Syria’s losses in the oil and gas sectors since the beginning of the war in 2011 until mid-2022 have amounted to about $107 billion dollars, revealed a letter sent by the Foreign Ministry to the UN-Secretary-General and President of the UN Security Council on Monday.
The letter said figures from the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources and its accurate statistics show that the direct losses suffered by the key sector amounted to $24.2 billion.
“The estimated value of these losses resulting from extraction, smuggling and illegal trade in Syrian oil, gas and mineral resources amounted to $18.2 billion until the end of H1 2022, while the estimated value of losses resulting from crimes committed by armed factions reached $3.2 billion.”
The letter stressed that the value of losses resulting from the operations carried out by the US-led coalition forces in Syria amounted to $2.8 billion, while the estimated value of indirect losses until mid-2022 amounted to $82.9 billion.
The Foreign Ministry said these figures reflect “the loss in Syria’s production of crude oil, natural gas, domestic gas, various oil derivatives and mineral wealth.”
It held the international coalition forces “the legal, moral and financial responsibility for the direct and indirect losses incurred in the oil and gas sectors, the Syrian mineral wealth, and the environment.”
Separately, two Iranian gas tankers arrived at the Syrian port of Baniyas on the Mediterranean in less than a week, following the opening of a new line of credit between the two countries.
President Bashar al-Assad ratified in July a “new phase” of the credit line agreement.
The deal aims to provide the war-torn country with energy and other supplies needed to make up for its shortfall.
Local sources said both tankers were carrying 2,000 tons of gas and were unloaded at the northwestern port on Saturday and Monday.
Authorities unloaded the tankers and shipped the cargo directly to various regions to alleviate the domestic gas crisis that has worsened in recent months.
Two oil tankers had arrived at the port in mid-August. The first was carrying 31,000 tons of diesel while the other was carrying 5,000 tons.
This brings the total number of gas and oil tankers arriving in Syria from Iran during August to five, added to a tanker carrying one million barrels of crude oil that arrived in July and four tankers carrying 3.3 million barrels in June.
The gas crisis has led to a hike in of prices of basic materials and affected the transport, agriculture and industry sectors.
Assad visited Tehran in May and met with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The visit culminated in the activation of the credit line and Iran’s announcement that it would maintain its support to the Syrian president.
A credit line is a flexible loan from a bank or financial institution, with a defined amount of money that can be accessed as needed and then repaid immediately or over a specified period of time.
The first credit line opened by Iran to Syria was in 2013, with a ceiling amounting to $1 billion dollars with soft interests, followed by another worth $3 billion to finance the country’s needs of oil and its derivatives.
In 2015, a new credit line worth $1 billion was opened, the revenues of which were used by Damascus to finance the import of goods and merchandise and the implementation of projects.
Syria’s internal commerce ministry announced in early August a petrol price hike of 127 percent.
