Former oil minister reduces the effects of the ban: America does not import oil from Syria

former oil minister, Dr. Matanius Habib Reduced of the repercussions of the ban on the import of U.S. on Syrian oil after being assured that the United States does not import oil from Syria.

Habib said that the scenario is worrying that Europe imposed a ban on the import of Syrian oil since most of the oil goes to Europe in an attempt to stifle the Syrian economy, not far from Europe.

The Syrian oil exports about 143 thousand Barrels per day, Europe invests about 40 percent of production, especially in the French group Total and the British-Dutch company Shell and China National Petroleum.

In response to a question, the former oil official said that European oil companies often complies with the laws that apply to them and will examine the U.S. actions is that this is not accurate, because Europe can not stop the import of Syrian oil before you find an alternative to another, pointing out that the U.S. sanctions prohibited the import of Syrian oil and not to prevent foreign companies from working in Syria.

The total production of crude oil last year, about 385 thousand barrels per day, or about 0.5% of global production of reserves estimated at 2.5 billion barrels, the end of 2010, or about 0.2% of world reserves. Syrian fields has about 2.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves to no more than 0.2% of the world total and the equivalent of almost the size of the British reserves are the 2.8 billion barrels.

The focus of most oil reserves known east of the country near the border with Iraq, and there are some small fields in the center of the country, and the Syrian General Petroleum Corporation has worked the past two years to open new fields to compensate for the depletion of oil and there are now two refineries of oil and three oil terminals along the production of large quantities of natural gas amounted to 7.8 billion cubic meters in 2010, ie 0.2% of the total world production.