Konflikten i Syrien

Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Suleiman al-Abbas dismissed US Secretary of State John Kerry’s statements on Saturday, stressing that the Ministry has never sold or bought oil from ISIS or any other terrorist organization. These allegations are totally untrue, the Minister stressed in a statement, affirming that the Syrian government prohibits by all available means oil theft from the fields and wells in Syria.

The Minister condemned the sides which have encouraged and facilitated stealing and marketing the Syrian oil, stressing that those sides are the same countries that made marketing this stolen oil legitimate by resolution No. 186 dated April 22, 2013 which was issued by the European Union.

So successful have they been in driving rebel gains in northwestern Syria that rebels call the missile the “Assad Tamer,” a play on the word Assad, which means lion. And in recent days they have been used with great success.
Since Wednesday, when Syrian troops launched their first offensive backed by the might of Russia’s military, dozens of videos have been posted on YouTube showing rebels firing the U.S.-made missiles at Russian-made tanks and armored vehicles belonging to the Syrian army.
The rebels claim they took out 24 tanks and armored vehicles on the first day, and the toll has risen daily since then.

“It was a tank massacre,” said Capt. Mustafa Moarati, whose Tajamu al-Izza group says it destroyed seven tanks and armored vehicles Wednesday.

The hits also plunged Washington into what amounts to a proxy war of sorts with Moscow, despite Obama’s insistence this month that “we’re not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia.”

“It’s a proxy war by happenstance,” said Jeff White of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who counted at least 15 tanks and vehicles destroyed or disabled in one day. “The rebels happen to have a lot of TOWs in their inventory. The regime happened to attack them with Russian support. I don’t see it as a proxy war by decision.”

BUTTER: HOW CAN SYRIAN CITIES STILL HAVE POWER?

Syria's energy supply has been greatly affected by the war. The country suffers from a lack of electricity and frequent blackouts. Most of the population still relies on the pre-war power grid although in many areas, particularly those outside regime or Islamic State control, Syrians have to resort to diesel generators for electricity supplies. Control over interlinked power stations and oil and gas fields has become divided between the government and various insurgent groups. In many places, otherwise hostile factions therefore quietly cooperate across the battle lines to keep the system running or for economic gain.

In late 2015, Syria’s power stations generated between 1,500 MW and 1,800 MW, according to a statement in parliament in early December by Imad Khamis, the electricity minister. This represents less than 20 percent of the country’s installed capacity of almost 10,000 MW in 2011.

It was not clear whether Khamis’s total included hydroelectric power stations on the Euphrates that are being run under the control of the Islamic State. Those plants, at the Tabqa, al-Baath and Tishreen dams, have notional capacity to produce about 1,000 MW, but their actual output depends on water levels and the state of the turbines.

Most of Syria’s thermal power stations depend on supplies of natural gas or fuel oil. The main plants around Damascus—Deir Ali, Nasiriya and Tishreen—are linked to gas fields between Homs and Palmyra that are under regime control and still producing at reasonable levels. The Jandar plant, south of Homs, is linked to the Conoco associated gas plant in the Deir Ezzor governorate, which is under Islamic State control. The plant’s output has recently been affected by air raids by the U.S.-led coalition on nearby oil fields such as Jafra, Omar, Tanak and al-Ward, which are the source of the associated gas processed at the plant. Gas from the Islamic State-controlled Twinan plant south of Raqqa is pumped to the Aleppo power station.

As a backup to natural gas for power generation, the government uses fuel oil, mainly produced at the Banias refinery from crude oil supplied by Iran. Most of the gasoline and diesel distributed in regime areas comes from the refinery or from tanker supplies to the Banias port. Consumers in rebel-controlled and Islamic State-controlled areas depend on fuel originating from Islamic State fields. The northern Hasakah region, largely controlled by Kurdish groups, processes oil from fields in this area to meet local needs.

David C. Butter is an associate fellow of the MENA program at Chatham House. He recently published a detailed report on the state of Syria's economy.

The regime retains a very large, if old, production facility to the immediate north of nearby Homs. Conversely the Islamic State does not possess enough plants to enable it to produce and market usable gas for domestic or industrial purposes, and it is unlikely to capture what it needs in working order. So it may be seeking to compel the regime into an exchange: continued flow of gas from eastern fields to regime power plants in return for payment or electricity supply. This is the sort of deal that has allowed continued operation of the Euphrates dam near Raqqa, held by the Islamic State but maintained with technical assistance from the regime.