Syria: Oil sanctions on the horizon

Syrian opposition efforts to cut a big funding lifeline to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime may be about to yield fruit

EUROPEAN buyers of Syria’s Souedie crude are considering a boycott of the heavy oil that can be refined only in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and France. Anti-Assad forces have focused on the oil and gas sector as a crucial pressure point for a government that has been starved of its only alternative source of hard currency earnings – tourism – since widespread unrest hit Syria in mid-March. Ausama Monajed, of the National Initiative for Change, claimed a boycott of oil exports would deprive the government of up to $8 million a day in earnings. “That revenue goes straight to the prime minister’s office making it easy to direct it to military and security operations,” he said. The Syrian oppo