Syria has reacted defiantly to the EU’s import ban on its oil, vowing to sell the oil to Russia or China instead, Reuters has reported. The EU was virtually Syria’s sole customer for oil exports before the bloc slapped an import ban on the country’s oil late last week.
The move is part of an effort by the union to pressure President Bashar Assad to end his violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrations. “The sanctions will not hurt Syria, Syria will remain standing on its own two feet… There is no problems as long as our local needs are secure”, Syrian Finance Minister Mohammad Jleilati said.
The EU stopped short of banning all trade between European energy companies and Syria because Brussels did not want to increase the suffering of the Syrian people by cutting off fuel needed for power generation.
In a separate development, Norway has said it will also adopt the EU sanctions against Damascus. “Despite international condemnation, the Syrian regime has not renounced using violence against its own people”, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in a statement on Wednesday, Agence France Presse reported.
“We therefore agree with the very clear European signals to the Syrian regime and Norway will as a result adhere to the enlarged measures adopted by the EU against Syria”, he added.
Syria is now left looking for new buyers for the 110,000-150,000 barrels a day of crude it typically exports – 99 percent of it to Europe – and hopes the world’s biggest oil producer, Russia and major importer China will buy some of it.
“We will either refine it … or sell it directly to Russia, China or any country that accepts to buy our extra oil”, Jleilati said.
“Otherwise we will keep it as reserves”, he added, without elaborating on whether such a move would see production shut down at Syrian oil fields or pumping into storage sites.
The International Energy Agency estimates Syria produced around 370,000 barrels per day of oil in July, while monthly Syrian crude loading programmes pegged exports at 150,000 barrels per day — worth nearly $16 million a day at current prices.
Syria can only refine up to 240,000 barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration, so the country would have to slash crude production if new buyers for the European oil were not found.
Traders view is that Russia and China are unlikely to take up any Syrian offer in the absence of deep discounts.
“The size of Syrian oil exports is relatively small… so it’s not very convenient to load and transport Syrian crude to China”, a trader at Chinese state oil company said.
“I can’t see any demand for Syrian crude in the near term… But if Syrian crude is cheap enough, I won’t rule out the possibility of buying it in the future”, he said.
A trader in Moscow said Russia, as the world’s second largest crude exporter, is even less likely to buy Syrian crude.
“I think Russia won’t spoil relations with Europe or the United States because of that”, he said.
