A delegation from the Turkish Ministry of Energy has been in Syria since Saturday December 28 to help the new authorities in Damascus restore access to energy services, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. In the background, oil and gas issues, on land, but also at sea.
3 mins
Turkey is definitely very active with the new Syrian authorities, since the Islamist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) of Ahmad al-Chareh (also known as Abu Mohammed al-Joulani) overthrown Bashar al-Assad last December 8. Ankara has just dispatched a delegation from the Turkish Ministry of Energy on Saturday, December 28 to offer to help the Syria to rebuild its energy system.
“ We must quickly provide electricity to areas of Syria that are deprived of it “, Minister Alparslan Bayraktar declared from Ankara. “ First through imports. Ankara could send electricity to Lebanon via Syria, said the Turkish minister. We are also considering setting up local electricity production “.
Replacing Iranian crude
There Türkiye already supplies electricity to northern Syria, which is under the control of its army. But in the rest of Syrian territory, half of the electricity network has been destroyed since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. The fall of Bashar al-Assad in early December also put an end to deliveries from Iranian tankers. The country’s large thermal power station, near the Baniyas refinery (30 MW), is therefore no longer supplied.
Syria is indeed a producer of hydrocarbons, but the main deposits located in the governorate of Deir Ezzor in the east of the country are under Kurdish and American control. The current rapprochement Ankara authorities with the Kurdish separatist organization PKK could change the situation and facilitate the reintegration of oil revenues into the coffers of the Syrian state (25% of the budget in 2010 with national production of 400,000 barrels per day, compared to 30,000 today, of which less than 8,000 are controlled by Damascus) if exports are freed from Western sanctions.
Qatar to Europe Gas Corridor Project
But Turkey’s energy plans go well beyond that. “ We will work on an infrastructure plan with the new leaders. There are many issues that need to mature, such as an oil pipeline from Syria to Turkey, which would join our oil pipeline between Iraq and Turkey. » Syria could therefore be connected to the oil pipeline between Kirkuk and Ceyhan, on the Turkish side of the Mediterranean, to offer it access to resources or an outlet for its exports.
The Turkish minister also dug up the gas corridor mega-project dating from the early 2000s. There are ongoing discussions to transport gas from Qatar to Turkey and Europe, via Syria. These plans are still in their early stages “, he admitted, “ and require more in-depth technical and financial studies. »
Sharing maritime resources with Syria
Turkey is thus trying to redraw the map of land energy infrastructure, thanks to the regime change in Syria, but it also intends to review on this occasion the map of maritime resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, an area rich in hydrocarbons that the countries are competing for. local residents.
“ We will conclude a maritime sovereignty agreement with the Syrian administration », declared Turkish Minister of Transport Abdulkadir Uraloğlu in Ankara, on December 24 last Monday. Enough to worry Cyprus and Greece, already very unhappy with the Turkish maritime agreement with Libya. This agreement was deemed illegal by the European Union, which has not yet positioned itself on the current new definition of maritime borders between Turkey.
Also readSince the fall of Assad in Syria, Turkey has its eyes on the pro-Kurdish regions of Rojava