An oil pipeline connecting Syria’s eastern fields to its largest refinery in the embattled city of Homs has exploded, according to several reports citing activists and eyewitnesses in the city.
The incident is the third reported attack on the oil pipeline since civil unrest in Syria began, with the government blaming terrorists for the attack and opposition activities blaming the government.
A gas pipeline has also reportedly been attacked on Sunday, with Sana, the Syrian state news agency, reporting that an “armed terrorist group” bombed a section of a line near Talbiseh, 15 km (10 miles) north of Homs, that provides feedstock for a power station.
The Homs refinery, located in Bab Amro, a district seven kilometres west of the city centre, is the largest in the country with a refining capacity of 5.7 mmt of crude, with the ability to process light and heavy grades. It is connected to Syria’s eastern oil fields by the 250,000 barrels of crude per day (bpd), 347-mile Tel Adas-Tartous crude line, which runs on from Homs to the Tartous export terminal on Syria’s western coast.
Homs has seen sustained shelling in a bid by the government to end a civil uprising against the regime of president Bashar Assad which has been escalating since March 2011.
Syria’s oil exports to Europe are currently barred under sanctions, a move that has severely damaged the Assad regime’s finances. Before sanctions were implemented Europe imported 95% of Syria’s marketed oil, which in turn provided the government with around a third of its revenue. Syria has a production capacity of around 400,000 bpd, and before sanctions were implemented was exporting around 140,000 bpd.
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