than seen elsewhere in the region,” he concluded.