Recent years witnessed the Islamic State forces taking over most of Syria’s oil production more than three years ago, and the Kurdish forces seizing the Rumailan oil fields. Throughout all this, the regime did not make any attempts to retrieve these fields, and it did not even bomb the fields to ensure the Islamic State did not benefit from them. Syrians asked and continue to ask, why?
It is known that Syria's production of oil was between 340,000-370,000 barrels per day, and in very few instances it rose to above 380,000 barrels per day before 2011. Several international companies were extracting the oil including, the Dutch-British Shell company in partnership with the Euphrates Oil company.
All of their fields were located in the Rumailan which produce other 110,000 barrels per day. The second company was the French Total which operated in Deir Ez Zor and extracted oil in cooperation with the Deir Ez Zor Syrian Oil company. The production in Deir Ez Zor reached 70,000 barrels daily. The two companies’ production reached more than 200,000 barrels per day. The partnership with the Syrian companies includes two stipulations that the majority of the staff the foreign companies are Syrian, and regarding production, the Syrian government buys oil from them at a price lower than the international price and exclusively in Syrian Pounds.
The remaining oil production, more than 150,000 barrels per day, was extracted by several companies, including a Canadian and a Syrian company. The Syrian state bought the oil in the same manner.
Most of the Syrian oil production was purchased by the Syrian government almost entirely from foreign companies, whereby 100,000 barrels per were designated for daily domestic demand, and the remainder was exported for US Dollars through other foreign companies controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s maternal uncle, Mohammad Makhlouf who made huge personal profits.
The overview of the oil production may help explain the regime's lack of interest in losing its oil production, since it was mainly purchasing the oil from the foreign companies anyway. The only variable that has happened is that the regime used to buy the oil in Syrian Pounds but now must buy it with hard currency.
So, rather than depending on the what is produced locally, Iran exports oil to the regime. The regime was never interested in regaining the oil fields in northern Syria because they did not belong to the state but to foreign companies. When the Islamic State took over the oil fields in Deir Ez Zor, the Syrian regime continued to buy raw oil from the Islamic State and in Syrian Pounds without this affecting the regime’s economy in any way.
