US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stepped the rhetoric against the Ba’athist regime of Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad, asking allies to cut commercial ties to Syria, include the import of Syrian heavy crude and gas.
“The United States will continue to work with our partners to turn this growing consensus into increased pressure and isolation for the Assad regime,” Clinton said on Friday. “In particular, we urge those countries still buying Syrian oil and gas, those countries still sending Assad weapons, those countries whose political and economic support give him comfort in his brutality to get on the right side of history. President Assad has lost the legitimacy to lead, and it is clear that Syria would be better off without him.”
Repression of civil opposition to Assad continues unabated, with violence in Alleppo, the country’s second city, escalating over the weekend. Between 1,700 and 2,000 civilians are reported to have died since uprisings began. Reuters reports that Syrian warships in the Mediterranean have begun shelling the town of Lattakia, killing up to ten, and that the city of Homs remains under seige.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has been in touch with heads of state in the UK and Saudi to win backing for more extensive sanctions against Assad’s regime, for which oil revenue is a valuable source of funds.
As previously reported, the EU is Syria’s main market for crude export, with refineries in Germany and Italy best placed to refine the country’s sticky, sulphur-rich oil.
EU countries are emroiled in a debt crisis that has in recent weeks extended to Italy, with speculation that France could be the next country to take a hammering from the jittery eurozone bond market. This economic turbulaence has made EU leaders wary of the destabilising effect of restricting oil flows, with the EU preferring incremental tightening of the current sanctions regime rather thanÂ
Meanwhile Canada has increased its unilateral sanctions against Syria, blacklisting a commercial bank and a telecoms provider, according to AP reports. “Canada reiterates its strong condemnation of the ongoing violent military assault by the Assad regime against the Syrian people,” Foreign Minister John Baird said in a statement.
The government will freeze the assets of additional people and entities linked to Assad, Baird said. The measures by North American countries are largely symbolic, as niether are major importers of Syrian hydrocarbons. Canada only exports around $60 million of goods and service annually to Syria, receiving around a tenth that amount in return.
Much more worrying for the Assad regime will be the reduced bilateral trade with Turkey, valued by Ibrahim Saif of the Carnegie Middle East Center at $2.27 billion last year, and the cessation of oil exports to the EU, which provides around a third of total government revenues.
Turkey may consider cooperating with international powers in the event they decide to intervene militarily in Syria, according to a report in the Turkish “Hurriyet” newspaper on Saturday
Turkey has lost its patience with Syria, according to Turkish officials, and Turkish President Abdullah Gul has issued an ultimatum to Syrian President Bashar Assad via Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who visited Syria on Tuesday.
Iran and Iraq have underscored their continuing support of Assad, with Iran promising a $5.5 billion loan and 290,000 barrels per day of oil to help sustain the Ba’athist regime.
Meanwhile, Syria’s Oil and Gas Minister Sufian Allaw said that oil output in the first half of 2011 increased year on year despite the chronic nationwide unrest.
Syria’s oil production in the period was estimated at 70.092 million bbl with an average of 387,250 barels per day (bpd), a rise of 957 bpd year on year, according to Allaw, who added that the country exported 27.793 million bbl of light and heavy oil in the period.
Allaw said Syria’s gas production in the six-month period was 5.158 bcm with an average of 30.29 million cubic meters per day, up 3 million cubic meters per day over the same period of last year.
State firm Syrian Petroleum Company is the dominant player in thr domestic oil industry. Shell have significant interests in the country under a JV with the China National Petroleum Corporation and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. Total Suncor and AIM-listed Gulfsands Petroleum, which continues exporation of block 56 in the Khurbet East and Yousefieh fields.
