WORLD
Syrian Petroleum Losses more than 17 Billion Dollars
Baku, November 15 (AZERTAC). The value of direct and indirect damages on petroleum sector in Syria, due to the continuous crisis in the country, almost 17.7 billion US dollars, as it was stated in Tishreen public newspaper last Tuesday, based in the Syrian Petroleum Establishment.
And it declared that “loss of direct damage of production is estimated with almost 4.2 billion dollars, and the loss of indirect damage of production is estimated with almost 3.15 billion dollars due to postponing production and transportation”
The Syrian authorities declared in August that it supported the petroleum sector with almost half a billion dollars in the first half of 2013, indicating that the general production detorierated in the same period for almost 90% than it was before the conflict, 31 months ago.
The production reached half in the first six months with 39thousand barrels a day, compared to 380 thousand before mid-March 2013.
The authorities justified this to “the bad security situation in the areas with petroleum fields, as well as sabotage and arson these fields had undergone, not to forget the economic punishments” those punishments enforced by the European countries and USA on exporting and importing petroleum from and to Syria.
Syrian government has supported petroleum continuously, in addition to electricity, sugar, rice, and flour. The crisis has pushed the government to import all their needs of petroleum semi-completely, depending especially on Iran one of the regional alliances of Bashar Asad regime.
The petroleum production presents the biggest source of foreign currencies in Syria. Most petroleum fields are based in the north and east of the country, which are mostly under the control of opposition and Kurdish fighters.
The crisis was reflected enormously on the Syrian economy, that all incomes fell back and so did the value of the national currency, the incomes of investments, tourism, and external trading has gone down to almost zero, according to economic experts.