Oil Minister Eng. Sufian Allaw revealed his country’s determination to increase oil production to two billion barrels by 2025, declaring that Syria has offered the equivalent of 40 per cent of the area of international companies to carry out exploration of new or re-evaluate previous data.

Allaw said in an interview with the newspaper /al-Hayat/ published yesterday, that the ministry plan to maintain the country’s production of oil, currently 380 thousand barrels per day, after declining during the past years, pointing out a strategy extends from 2009 to 2025 for the production of two billion barrels of oil and 160 billion cubic meters of clean gas.

The statistics from the Ministry of Oil shows that Syria’s oil production fell from 600 thousand barrels per day in 1996 to 400 thousand in 2006 and 380,000 currently.

” The minister said that Syria “has offered 74 thousand square kilometers, constituting about 40 per cent of the area of international companies for exploration of new or re-evaluation of data prior and follow-up exploration of the new companies after abandoned by the old firms either material weakness or unwillingness to follow-up.”

He added, “We have between 7 and 10 companies in the sites under exploration has not produced yet, and we hope to achieve a positive outcome.”

Allaw estimated inherent reserves in Syrian territories by about 44 billion barrels. He confirmed that “his country’s gas production currently amounts to 28 million cubic meters / day after the gas plant (Ebla) in production and end of the year will rise to 32 million and 36 million next year.”
. “We are planning to use the gas in public transport instead of diesel and gasoline to supply the industrial city of Adra,” he said, adding that the country imports about 2,5 million cubic meter of Egyptian gas per day through the Arab gas pipeline and plans to import from Iran and Azerbaijan.

The Minister expressed his hope to cooperate with Iraq in addressing the Iraqi gas in the laboratory and then the Syrian exports to Europe, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.