Baladi News
The United States’ primary allies in Syria have supplied oil to Damascus, despite the regime being sanctioned by Washington.
The Assad regime and the Kurdish militias that comprise the majority of the Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have long maintained a working relationship despite vast political differences before and after the 2011 uprisings that has threatened both of their livelihoods.
Turkey's official Anadolu Agency and Daily Sabah newspaper cited local sources Thursday as saying that a new deal had been reached to allow the People's Protection Units (YPG)—the leading faction of the Syrian Democratic Forces—to more quickly transport oil via new pipelines being built under the regime-held, eastern city of Deir Ezzor.
The sources claimed that companies operating under regime control had already begun laying pipes near Al-Shuhayl, a town off the western bank of the Euphrates River.
The deal was reportedly the result of an agreement made during talks last July when the two sides agreed to share production profits.
The day after the Turkish report was published, The Wall Street Journal published its own piece citing a person familiar with US intelligence and a tanker driver transporting oil in elaborating on the arrangement. The article found that oil tankers were traveling near daily to transport oil to the Qatarji Group, a firm hit by US sanctions in September due to its alleged involvement in facilitating oil deals between the regime and ISIS.
The SDF's share includes most of the nation's oil resources, which produced up to 350,000 barrels per day prior to the war before dwindling to about 25,000, according to current estimates, while the regime still controls the nation's oil refineries. The successful Syrian Democratic Forces campaign to retake the oil and gas fields from ISIS helped to starve the jihadis of their black market revenue. Now Damascus is in dire need of this income to establish an economy stable enough to capitalize on successive military victories.
This has led to a number of profit-sharing agreements, extending back to at least 2017, as Damascus continued to pay the salaries of workers in Kurdish-held cities and talks expanded last year to include the Syrian regime potentially retaking control of certain facilities such as the Al-Tabqa well near the northern city of Raqqa. In return, the SDF pushed for wider recognition of the country's significant Kurdish minority and for greater autonomy.
Source: Orient Net.