Syria desperately seeks fuel

The Assad government is reasserting control over territory, but still faces huge problems sourcing sufficient volumes of oil and gas to meet domestic demand

Syria's energy prospects have been affected in starkly contrasting ways by recent actions from the US administration. The sanctions announced by the Treasury Department's office of foreign assets control in November on entities involved in shipping petroleum to Syria caused severe disruptions to Syria's imports of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and gasoil in early 2019. This was when demand for heating fuel was at its height during a spell of bitterly cold winter weather. At the other end of the spectrum, US president Trump's mid-December announcement that he had decided to pull US forces out of north-eastern Syria has opened the way for the government of President Bashar al-Assad to reasse