Damascus, SANA-Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Suleiman al-Abbas said on Thursday that the oil sector was one of the basic pillars of the national economy, thus, it was targeted from outside before it was targeted internally through imposing sanctions and blockade to prevent the country from exporting it.
“That led to decreasing the production after it hit nearly 385 thousand barrel per day and nearly 29 million cubic meter of gas which were meeting Syria demands from the oil products,” Minister al-Abbas said at a meeting for the oil workers syndicate.
He revealed that the total direct and indirect losses in the oil sector due to the terrorist acts reached at 27 billion USD.
Al-Abbas added that the oil sector has endured a lot of burdens by the acts of armed terrorist organizations which targeted the railways to prevent workers from transferring the fuel, oil and gas in addition to targeting the petroleum and gas fields and investing them through random means after the European Union has given the license to those organizations to market the oil and export it to the neighboring countries, mainly Turkey.
“The suffering of this sector increased in 2013 when the oil pumping completely stopped and the terrorist organizations seized some of those regions,” the Minister affirmed.
Mazen Eyon