By Selen Tonkus
ANKARA
Oil production in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war three years ago has almost totally collapsed due to war damage and EU sanctions, says a Syria expert in Washington.
At the beginning of the war, output was at 400 thousand barrels a day and has fallen to 10 thousand this year, says Faysal Itani from the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council. This represents a decline of 97 percent. Revenue lost is estimated to be around $23 billion, Syrian oil ministry announced ten days ago.
Most of the oil fields are known to be controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant-led rebels. They seized some of the largest oil fields close to the Iraqi border in recent months -- the oilfields of Deir al-Zor, the al Shaer field in Homs and al Omar.
There is the emergence of a massive informal economy in both regime and rebel areas says Itani.
"Warlordism is rampant, and revenues in this case go to the black market" he adds.
He emphasized that most dramatic effect is the physical damage to infrastructure, in terms of both extraction and delivery as most of all the fields captured by militias.
"Revenue from oil assets captured in Deir al-Zor, for example, flow to rebel groups, their tribal allies, and criminal groups -- even though some of these groups sell oil to regime-held areas," he says.
The European Union, main consumer of Syrian oil until March 2011, recently announced that it had renewed a blacklist of companies that sell oil from Syria to the union. An EU foreign policy representative told the Anadolu Agency that as of July 22, there is a total of 192 persons and 62 entities subject to EU sanctions.
Companies which are on EU's blacklist is as follows:
''Syrian Trading Oil Company (Sytrol), General Petroleum Corporation, Deir ez-Zur Petroleum Company, Ebla Petroleum Company, Dijla Petroleum Company, Syrian Petroleum Company, Mahrukat Oil Company, Syrian Company for Oil Transport, The Baniyas Refinery Company, The Homs Refinery Company, Tri Oceans Trading.''
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