Introduction: what the open floor tells us

If Part 1 was the minister’s presentation, Part 2 is where Parliament talked back: once the presentation ended, 87 MPs registered to speak, and the Speaker limited each to one question and one minute, grouped them in batches of about five, then handed the floor back to the minister. The rules were broken constantly. Many of the “questions” were statements or proposals, and the minister, to his credit, responded to most of them anyway. Unlike in Part 1, opening the floor to so many MPs produced exchanges that were more often than not political, less technical and, overall, much closer to what Syrians were saying in the streets.

Living costs gave the MPs their strongest arguments, with one noting that a 200-liter barrel of diesel at the third-tier price now costs about 2.3 million old SYP (about USD 170), roughly a public employee’s monthly salary, and that transport and food prices had risen 30–60%. Another asked how a family earning USD 250–300 a month is supposed to heat its home. A third called the rise an inflationary shortcut to closing the budget deficit, “a tax the poor pay to the rich”, and warned that multiple fuel prices have always meant black markets.

In reply, the minister held to a doctrine he repeated throughout the afternoon: the Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC) and the Syrian Electricity Company (SEC) are “economic entities” that run on profit and loss, and support for farmers, bakeries, transport or vulnerable households belongs to the ministries in charge of those sectors, to the Ministry of Finance and to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor. “We feed the treasury, not the other way round,” al-Bashir said. He came back to this so often that he ended up explaining how subsidies are meant to work in the new system, arguing that “supporting agriculture, bread, industry and vulnerable groups is not the Energy Ministry’s job alone.”

If the Ministry of Agriculture wants cheaper diesel for farmers, it buys at the set price and covers the difference with money agreed with the Ministry of Finance, and the same goes for the Ministry of Transport and bus lines. The Ministry of Energy sells at the price the pricing committee sets; who gets help, and who pays for it, is decided elsewhere.

In a transition to a market economy, that logic is defensible, but the hearing showed that nobody else seemed to own the safety net either. An MP reported that the Minister of Social Affairs said she learned of the price rise like any citizen, even though her lists of households needing support were ready, and the minister answered that the data were incomplete.

Along the way, the hearing gave a fair picture of how little the state pays its own workers, and how much of a problem that has become. When the burners in the east were shut down, the workers’ names were recorded and they were promised jobs at SPC, but many turned them down: SPC is still on the civil-service pay scale, and the jobs paid USD 100–110 a month. Engineers at the Euphrates Dam earn about USD 120. The minister said he found only 11 engineers at the dam, all in their fifties and sixties, while HKN, Conoco and other private operators hire away the younger ones. A new pay system has to wait for SPC’s statute, and with SEC’s losses of USD 1.65 billion, there is no money for raises yet.

Compared with Part 1, where the minister was mostly candid, the open floor showed a more combative side of him, and at times a much wittier one. To MPs complaining about the price rise, he offered a deal: a smart card with 50 liters per family, and a black market at USD 2–2.5 a liter for the rest, “as in many countries”. “If Parliament agrees, write it and send it, and I’ll adopt it immediately.” It was not the only time he handed the problem back to Parliament. Asked why Raqqa’s energy directors come from outside the governorate, he asked whether any law requires otherwise, and promised to comply if Parliament passes one.

While the line works in Parliament, it is too easy a way out: presidential decrees have reached into almost every corner of economic policy since the transition, and the government does not need a letter from Parliament to bring back the smart card or to appoint local directors. The current system is a policy choice, and the minister both acknowledged and defended it.

His wit showed again when an MP asked about SPC’s assets and oversight, and the minister suggested that MPs would understand how such institutions work “if the brothers took a little trouble to read the decrees”. He brushed off rooftop solar feed-in as the idea of people who call themselves “a PhD or an expert”, “sitting on the sofa, under the air conditioner”, which anyone who follows Syrian debates online will find hard to disagree with entirely. Less defensible was his explanation for hiring no women in petrochemical engineering: field jobs, he said, are “unsuitable” for them. So was his argument that fuel is only about 2% of production costs, and that a 30% rise should therefore not push prices up 30%, a claim the MPs’ own figures contradicted.

Several of his arguments deserve a fair hearing, starting with why price rises are not announced in advance: doing so, he said, invites hoarding, and before one change, daily gasoline orders from stations fell from 7,000 to 1,000 tons as everyone waited. The problem is real, but it does not explain why the ministry rejected a proposal for a fixed, published monthly pricing cycle with a transparent formula, which is how many countries avoid both surprise and speculation.

The minister was also convincing on priorities: much of the infrastructure is past its design life, from plants and substations to breakers and valves, so the first job is the 29% of the network that is out of service, and replacing old equipment that still works comes later, after an inventory. That answer came in response to one of the day’s most technical questions, on the switching life of ring main units, and it was not the only one. MPs came with figures on solar buyback tariffs, GPS tracking on Homs buses and the monitoring of burner refineries. Some of them were plainly well informed, or well supported, which is good news for the hearings to come.

The open floor also produced the hearing’s most important governance disclosures, starting with the minister’s confirmation that Taaziz, Golkon and Star Petronova, firms that hold SPC contracts, belong to the same owner or owners, and that the Central Authority for Supervision and Inspection (CASI) had flagged problems in their contracts. He explained that Taaziz won a direct contract to reinject polluted formation water because it was the only firm operating on both sides of the Euphrates. He defended SPC’s termination of 42 contract workers who celebrated a CASI corruption case, saying they had threatened their director, while the USD 28 million case itself went unaddressed.

He also expanded a contract with burner-type “refineries” in Hasakah from about 17,000 to 35,000 barrels a day without explaining how costs and volumes are monitored. And he revealed that Green Energy, the private-looking company that distributes electricity in Idlib at higher prices than elsewhere, is owned by the Sovereign Fund and registered with the Ministry of Economy. That raises questions nobody asked: why the Sovereign Fund is running electricity distribution in one governorate, and whether other companies set up in Idlib under the Salvation Government were folded into the fund the same way.

As in Part 1, much went unanswered, and the most important gap was raised by an MP almost in passing: if every energy activity loses money, how does SPC still transfer USD 250 million a month to the treasury? The question got no reply.

Still, Parliament now holds a public record of commitments: smart meters, a monthly stock target, Baniyas back online by November, a Social Affairs representative on the pricing committee and written answers to every question left open. The Speaker adjourned until October 18. Whether those answers arrive, and whether both sides are better prepared for the next hearing, is the real test of the precedent set on September 20.

How to read Part 2

Part 2 covers the open floor, which ran from 39:49 to the end of Session 2 (3:20:04). MPs spoke in batches of about five, then the minister answered the batch. Questions are grouped here by theme, with the name of the MP who asked each one.

• Sessions and timestamps: all exchanges in this part took place in Session 2 (S2). Each timestamp marks where the point begins in that session’s recording.

• Minister’s answers: these appear under the header “Minister al-Bashir”. Because he answered several MPs at once, his remarks are matched to the questions they address. Where he answered the same theme in several rounds, his replies are combined.

• Sources: each claim ends with its source in parentheses: session and timestamp. When consecutive claims come from the same passage, a single timestamp follows the last one.

• Paraphrase and quotation: questions and answers are condensed and paraphrased for clarity and length. Only passages in quotation marks are verbatim.

• Editorial clarifications: where the audio was unclear, or a speaker appears to have misspoken, the likely intended meaning is given in square brackets. These are the author’s interpretations, not the speaker’s words. Additional information, when necessary, is also added in square brackets.

• Currency: unless noted, SYP refers to the new lira, which the minister converts at about SYP 135 per USD. Figures in old lira are marked “old SYP”.

• Unanswered questions: questions the minister did not answer, or answered only in part, are listed at the end, grouped by MP.

1. The price rise, protests and consultation

Nour Mohammad Mouayad Jandali (S2 41:35). Protests in at least eight governorates pushed the government, within days, to an emergency package: three diesel price tiers and restarting some local refineries to supply subsidized fuel for heating and farming. What has the ministry learned? Does it have an institutional mechanism to assess a decision's social impact before taking it? Will it commit that any future energy price change is preceded by a published study of its economic and social cost, and a mechanism to protect those most affected?

Ibrahim Abdallah al-Abdallah (S2 2:32:12). The year began with promises that “we don’t import a liter of diesel or gasoline”. Then the Jazira [the northeast] returned to the state, followed by a fuel shortage and a sudden price rise. The state could have temporarily financed the deficit, which he estimates at USD 150–200 million a month. Why do solutions always fall on the citizen?

Minister al-Bashir

The ministry understands the hardship that pushed people to protest, and that diesel feeds into transport, bread, and much else. But the price path was “imposed on us”: SPC had reached a point where it could no longer afford to buy products. The choice was to supply fuel at cost, about SYP 206 a liter, or to return to crises, queues and the smart card (S2 49:39).

“If Parliament agrees, write it and send it, and I’ll adopt it immediately”: a smart card with 50 liters per family, and a black market at USD 2–2.5 a liter for the rest, “as in many countries”. Transport and production costs would then rise further; “this is from experience”. The chosen path only reduces SPC’s losses, and all prices are still subsidized (S2 50:43–51:56).

On the “no imports” promise: at one stage, need was 150,000 bpd, met by refining imported crude at Baniyas without importing products, because Hasakah and the area east of the Euphrates were not yet supplied and there were fewer cars. Syria then started importing about 1,000 tons of products a day, then more, as need rose to 300,000 bpd (S2 2:40:32).

Radwan Mohammad Sbeinati (S2 1:27:41). Citizens are always surprised by price rises and feel they bear the crisis alone, which leads to protests that harm the state. He proposes a reserve fund, fed by revenues such as transit fees on Iraqi shipments to the coast, to protect vulnerable groups.

Mahmoud Kamel Mustafa (S2 2:57:13), on behalf of the Social Affairs and Labor Committee. He makes two requests. First, a published monthly pricing cycle on a fixed date, with its method and components (import price, exchange rate, transport, storage, distribution), 72 hours’ notice, and no mid-cycle changes except announced exceptions. Second, institutional consultation before decisions, with chambers of industry and agriculture, the farmers’ union, labor unions and transport representatives, plus a written impact report submitted to Parliament. Will the ministry commit to a monthly cycle with automatic reductions, and when will the first bulletin appear?

Minister al-Bashir

On the topic of warning before price increases, he says that announcing prices in advance is “a huge door to crises and corruption”. If people know diesel will rise from 125 to 150 or 160, they hoard, and large traders store a million liters to resell during the shortage they create. Before one price change, daily gasoline orders from stations fell from 7,000 to 1,000 tons, and even motorists stopped refueling. “Announcing these things creates crises we can do without” (S2 1:33:20).

Institutional consultation already exists: a pricing committee drawn from several ministries, a fuel meeting held under the Presidency and the General Secretariat, and impact assessments through governors and Social Affairs directorates. But increases cannot be publicized in advance (S2 3:01:40). “We didn’t raise prices on a whim, to lower them at will.” The crisis is global and will only ease when the global crisis does (S2 3:02:11).

AbdulRazzaq Saad al-Awad (S2 1:30:08). The minister keeps focusing on factories and their owners, although his own career began in humanitarian work. He proposes that a representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor sit on the pricing committee, since some always profit from crises.

Tariq Khaled al-Madani (S2 1:52:22). Is there a government body that assesses the economic impact of energy price changes on productive sectors and living standards, and can Parliament see its study? He also recommends a ministry spokesperson giving weekly or fortnightly briefings.

Mohammad Fadi Ahmad al-Halabi (S2 1:53:10). One Social Affairs representative on the committee is not enough. “On Thursday, the Minister of Social Affairs told us she learned of the price rise like any citizen, that her lists of households needing support were ready, and that nobody contacted her.” How does he explain this gap in government coordination?

AbdulQader Mohammad Khoja (S2 2:09:03). What social calculation underlies the new prices, and was Social Affairs consulted? With average incomes of USD 250–300 a month, how does a family heat its home, especially if it is not on Social Affairs’ lists? He calls for fuel to be subsidized from the Sovereign Fund, which “exists for crises”, and asks why Syria does not buy on forward contracts when prices are low.

Minister al-Bashir

The suggestion to add a Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor representative is good. He says he has played that role himself: SPC has been losing money for four months, Economy and Finance members of the committee pushed for increases, and he held back hoping the crisis would ease. He will ask Social Affairs for a permanent representative (S2 1:35:12). The transition from a socialist to a market economy will hurt some people, and vulnerable groups will be supported through Social Affairs, including on electricity. On winter heating fuel, “we are able to cover this need” (S2 1:36:06).

Energy’s remit is electricity, water, and oil, through profit-and-loss economic entities. That does not mean acting at citizens’ expense, and Social Affairs has a role (S2 1:54:13). When the electricity tariff changed, he asked the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor for beneficiary data, but it was not ready. As of the day before, Social Affairs directorates in the governorates had still not completed their data on vulnerable households (S2 1:54:48).

Economy Ministry representatives on the pricing committee study impacts from all angles (S2 1:58:26). A “crisis committee”, including representatives of the Ministries of Economy and Finance and the Central Bank, also exists, and it met before the decision was taken (S2 2:05:10). It saw the rise as “a necessary evil”: the losses to SPC and the treasury had become unbearable (S2 2:15:03).

On forward contracts: “We’re ready. If anyone has companies that will sell on deferred terms or reserve product for us now, bring them” (S2 2:13:54). On the Sovereign Fund, he skipped the point deliberately: “It isn’t ours.” He will “take support from any ministry, from the Sovereign Fund, from Economy, from Finance” so as not to raise prices (S2 2:22:37).

On media, the ministry does communicate through its communications and media directors and state television, but official media are “documentary rather than interactive”; he will work on it (S2 1:58:34).

Nawar Eliyas Najmeh (S2 2:11:23). The oil deficit has been inherited from the previous regime, and raising fuel prices is the easiest way to close the budget and oil deficits, but it is inflationary, threatens the economy, and is out of line with wages. “Inflation is a tax the poor pay to the rich.” Multiple fuel price hikes have failed before, bringing black markets and tampering with specifications. With a budget deficit of 30%, and 40% of revenues coming from inflationary customs revenue, raising prices is “extremely dangerous”. But given that the government hates subsidies, and so do economists, the state should tax the rich more to fund the deficit, instead of raising prices.

Mohammad Walid al-Bakir (S2 2:34:38). He supports Nawar Eliyas Najmeh: it would have been better to keep diesel unchanged, given its links to agriculture and transport, and make a modest, studied rise on gasoline.

Minister al-Bashir

[No direct answer to either point. Replying to Najmeh’s round as a whole, the minister said the rise was sensitive and would have effects, but that the crisis committee, including Economy, Finance and the Central Bank, saw it as “a necessary evil” given SPC’s and the treasury’s losses (S2 2:15:03). He did not address taxing higher incomes, or raising gasoline instead of diesel.]

Amin Bashir al-Bashir (S2 1:25:36). Why does gasoline cost USD 1.34 a liter in Lebanon but USD 1.52 in Syria, according to the presentation? Given external shocks such as the Gulf war and the Strait [of Hormuz], what is the ministry’s policy for not passing them on to citizens?

Minister al-Bashir

Gasoline in Lebanon costs USD 1.58, or SYP 213, so it is not cheaper; diesel in Lebanon is more expensive than in Syria. The MP’s figure must be multiplied by 135 to convert to lira (S2 1:31:48).

Tariq Mohammad al-Dhiyab (S2 2:10:53). Does the ministry see these hearings as protocol, or as a real spur to act? Does it expect more crises?

Minister al-Bashir

The hearing is important for showing the sector’s challenges and plans, gaining Parliament’s help on legislation, and hearing citizens’ concerns more closely. “A very positive session” (S2 2:37:02).

2. Subsidies, diesel grades, burners and distribution

Fajr Fawzi al-Ahmad (S2 42:48). “The minister spoke to us in numbers; we speak in pain.” Global price rises may match incomes elsewhere, but not in Syria. Is there a plan to help the poor with winter heating fuel? The burners (harraqat/حراقات) in Deir Ezzor were stopped, leaving those who worked there without jobs. Power was also cut to farmers’ cooperatives, wrecking the summer season.

Mahmoud Madi al-Ali (S2 1:47:12). The hearing was called over the fuel price rise, yet the discussion drifted to future projects. The third diesel tier now costs 11,500 old SYP (new 115 SYP) a liter, so a 200-liter barrel costs 2.3 million old SYP (new 23,000 SYP): “an employee buys one barrel with his salary”. Transport and food prices have risen 30–60%, and farmers in Hasakah can no longer afford to plow. The third tier should not be priced this way, since it is local crude run through burners.

Osama Mahmoud al-Naous (S2 2:46:23). If the subsidized fuel at 115 comes from primitive burners, that implies a price of about USD 200 a barrel. In al-Bab, the Tarhin burners sold a barrel for USD 70, from domestic crude. Why the gap?

Minister al-Bashir

Returning to burners is regrettable: many people in the east developed cancer because of them and because of bad production practices. “Today we have stopped 30,000 bpd of production for people’s health”: wells whose formation water erodes land, reaches groundwater or rivers, or forms radioactive oil lakes are shut until they are repaired, even at a loss to SPC (S2 51:56–52:42).

The new third grade comes from “semi-electric” burners with lower carbon emissions and runs under SPC’s management from input to output. It is sold only through designated stations to prevent a black market and blending. “There will be adulteration”, so the Energy Services Administration and SPC will take daily samples at all stations (S2 52:42–53:37). After the new prices were announced, a “brotherly country” supplied cheaper, lower-quality diesel, which made the SYP 150 grade possible at no profit and no loss. The improved grade is for heating (S2 53:37–54:04).

When the burners were stopped, all workers’ names were recorded and they were promised SPC jobs. But SPC salaries remain on the civil-service scale, and many burner workers refused jobs paying USD 100–110 a month (S2 54:12–55:17).

The Tarhin price of USD 70 reflected crude at about USD 67 a barrel at the time; the day before the hearing, crude was USD 104 (S2 2:50:18).

Israa Zuhair al-Mashhour (S2 59:36). Subsidized farm diesel is useful, but agriculture’s problem is wider. Does the ministry, with the Agriculture Ministry, have an integrated water-and-energy plan for farming? It would map real needs by area, crop, and water source; prioritize irrigation projects; rehabilitate pumping stations; electrify pumping or use alternative energy; and set out funding and a timeline, rather than relying on seasonal fixes.

Salem Mohammad al-Ahmad (S2 1:06:39). In this difficult transition, how will the ministry ensure that the energy sector bears the cost of recovery without shifting it to citizens? He asks for a published transitional energy plan, with targets and dates for what will change this year.

Minister al-Bashir

Supporting agriculture, bread, industry and vulnerable groups is not the Energy Ministry’s job alone. It needs an integrated plan, and the Higher Council for Economic Development is working on it. Energy does its share, for example by selling fuel oil to industry at USD 400 a ton instead of USD 570–600 (S2 1:07:33). The move to a market economy means some things will eventually no longer be subsidized. Diesel sold cheaply to bakeries ended up on the black market, so support was switched to flour, which is easier to monitor (S2 1:08:22).

The presentation already showed large subsidies on electricity and on diesel and fuel oil for industry (S2 1:11:19). Each ministry should support its own sector: Agriculture should buy diesel at the set price and subsidize farmers. In Turkey, diesel cost about USD 2 the day before, and the oil company does not subsidize farmers; fuel revenue goes to Finance, which funds Agriculture. Energy can supply subsidized products to vulnerable households in coordination with Social Affairs, NGOs and charities (S2 1:55:11–1:56:31).

Hanan Ibrahim al-Balkhi (S2 1:15:44). Real support is measured by whether those entitled can actually get subsidized fuel. What mechanism identifies beneficiaries, sets fair quantities, ensures transparent distribution, and prevents leakage to the black market?

Faraj Rakan al-Uqda (S2 3:08:49). Multiple diesel grades may create a deeper crisis: quantities are hard to monitor, parallel markets will appear for cheaper grades, and some areas will not be covered. He proposes direct cash support for the neediest, a single price, and strict control instead. Sector committees should be consulted before prices change, and the Trade ministry’s supply directorates should issue new price lists immediately.

Minister al-Bashir

He asked Social Affairs for a digital beneficiary database when the electricity tariff changed, but it was not ready (“like other institutions, no data”). With governors, distribution will run through Social Affairs directorates, SADCOP branches and the Energy Services Administration. Designated stations will serve named lists, digitally stamped (S2 1:20:19). Distribution to those entitled will go through committees in each governorate (S2 1:45:43).

Production from the burners was increased from the Saturday before the hearing. Committees in each governorate, combining Social Affairs, the governor, SADCOP and the Energy Services Administration, will choose stations for the second and third grades; the first grade will be sold at all stations (S2 3:04:36). Cash support for heating, electricity or food is not the ministry’s responsibility (S2 3:17:30).

Mohammad Saadi Mohammad Hisham Sukkarieh (S2 2:53:14). The “electric refineries” of 35,000 bpd mentioned in the presentation: when will they start? Will they be contracted directly or tendered, and what are the qualification criteria? Is the electricity infrastructure ready for them? How are operating costs calculated, and who monitors crude in and products out?

Minister al-Bashir

These units already operated in Hasakah under an existing contract, supplying subsidized fuel to residents without grid power who depended on generators. The contract is being expanded from about 17,000 bpd to 35,000 bpd, the burners’ full capacity. Homs refinery will rise to 45,000–50,000 bpd within days, and the surplus heavy crude will go to the burners (S2 3:00:11–3:01:15).

Hamza Jassem Qabalan (S2 2:54:12). Homs fuel committees say there is no daily, monthly, or annual fuel report. Using manual checks, they cut the water sector’s diesel from 900,000 to 500,000 liters a month. Homs public transport takes 3.3 million liters a month for 3,600 buses, all fitted with GPS that may not be active. Regular reporting would curb public-sector waste.

Minister al-Bashir

A private company used to run GPS on government vehicles; a ministry team of IT engineers now runs it. All ministries’ vehicle fuel use is tracked, and reports are held at the ministry (S2 3:01:15).

Madonna Suhail Bishara (S2 2:46:57). Instead of subsidizing diesel generally, could the state subsidize transport for those with no alternative, such as school and university students and employees commuting from rural areas, with enough diesel allocated to the lines that serve them?

Minister al-Bashir

The same logic applies as for industry and agriculture: the Transport ministry can request subsidized fuel, and Finance covers the difference. The fear is corruption, with a bus owner selling half of his 100 liters because it is cheap. GPS could help, but Transport should organize it (S2 2:51:45).

Ahmad Mohammad al-Shalash (S2 2:16:42). The rise triggered price chaos, with everyone raising prices at will. Were these effects anticipated, and coordinated with other bodies? If the chaos continues, MPs may have to question the ministers concerned, especially for the east, where all transport depends on fuel.

Minister al-Bashir

The relevant bodies were told of a rise of about 30%; the Trade Ministry needs to control traders. Fuel is one input among many, about 2% of production costs, so prices should rise about 2%, not 30% (S2 2:23:08).

Jamal AbdulRahman Mkayyes (S2 2:10:36). Reduce the mandatory storage requirement for fuel stations from 20% to 10%.

Minister al-Bashir

Syria has about 2,450 licensed stations, with 1,800 operating. Licensed stations that are closed have been told to open or lose their license, and a licensing platform has been launched. As stations multiply, the reserve requirement could be revisited; by international standards, Syria could hold twice as many stations (S2 2:14:28).

3. Electricity: tariff, supply and regional grievances

Electricity Tariffs

Mohammad Basel MuhiEddin Haylam (S2 1:03:20). “I am not speaking with emotional or populist rhetoric”: he asks the Syrian President to make a gesture and suspend the electricity price rise until incomes improve. In his own survey of two Damascus neighborhoods, 60% of the people he asked had not paid their bills, against the 70% collection rate the minister cited. “His income is a million [old SYP] and his electricity bill a million or a million and a half. How does he live?”

Aref AbdulMajid Razzouk (S2 1:16:12). On behalf of colleagues: raise the first electricity block to 250 kWh, and read meters regularly, because late readings push bills into higher tiers.

Jamal AbdulRahman Mkayyes (S2 2:10:12). “You are an honest man”: he asks the President, from the floor of Parliament, to suspend the electricity price rise for two years, until the country recovers.

Mohammad Wisam Mohammad SalahEddin Zaghloul (S2 2:00:26). The 150 kWh basic block excludes water heating and heating, while diesel has also become more expensive. A family needs at least 5 liters of diesel a day, or 150 liters a month, which limited incomes cannot afford, and more than 150 kWh. He proposes letting households with solar systems export their surplus to the national grid.

Minister al-Bashir

Suspension or a deeper subsidy is only possible if the Ministry of Finance pays for the gas. Without that money, purchases stop and service falls, hurting industry and development as well as households. That is why there is a protected block: about USD 6.5 a month for 150 kWh (S2 1:09:55). The message on suspension goes to the President (S2 2:14:19).

On rooftop feed-in (on-grid solar system): “sometimes someone comes along who calls himself a PhD or an expert”, “sitting on the sofa, under the air conditioner”, proposing ideas to become a trend. Technically, Syria is not ready: meters are not bidirectional, and neither transformers, networks nor load studies are prepared, especially with heavy rationing. Jordanian and Turkish ministers told him on-grid causes technical problems even where it is licensed (S2 2:05:56–2:07:17).

Mustafa Mahmoud Saqr (S2 2:55:17). SEC buys surplus power from factories at 2 euro cents (about 2.3 US cents) per kWh but sells at 14 cents, about six times more; elsewhere, the gap is at most three times. SEC used to buy any surplus, but now only above 200 kVA. Many industrialists, including in Adra industrial city, installed solar systems hoping to sell their surplus.

Minister al-Bashir

Some industrialists installed large solar systems mainly to sell power to SEC rather than use it themselves. The grid can no longer absorb renewables at that scale, given the 20–30% ceiling; hence the pricing (S2 3:14:56).

Nizar Mohammad al-Shayeb (S2 2:58:28). As long as connections are uncontrolled, new equipment will fail within days. Why the delay in smart meters? Why not distribute them early and free, reach 95% collection, and then revisit the tariff?

Minister al-Bashir

The electricity meter tender was external, which legally requires 50 days. It drew 52 bids of about 3,000 pages each, in English, that committees read “day and night”; then came an objection period and a delegation to China to qualify the firms. The commercial bid was suspiciously low, so a second delegation went. Water meters were installed faster, from about four or five months ago, because they were bought by direct contract with a Saudi meter company, financed by the Saudi Development Fund on long installments, at no cost to citizens. The electricity meter contract is not yet signed because of technical qualification details (S2 3:02:49–3:04:29).

Regional Supply of Electricity

Ahmad Mahmoud al-Khalaf al-Shalash (S2 44:26). Ring main units (SF6 or vacuum, from ABB, Siemens or Schneider) have a design life of 25 years or 13,000 operations. At four switchings a day since 2011, their life is already exhausted. Has there been a field survey, a needs assessment, and a budget?

Minister al-Bashir

Much of the infrastructure is past its design life: plants, substations, breakers and valves. The priority is the 29% of the network that is out of service. Replacing aging equipment that still works is phase two, after an inventory (S2 55:57–57:10).

Ahmad Mohammad Hassan al-Omar (S2 1:39:37). No institution has kept to the Constitutional Declaration as Parliament has. The ministry should honor the social-justice goals in its own presentation: Raqqa’s allocation of power from the Euphrates Dam was cut from 120 MW to 70 MW four months ago.

Ahmad Idris al-Taan (S2 2:20:31). Three transmission lines between the Tishreen Dam, “which we call the Manbij Dam”, and Aleppo could add about 200 MW if repaired. One of the dam’s two transformers is out of service; repairing it would add another 100 MW.

Alwan Ayed al-Ali (S2 1:40:09). Hasakah’s two plants at al-Suwaidiyah are in very poor condition and meet less than 10% of the governorate’s needs. He proposes a new 450 MW combined-cycle plant. What is the plan for the high-voltage lines that link Hasakah to the national grid?

Gabriel Moushe Gawrieh (S2 2:02:57). Qamishli and Hasakah have long suffered severe power shortages, covered by generator subscriptions (“amperes”) or solar panels. After the latest rise, many canceled their subscriptions, choosing bread over light. The two cities now get about two hours of power a day, while Rmeilan and other towns get reasonable hours. He proposes rehabilitating the al-Suwaidiyah gas turbines and adding new ones.

Minister al-Bashir

Al-Suwaidiyah works, but at low efficiency, like other plants (S2 1:45:52). Hasakah is currently cut off from the grid. Lines are being restored from the dams to Hasakah and from Hasakah to Deir Ezzor to close the loop, but it takes time (S2 1:46:00). Work on the transmission line continues; on water, the Alouk station now reaches 80% of Hasakah’s homes (S2 2:08:23).

Osama Mahmoud al-Naous (S2 2:45:37). The presentation said water costs 7 lira. In the al-Bab area, home to more than a million people, residents pay the equivalent of 2,700 [old SYP] (new SYP 27) per cubic meter of water and about 1,800 [old SYP] (new SYP 18) for electricity, with no tiers. He demands immediate equalization: “We are part of the Syrian Arab Republic, not another country.”

HussamEddin AbdulRazzaq Dbeis (S2 3:10:42). Why do Idlib residents pay more for electricity than other governorates? Who is Green Energy, what is its legal and investment framework, and what are its contracts with the Turkish side? What will be done to close the price gap, and when? Why must water and cleaning bills be paid before a meter can be topped up, and what legal basis allows a private electricity company to collect fees for services it does not provide?

Minister al-Bashir

“It is their right”: electricity in Idlib and northern rural Aleppo is more expensive than elsewhere. It matches the second tier, but there is no subsidized first block. A future session will study electricity and water tariffs there. Because private companies buy the power, cutting prices needs Finance to cover the loss (S2 2:49:22–2:50:18).

Green Energy is a known, registered company, “owned by the Sovereign Fund”: a government company, registered with the Economy Ministry (S2 3:18:14).

Mohammad Yasser Dalwan (S2 3:13:28). Two years after liberation, Douma, a town that gave more than 30,000 martyrs, is still in darkness. The electricity establishment puts the network shortfall at 70%.

Minister al-Bashir

He will check the 2027 plans and needs for Douma so that it is prioritized (S2 3:18:53).

Ibrahim Khalil al-Taleb (S2 1:01:27). Solar investors in Idlib from the Salvation Government era have waited four years for the electricity company to honor its commitments, even after mediation by Aleppo Mufti Ibrahim Shasho. They ask the minister to form a committee under his supervision.

Lara Fathi Qadid (S2 1:02:43). What administrative facilitation will the ministry offer solar-farm investors, especially in setting the price per kWh?

Minister al-Bashir

He will follow up on the Idlib solar case with the company (S2 1:09:16). The ministry has signed contracts for 2,500 MW of solar and about 1,500 MW of wind, which is enough as a share of the energy mix (S2 1:09:31).

4. Governance: dismissals, salaries, contracts and transparency

The 42 employees, dismissals, corruption, and CASI

Yasser Mahmoud al-Shahhadeh (S2 1:16:55). What about the dismissal, by Youssef al-Qablawi [SPC’s chief executive], of 42 employees in SPC’s Central Region administration for supporting and celebrating the efforts of the Central Authority for Supervision and Inspection (CASI) to catch corrupt officials?

Minister al-Bashir

“It is not a dismissal”: these were temporary, seasonal contracts, which a director can legally end (S2 1:21:32). Not everything on social media is true; he cites a claim that Brent had fallen to USD 80, with people asking why prices were not cut, when it stood at USD 104 (S2 1:21:57).

A complaint reached the ministry the previous week and was referred to the Internal Audit Directorate. According to SPC, the employees threatened the Central Region management to approve a celebration of a corruption case that is not yet proven and still under investigation, entering by force. “The issue is not the celebration; it is threatening the director.” Internal Audit will report, and legal action will follow (S2 1:22:27–1:23:15).

Qutaiba Ahmad al-Issa (S2 1:28:52). The suspended employees are contract workers, but most were originally dismissed for supporting the revolution, so they have been “wronged twice”: instead of being made permanent, they were given contracts and then suspended for celebrating the exposure of a corruption case “that became public knowledge”. Who bore responsibility for the USD 28 million case? The story that they forced their director to approve a celebration “is not logical at all”: anyone able to force the director would not have needed his approval.

Minister al-Bashir

A committee will examine whether SPC Central Region’s justification holds. If it does not, they will punish whoever acted wrongly. “If an employee is wronged even 1%, we will lift the injustice” (S2 1:34:32–1:35:12).

Contracts and Companies

AbdulAziz AbdulQader Moughribi (S2 3:08:10). After the price rise, there was wide debate about three companies, Golkon, Taaziz, and Star Petronova, said to share one owner or to have overlapping owners. Is this true?

Minister al-Bashir

“Yes, they are companies licensed to one person or several people with a single owner.” CASI raised problems in some of their contracts: some unjustified, some needing control (S2 3:16:16). One example: polluted formation water from the al-Taim field was heading for the Euphrates and nearly contaminated it, so SPC urgently contracted Taaziz to collect it and reinject it into wells. Before integrating the areas east of the Euphrates, Taaziz was the only company working both west of the river and in Autonomous Administration areas. It was among the qualified firms and was awarded the contract directly (التراضي). Part of the work was carried out, with technical problems now being followed up with CASI (S2 3:16:41–3:17:30).

Aref AbdulMajid Razzouk (S2 1:16:12). Direct contracting (التراضي) is “firefighting”. Why not do a strategic needs assessment and purchase frameworks so equipment is ready when a transformer fails?

Minister al-Bashir

The reasons for direct contracting were already explained in the presentation [Part 1] (S2 1:21:22).

Ahmad Mohammad al-Hariri (S2 2:52:42). “Corruption eats development.” Information points to two lines smuggling oil from a field in the Rmeilan area to northern Iraq. He asks that this be treated as a formal report to the minister and to CASI.

Minister al-Bashir

An old line existed before the integration of the east, and it has stopped. If corrupt people restarted it, that needs checking, but he doubts it: production and refinery receipts are measured and match (S2 2:59:46).

Jaafar al-Sadeq AbdulLatif Tahhan (S2 2:47:31). Have SPC’s assets been inventoried, revalued, and handed to the holding company? What are its oversight mechanisms and its human-resources policy?

Minister al-Bashir

“If the brothers took a little trouble to read the decrees”: two decrees, one establishing SPC and one forming its board, set out its tasks, budget and relationship with the ministry “clearly and in detail” (S2 2:50:46).

Salaries and Austerity

Nizar AbdulRazzaq Rashdan (S2 2:19:05). The minister says SPC engineers earn about USD 120 a month, but SPC’s director has said otherwise.

Khaled Ahmad al-Salloum (S2 3:06:55). SPC chief Youssef al-Qablawi went on the media to talk about high salaries, yet salaries turn out to be under the Basic Employees Law. He should have distinguished between advisers and employees. “This is the sixth hour you’ve been answering.” The problem of the people is simple: “I want money”.

Minister al-Bashir

SPC, SEC and the Ministry are still paid under the Basic Employees Law, with no sectoral pay rise for energy. Euphrates Dam engineers earn about USD 120 a month, 1.5–1.7 million old SYP. A new wage system awaits SPC’s statute; only some experts have better-paid contracts (S2 54:12–55:09). He has raised energy-sector pay with the Presidency, Finance, and the General Secretariat, and the President ordered a study. Not all ministries received the 550% sectoral raises (S2 55:25).

Some engineers and oil experts from abroad are on expert contracts under Law 53, as used in the north [Idlib]. Engineers are leaving as HKN, Conoco and UCC hire them, so as chairman of SPC’s board he asked for a proposal on bonuses, and some bonuses and perks are paid. The chief executive’s figure of USD 4,000 for some experts is “a vision”, not an adopted wage system. The ministry’s central experts include the head of electricity-sector regulation, recruited from Ireland with a PhD in renewables, on an expert contract. With SEC losing USD 1.65 billion, there is no capacity to raise pay yet (S2 2:25:22–2:27:31).

On the “I want money” point: all the ministry’s policies aim at good incomes, jobs, and real development. The transition will be hard (S2 3:15:44).

Mohammad Yasser AbdulKarim al-Hamidi al-Hamad (S2 2:21:10). According to the half-year report, administrative spending is 28% of the 2026 budget, and wages and compensation are 36%, against 5.5% administrative spending in Germany. He says this pays for officials’ luxury: large cars, with “the least minister having three or more”. He supports ending subsidies and pricing at market levels, but asks why officials face no austerity: cut administrative spending to 6%, reduce SPC salaries to a reasonable level, and use the savings to support poor families.

Hussam Adnan Hamdan (S2 2:30:46). Any government austerity plan should be public. The motorcades of ministers and officials “provoke the street”.

Minister al-Bashir

Ministry salaries are transparent: “request the table from Finance, nothing is hidden”. SEC’s head, Omar Shaqrouq, told him engineers are leaving. At the Euphrates Dam establishment, he found 11 engineers, all in their fifties and sixties; young people will not come at these salaries (S2 2:28:53–2:29:48). He supports austerity and has written internally to cut fuel spending and non-essential work, but the three diesel grades need about ten field inspection rounds instead of one or two to stop fraud. “Our administrative spending, salaries, cars: an open book” (S2 2:29:48–2:30:46).

Social media exaggerates motorcades. At the opening of the Alouk water station in Hasakah, he traveled in two cars, his own and one for security and media. About 200 cars arrived, carrying local officials, MPs, the Red Cross, UNICEF, security, the governorate, the Autonomous Administration and a presidential envoy, and it looked like a motorcade. Many ministers are “wronged” this way. Austerity and lower administrative spending are still needed (S2 2:38:03–2:40:18).

Recruitment and the Raqqa Directors

Akram Maddah al-Assaf (S2 1:49:11). Recruitment rounds for petrochemical engineering graduates since liberation have taken very few people relative to the number of graduates. More seriously, “zero women were accepted”, which he calls a constitutional violation. If the ministry will not hire women engineers, why does the state admit them to the degree? He proposes a national training and skills program with the Education and Higher Education ministries.

Minister al-Bashir

Some recruitment rounds are for field jobs at oil wells in remote areas, “unsuitable for women”. “I worked at the Conoco and Tuwaynan plants: not one woman was there”; staff lived in desert caravans during construction. Some administrative posts are sometimes women-only, and the ministry’s central office is staffed by women, including petroleum engineers and economists. It depends on the post (S2 1:56:31–1:57:24). A national program or fund is a good idea; MPs can submit proposals through the Speaker (S2 1:57:24).

Ahmad Mahmoud al-Khalaf al-Shalash (S2 45:39). In Raqqa, the electricity directorate is run by someone from outside the city after the previous director was removed; the water resources director, the SADCOP director (a veterinary graduate), and the Euphrates Dam director are also outsiders. “What do you say to the people of Raqqa?”

Minister al-Bashir

Is there a law requiring directors to come from the governorate? If Parliament legislates it, he will comply. His deputy minister for planning and institutional excellence, Ibrahim al-Adhan, is from Raqqa, and he himself lived in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor while working at the Tuwaynan and Conoco gas plants (S2 57:10–57:58).

Marwan Ahmad al-Nazhan (S2 1:59:09). On behalf of oil engineers and experts, he proposes an energy crisis-management group (Energy, Finance, Transport and Economy), given Finance’s slowness and tankers held at sea. It would handle government austerity, waste and smuggling, output, subsidy and price reform, anti-corruption and accountability, and publish a simple periodic bulletin on production, consumption, imports, deficit, losses and savings. He also asks for priority hiring of eastern residents in the oil sector.

Minister al-Bashir

Part of this work is already done by the pricing committee, and a crisis committee with Economy and Finance exists (S2 2:05:10). Hiring eastern residents is a priority: most workers in the eastern oil and gas fields are local, though not all (S2 2:05:40).

Strategy, Transparency, and Structure

Tamam Mohammad al-Ludaimi (S2 2:42:55). Strategic plans need goals broken into SMART objectives, a timeline, and delivery steps, all published on the ministry’s website: a baseline, the plan, what was done after six months, and explanations for what was not. This would ease public anger.

Minister al-Bashir

The ministry is new. The Energy Services Portal and the official website have been launched but are still in a trial phase. He accepts the recommendation to publish the plans there (S2 2:48:20).

Mohammad Walid al-Bakir (S2 2:34:38). He calls for separating the merged ministries, each of which needs full attention, and asks the Speaker to move water to the Agriculture and Food Security Committee.

Minister al-Bashir

Separating ministries is a legislative matter for the President and Parliament. Models vary: Germany combines economy and energy, plus industry and trade (S2 2:41:35).

5. Oil: production targets, the east, and pollution

Need, Production, and 1 million Barrels Per Day Target

Yasser Mahmoud al-Shahhadeh (S2 1:17:18). The presentation says Syria needs 300,000 bpd. Earlier ministry statements called that the market’s need; today it is described as 150,000 bpd for the market plus 150,000 bpd for the refineries. What is the total need?

Ahmad Omar Zaidan (S2 2:12:44). The statements contradict each other: the minister says the need is 300,000 bpd, while SPC’s head has said 800,000 bpd by 2030, then one million. With the infrastructure dilapidated, how can Syria produce 1 million bpd within three years?

Minister al-Bashir

Need is 300,000 bpd of crude, but refining capacity is 150,000 bpd. With Baniyas running, Syria buys about 100,000 bpd for Baniyas, plus local crude for Homs, for a total of 150,000 bpd refined. The other 150,000 bpd is imported as products. A refined barrel yields only about half diesel and gasoline; the rest is fuel oil, kerosene, naphtha and losses (S2 1:23:15).

Everything is dilapidated: generation, transmission, oil and gas pipelines, gas plants, SADCOP filling plants and refineries, and it needs “enormous funding”. MPs contradict themselves by asking both for subsidized fuel and power and for repairs. “We feed the treasury, not the other way round. I am an economic, investment entity under Syrian law, not an administrative body that takes money” (S2 1:24:00).

Statements are taken out of context or out of date. Need today is 300,000 bpd. If SPC’s chief executive says 1 million bpd by 2030 or 2031, then about 700,000 bpd would be exported, with domestic need perhaps rising to 400,000–500,000 bpd. “Production and need aren’t linked: surplus we export, shortfall we import” (S2 2:15:49).

Oil Revenue and the East

Alwan Ayed al-Ali (S2 1:40:09). Will any oil revenue go to developing the eastern region? What is the ministry’s relationship with HKN and Gulfsands?

Fajr Fawzi al-Ahmad (S2 42:48). Deir Ezzor needs an oncology hospital: of “100 cases in Syria, 51 are in Deir Ezzor” [as stated], with the small village of al-Jurdi carrying a heavy share. The east also needs a bacteriological laboratory.

Minister al-Bashir

Oil revenue for the east was discussed with the Presidency, the General Secretariat and Finance. The outcome: revenues go to Finance, which budgets them. The ministry can flag needs, such as an oncology hospital, but the Health ministry would build it. The ministry wanted to build the al-Siyasi bridge in Deir Ezzor, since the earthen bridge used to truck oil across had gone, but the government said that was the Housing ministry’s job. Some community contributions are possible, but not strategic projects (S2 1:43:57).

HKN operates under a production-sharing contract, like any investor. Gulfsands had an earlier contract but declared force majeure in 2012. It applied to return; its contract was redrafted, and it will take back its block and continue production and development (S2 1:46:28).

Pollution in the East and on the Coast

Rami Shaher al-Saleh (S2 1:12:06). “Everything is clear; now it’s execution.” He proposes an operations room in Deir Ezzor. The Euphrates is so polluted that “whenever you taste it you need a doctor”, and oil residues and formation water from the al-Taim field flow into it. The Khabour, with 220 km of contiguous villages from its mouth to Hasakah, has been dry for 45–50 years, and only a diversion from the Tigris can save it.

Minister al-Bashir

The Tigris diversion is a priority. The Halabiyeh–Zalabiyeh dam and the Tigris–Khabour project will soon be offered for investment (S2 1:19:55). [On formation water, see the 30,000 bpd of wells shut for health reasons in section 2 (S2 52:12), and the Taaziz contract to reinject al-Taim’s formation water in section 4 (S2 3:16:16).]

Amjad Akram Ali (S2 1:36:30). Baniyas and al-Qadmous suffer a “double pain” from the thermal power plant, the refinery, and the Syrian Company for Oil Transport: heavy pollution and disease. The plants need filters, and the area needs compensation. Part of the refinery’s revenue used to fund development in affected areas, and this should be reinstated, or the state could give directly, for example through lower electricity tariffs for areas that host generation. Al-Qadmous, a mountain area where bread arrives by helicopter in snow, is among the most vulnerable.

Minister al-Bashir

Strategic facilities are spread across Syria: the Tishreen, Nasiriyah and Deir Ali plants in Rural Damascus, Mhardeh, Jandar, the Homs and Baniyas refineries, Aleppo, the dams in Raqqa, oil in Deir Ezzor, and the Furqlus, Hayyan and Ebla gas fields. Many areas are affected. The ministry is working on Baniyas’s recent heavy emissions and on securing gas to reduce fuel-oil firing (S2 1:42:21). Every region asks for priority, Raqqa for the dam, Baniyas for its plant, Homs for Jandar: “These resources belong to the Syrian state” (S2 1:43:35).

Storage and Baniyas

Ahmad Mahmoud al-Khalaf al-Shalash (S2 47:19). Energy faces “a resource crisis and a resource-management crisis”. When SPC withdrew, the shock fell on Syrians, though shock-absorbing policies were possible, such as stockpiling when oil was cheap. On Baniyas: did no maintenance team recommend the overhaul earlier, and could an alternative refinery not have been secured first?

Minister al-Bashir

Liquidity does not cover current purchases, let alone stocks. Tanks are being rehabilitated and price offers requested, and the private sector has been invited to bid to store and distribute products in return for a share of profits. The target is at least one month of stock, “our zero point”, especially for winter, when waves stop tankers from berthing. Global availability and prices remain obstacles: “we buy at auction” (S2 57:58).

Bishr NajmEddin al-Hawi (S2 2:17:59). What is the timeline for Baniyas, and will prices fall directly afterward?

Minister al-Bashir

At the end of October, the units that produce diesel restart. At the end of November, the reformer and distillation units will be ready to produce gasoline. Prices may fall if crude stays at this level or lower; if Brent returns to USD 130–140, they will not (S2 2:24:17).

Oil Secondary Schools (Vocational Training)

Minister al-Bashir

[Answering a committee question from Session 1 that he had missed.] The oil secondary schools were closed: they added little value, most students were not interested, and graduates were unsuitable. The oil institutes remain. The Education ministry agreed in advance to absorb all students into general or industrial secondary schools (S2 1:41:23).

6. Water, irrigation and dams

Damascus, the Barada and the Coast

Mohammad Basel MuhiEddin Haylam (S2 1:05:22). The former regime diverted sewage into the Barada River and blocked its flow with concrete. It also had a contract with a neighboring country to export Barada spring water. He asks for a review.

Imad Ali al-Ashrafani (S2 1:51:31). When will water extraction from the Zabadani plain end? It has dried up the Barada and lowered groundwater, threatening the whole plain. He asks for a fast alternative before an environmental disaster.

Minister al-Bashir

The “national carrier” from the coast aims to end Damascus’s reliance on springs such as Ain al-Fijeh, so that the Barada can recover. “Nobody is taking it outside Syria”: all of it goes to Damascus, and the 1.5 m³/s from Ain al-Fijeh and the Barada spring is not enough for Damascus and Rural Damascus (S2 1:10:49).

The drought is severe. Ain al-Fijeh has fallen from 40 to 1.5 m³/s [as stated]; many springs are dry, and the Yarmouk basin has dried out because of random wells. The tactical fix is to stop random drilling, close wells, and regulate extraction; the strategic fix is the coast-to-Damascus carrier (S2 1:57:41).

Issa Mohammad Ibrahim (S2 2:02:05). The coast itself has suffered severe thirst: many villages get water for one hour every 10 to 20 days, and Latakia City has had shortages. “A project that solves one problem creates another.”

Minister al-Bashir

The carrier will not take the coast’s share. It will capture wasted river surplus, submarine freshwater springs and groundwater, with desalination if shortages arise. A project recently opened in Latakia now provides excellent, continuous water. Neglected mountain villages will be reached under a plan to bring power and water to every home (S2 2:07:17).

The Euphrates Basin: Raqqa, Manbij and Rural Aleppo

Ahmad Qaddour al-Afdal (S2 1:17:48). Raqqa’s Euphrates irrigation projects cover 103,000 hectares in five sectors. Under the former de facto authorities, irrigation infrastructure was ruined, with canals and drains destroyed or blocked and secondary salinity rising. Farmers in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor have not yet returned to farming.

Ibrahim Khalil al-Taleb (S2 1:02:26). Dozens of villages near the Euphrates around Manbij lack drinking and irrigation water, and many districts of the city get no water.

Khalil Issa al-Kanou (S2 2:44:50). The minister listed many projects, but none in Raqqa, not even a water station. North of Raqqa, around Tell Abyad and al-Zaydi east of Suluk, dozens or hundreds of villages have been abandoned for lack of water, because the al-Hisha pumping station on a Euphrates irrigation canal is broken. It only needs maintenance.

Miqdam Ali al-Jashaam (S2 3:05:10). Water waste is the biggest issue. Lake Assad is 90 km long, yet in al-Jurniyyeh district, 70,000 hectares and 140 villages within 3 to 20 km of it are thirsty. A project has been ready since 2007, and the area’s 2 million olive trees all depend on wells. It needs only about four pumping stations, far cheaper than the Euphrates–Hisyah project.

Minister al-Bashir

Many projects in Raqqa were not named for lack of time, such as al-Rusafa, the al-Jurniyyeh plains and a previously bombed pumping station (al-Balikh). All are in the 2027 investment plan (S2 2:48:42). The al-Jurniyyeh and al-Rusafa projects are in the 2027 budget (S2 3:15:29).

Muayyad Sameh Ahmad Qabtour (S2 1:26:10). The north and north-east of rural Aleppo are fertile plains with poor groundwater. A pre-2011 Irrigation Ministry project would have brought Euphrates water to them; the area is near Azaz and Jarabulus, so it would be cheap.

Mohammad Fawwaz al-Mahalli (S2 1:38:50). Rural Aleppo faces severe water scarcity, and some villages have no government water at all. The al-Bab irrigation project has been stopped for years, and Aleppo’s water resources directorate will not let farmers drill new wells or clean old ones. “Where are people supposed to go?”

Jaafar al-Sadeq AbdulLatif Tahhan (S2 2:48:03). Is Azaz included in forthcoming irrigation plans, given its soil and moisture?

AbdulKarim Ahmad Barakat (S2 2:36:15). A canal carrying Euphrates water from Aleppo to its western countryside and Idlib stopped at the village of al-Sheikh Ali at the start of the revolution. It matters greatly to farmers. What is the timeline for completion?

Minister al-Bashir

The Tadef–al-Bab project will be implemented, and other areas in the land-reclamation plan will follow in phases. With 70% of the land arable, it cannot all be done at once, “especially while people demand that electricity, oil and bread all run at a loss” (S2 1:32:36). The Tadef–al-Bab study has been approved, and the project is at the contract-signing stage (S2 1:45:05).

On Azaz, he will check at the next water session which projects have been studied and can be prioritized (S2 2:51:22). On the Aleppo–Idlib canal, he will follow up (S2 2:42:16).

Groundwater and the South

Ahmad Idris al-Taan (S2 2:19:40). “We raised electricity, we raised fuel, and we banned drilling wells in thirsty villages”: three steps “strangling the citizen”. Dozens of villages in rural Aleppo have no water and must drill. “The state will rise, but the citizen will die.”

Minister al-Bashir

Syria faces a groundwater crisis. Daraa alone has about 50,000 random wells, according to an initial count, which lowered the water table and caused drought. Opening drilling in every basin would dry them up, and Daraa already has a drinking-water crisis (S2 2:27:49).

Nizar AbdulRazzaq Rashdan (S2 2:19:22). Repairing the earthen dams in Quneitra would help the Yarmouk basin in Daraa.

Mohammad Ibrahim al-Zoubi (S2 3:10:01). He praises the minister and the Daraa governor for their work on water in the south, and asks for a solution in western Daraa, near the border with Palestine, so that people can stay there.

Minister al-Bashir

Western Daraa has one of the worst water shortages. When the governor and the water resources director visited one area, locals closed their wells and the spring rose markedly. A well census and a control plan are under way (S2 3:17:46). [The Quneitra dams were not addressed.]

Al-Ghab

AbdulFattah Hassan Obeid (S2 2:33:36). According to the Ghab Development Authority, 500 million m³ of water flows to the Mediterranean, and the plain’s three dams (Afamia, Qastoun and Zayzoun) need repair. The crisis cost 8,600 tons of wheat and flooded 40,000 dunums, while in summer the plain is a desert. Is there an urgent plan for this winter?

Minister al-Bashir

The al-Ghab dams are among the studied projects in the investment budgets. If Finance approves, work starts; if they are deferred, they remain a priority (S2 2:42:33).

7. Industry, transport and alternative energy

Bishr NajmEddin al-Hawi (S2 2:17:59). In Aleppo, industrial production costs were high even before the rise, mainly because of fuel and electricity. Is there a plan with the Ministry of [Economy and] Industry? Could the private sector import fuel itself?

Minister al-Bashir

Industry is already subsidized. It buys fuel oil at USD 400 a ton, while a private importer would pay about USD 600. Electricity costs SEC 18 cents per kWh, but industry pays 14 (S2 2:23:47).

Hussam Adnan Hamdan (S2 2:30:46). The price rise came at the start of winter and of the school year. Since the government cannot lower prices, could it grant tax and customs exemptions on alternative energy, such as panels and batteries, so that families can buy a few panels and draw less from the grid? Could the Transport and Energy ministries also work together to replace worn-out diesel minibuses, which are “humiliating” for passengers, with efficient ones?

Mohammad Yasser Dalwan (S2 3:12:00). “Between the hammer of the state and the anvil of the people.” He proposes targeted, temporary support and an emergency customs exemption for alternative-energy kits such as lithium batteries. Customs duties have risen from USD 30 to USD 120 a ton, and on some items from USD 100 to USD 600–700.

Minister al-Bashir

Exemptions fall under the Land Ports and Customs Authority. The ministry will write to request them, and a multi-agency committee decides (S2 2:37:42). Customs is not Energy’s remit; the ministry will ask the authority for exemptions on solar panels and batteries (S2 3:18:44).

On transport, the ministry is working on vehicles, with new rules for licensing electric vehicles once adequate infrastructure is in place (S2 2:40:18).

Maher Abdul Wahab Alloush (S2 1:37:33). The energy crisis may last, so the ministry should think strategically. Renewables “are not the solution in Syria”. The presentation cited 38 billion tons of oil shale, about six times oil reserves; at 0.5–0.6 barrels per ton, that would be about 20 billion barrels [his estimate]. Estonia gets about 90% of its power from shale, and Jordan has done well with it. Syria’s deposits lie in the north, near Khanasser, and in Daraa. Oil shale should become a strategic energy-security project.

Minister al-Bashir

Oil shale is important. It has been studied and discussed with Jordan. It produces costlier energy than oil, but it is an energy-security option alongside geothermal, wind and solar (S2 1:45:14).

Unanswered questions, grouped by MP

Under the Speaker’s ruling, questions left open should come back as written answers at a later sitting. The Energy Committee chair, Iqbal Mohammad Mansour, said remaining questions would be compiled and sent to the minister (S2 3:14:08). Listed in the order the MPs spoke.

A. Not answered

Fajr Fawzi al-Ahmad

• Why was power cut to farmers’ cooperatives, wrecking the summer season? (S2 42:48)

• A bacteriological laboratory for the east. (S2 42:48)

Ahmad Mahmoud al-Khalaf al-Shalash

• Did no maintenance team recommend the Baniyas overhaul earlier, and could an alternative refinery not have been secured first? (S2 47:19)

Ibrahim Khalil al-Taleb

• Drinking and irrigation water for villages around Manbij and the city's districts. (S2 1:02:26)

Rami Shaher al-Saleh

• An operations room in Deir Ezzor. (S2 1:12:06)

Aref AbdulMajid Razzouk

• Raise the first electricity block to 250 kWh. (S2 1:16:12)

• Read meters regularly, since late readings push bills into higher tiers. (S2 1:16:12)

Ahmad Qaddour al-Afdal

• Rehabilitating Raqqa’s ruined irrigation canals and drains (103,000 hectares). (S2 1:17:48)

Qutaiba Ahmad al-Issa

• Who bore responsibility for the USD 28 million corruption case? (S2 1:28:52)

Amjad Akram Ali

• Reinstate a share of refinery revenue for affected areas, or lower electricity tariffs where power is generated. (S2 1:36:30)

Ahmad Mohammad Hassan al-Omar

• Why was Raqqa’s allocation from the Euphrates Dam cut from 120 MW to 70 MW? (S2 1:39:37)

Alwan Ayed al-Ali

• A new 450 MW combined-cycle plant for Hasakah. (S2 1:40:09)

Ahmad Idris al-Taan

• Repair the three Tishreen (Manbij) Dam–Aleppo lines (about 200 MW) and the idle transformer (about 100 MW). (S2 2:20:31)

Nizar AbdulRazzaq Rashdan

• Repair Quneitra’s earthen dams to help the Yarmouk basin. (S2 2:19:22)

Mohammad Yasser AbdulKarim al-Hamidi al-Hamad

• Administrative spending at 28% of the 2026 budget, and cutting it to 6%. (S2 2:21:10)

Nawar Eliyas Najmeh

• Tax higher incomes to fund the deficit instead of raising fuel prices, given the inflationary risk and the reliance on customs revenue. (S2 2:11:23)

Mohammad Walid al-Bakir

• Keep diesel unchanged and make a modest, studied rise on gasoline instead. (S2 2:34:38)

Ibrahim Abdallah al-Abdallah

• Why not finance the USD 150–200 million monthly deficit temporarily instead of raising prices? (S2 2:32:12)

AbdulFattah Hassan Obeid

• How does SPC pay Finance USD 250 million a month while every energy activity loses money? (S2 2:33:36)

Khalil Issa al-Kanou

• Repairing the al-Hisha pumping station north of Raqqa. (S2 2:44:50)

Jaafar al-Sadeq AbdulLatif Tahhan

• SPC’s asset inventory and revaluation, oversight mechanisms and HR policy. The minister referred MPs to SPC’s founding decrees. (S2 2:47:31)

Mahmoud Kamel Mustafa

• A published monthly pricing cycle with 72 hours’ notice, an automatic reduction mechanism and an impact report to Parliament. Refused on hoarding grounds (S2 3:01:40). (S2 2:57:13)

B. Partly answered

Nour Mohammad Mouayad Jandali

• A mechanism to assess social impact before decisions, and published studies before future price changes. The pricing committee and governors are consulted, but advance publication was refused (S2 1:33:20, 3:01:40). (S2 41:35)

Israa Zuhair al-Mashhour

• An integrated water-and-energy plan for agriculture. Referred to the Higher Council for Economic Development (S2 1:07:33). (S2 59:36)

Lara Fathi Qadid

• Facilitation and the kWh price for solar-farm investors. Only the 2,500 MW solar and 1,500 MW wind contracts were mentioned (S2 1:09:31). (S2 1:02:43)

Salem Mohammad al-Ahmad

• A published transitional energy plan with targets and dates. The minister pointed to existing subsidies (S2 1:11:19). (S2 1:06:39)

Muayyad Sameh Ahmad Qabtour

• Regulating fuel stations that sprang up in formerly liberated areas. Only general station licensing was addressed (S2 2:14:28). (S2 1:26:10)

Mohammad Fawwaz al-Mahalli

• Letting farmers drill or clean wells. The ban was defended on groundwater grounds (S2 2:27:49). (S2 1:38:50)

Mohammad Saadi Mohammad Hisham Sukkarieh

• Burner “refineries”: operating costs, qualification criteria, and who monitors crude in and products out. Only the expansion of the existing Hasakah contract to 35,000 bpd was explained (S2 3:00:11). (S2 2:53:14)

Osama Mahmoud al-Naous

• Equalizing electricity and water tariffs in al-Bab. Acknowledged as “their right” and deferred to a future session (S2 2:49:22). (S2 2:45:37)

Faraj Rakan al-Uqda

• Direct cash support for the neediest instead of multiple diesel grades. Cash support is not the ministry’s remit (S2 3:17:30). (S2 3:08:49)

HussamEddin AbdulRazzaq Dbeis

• Green Energy’s contracts with the Turkish side, and why water and cleaning bills must be paid before a meter can be topped up. Only Green Energy’s ownership was explained (S2 3:18:14). (S2 3:10:42)

Mohammad Yasser Dalwan

• The rise in customs duties on alternative-energy equipment. An exemption request will go to the customs authority, but the increases themselves were not addressed (S2 3:18:44). (S2 3:12:00)

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Introduction: what the energy hearing tells us

For more than four hours over two sessions, Syria’s new People’s Assembly questioned Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir. The fuel price increase and the protests that followed triggered it; though the hearing’s scope was widened to everything his merged ministry now covers: oil, gas, electricity, water and mining. The Parliament’s Energy Committee sent the Minister about 40 written questions in advance, which he answered with a long presentation of figures and timelines before taking questions from the floor.

As noted previously, a Minister sitting before elected representatives, on the record, to explain a politically costly decision and defend his sector’s numbers, is new in Syria. The hearing’s format is therefore the first story, as it tested accountability for the transitional government and the new MPs: would they press the executive on how the decision was made? How would the Minister respond? Whatever one makes of the answers, a precedent has been set, and the committee chair closed by asking for such hearings to become regular. Whether they do will say a lot about how much oversight the new institutions are willing to exercise, and to tolerate.

Overall, the questions were good, well-researched, and sometimes even sensitive, such as when Laith al-Balous asked about Tayba Petroleum. Some questions were grounded in constituencies: a transformer station in al-Rusafa idling 110 wells, broken pumps at Maskanah East, flood risk in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. Others went straight to governance. MPs asked whether fuel contracts are tendered or awarded directly, in breach of Contracts Law No. 51 of 2004, and invoked a “phobia” of a return to Qaterji- and Hamsho-style intermediaries. They asked whether certain stations are favored in fuel allocations, and demanded a copy of the UrbaCon contract and a live hearing with the head of the Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC).

In reply, the Minister provided a significant amount of figures which now represent the most detailed public account of Syria’s energy balance since the transition, and several deserve a closer look.

Oil production is about 110,000 bpd (107,000–112,000) against a need the Minister now puts at 300,000, so domestic output covers barely more than a third of demand, but refining capacity is only about 150,000 bpd. When the ministry was founded, need was 150,000 bpd, meaning that the two refineries covered it.

The gap is much wider for household gas: LPG demand is 1,300–1,500 tons a day against domestic output of about 100 tons, meaning more than nine-tenths of the cooking gas Syrians use is imported. Daily consumption is about 10,000–11,000 tons of mazout (about 12 million liters) and about 8 million liters of gasoline. Gas output rose to 8.1 mcm/d after part of the Conoco plant came online, reached 8.4–8.5 mcm/d the day before the session, and has touched 9, against 24 mcm/d needed.

On his own worked example, a liter of mazout costs SYP 206 to supply and sells for SYP 175. This means that at about 12 million liters a day, a SYP 31 loss per liter is about SYP 372 million a day, or roughly USD 2.8 million at 135 SYP/USD, around USD 80 million a month. This is a ceiling, since part of the volume now sells under the cheaper grade, which the Minister says breaks even, and not all diesel is imported at that cost. Still, the order of magnitude explains the price rise better than the “global refining crisis” framing he also leaned on.

The Minister also provided interesting insights on various procurement and contracting procedures, in what can be considered the most transparent bout of public reporting. When asked “where are the tenders?”, the Minister replied that “we are buying diesel at auctions at sea”. The line was meant as a rebuke, but it is also a revealing admission: Syria is buying spot cargoes in a tight market, with no term contracts and little bargaining power. He argued the government-to-government supply deals he wants (with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya) are still out of reach.

The same emergency logic justifies direct contracting (التراضي): tendering for transformers would leave a neighborhood dark for two months, and an external tender alone takes 50 days. The argument is reasonable for a genuine emergency. The problem is that, more than a year into the transition, the emergency has become the rule… and seems to be a convenient excuse, so is the “we could also go back to 2 hours of electricity per day” rebuttal, which seems a bit of an easy way out of some questions.

Most striking still was his statement that some contracts follow the state’s “political orientation”. Since Chevron and ConocoPhillips carry weight, and an Arab energy Minister had told him that bringing them in “will open the doors to all companies”, the Ministry privileged contracting with them. This is a candid acknowledgment that energy contracts are being awarded partly as signals, privileging American majors so that others follow, but it also makes the transparency questions MPs raised about UrbaCon and other contracts more pressing, not less.

The Minister may also have provided insight into potential cooperation with an Iranian company that previously worked in Syria. Indeed, Iran’s MAPNA Group started the Rastan power plant (526 MW), which halted work after the regime fell, but which the ministry says it is now negotiating with companies to complete it. He did not say whether MAPNA is among them; given the “political orientation” he described, that is worth asking.

The Minister also highlighted interesting tug-of-war dynamics between his Ministry and the Ministry of Finance, exposing open tension between the two. SPC has been transferring about USD 250 million a month to the treasury since oil came under state control, which the Minister credits with helping fund public-sector wage rises. Last month (August 2026), SPC asked the Ministry of Finance to cover its deficit, though the Ministry said it could not. Minister al-Bashir’s ask then seemed blunt: let SPC keep four or five months of those transfers, equivalent to “a billion dollars”, and it would build reserves, tanks and supply lines. The alternative he described is stark, which some might see as a provocation: either live with fuel crises, or stop buying gas and return to 2–3 hours of power a day, as under the old regime. With industrial and commercial users taking about 40% of power, cutting supply would shut down reopened factories. For scale, the monthly transfer to the treasury is almost a third of the USD 831 million Syria spends each month on crude and products.

Beyond the lack of fuel and money, spare parts are another obstacle, and so are long delivery times. This is especially critical as most substations must be made to order, taking 18 months to two years. Alternative solutions have been utilized, but they are by default limited: Deir Ezzor, which had a single substation at al-Taim, received an unused one moved from elsewhere in Syria. The same lead times explain delays on large solar projects: nine sites have been handed to companies, but they need substations and imported equipment. Gas turbines from Siemens, Ansaldo, GE and Mitsubishi are booked until 2033–35; only UCC’s pre-purchased turbines let Syria expect new plants by 2029.

Following oil and gas resources, electricity data was also plentiful, albeit more sobering. Syria has 460 transmission lines at 400, 230 and 66 kV; 29% of high-voltage lines are out of service, as is 29% of distribution network length in war-damaged areas. Of 458 transformer substations, 17% are out of service. Of 12 generation plants, about 37% of capacity is unavailable: Zayzoun and Mhardeh are wholly out, and Aleppo lost all five units, two of which have since been rehabilitated. Even so, generation has risen from 915 MW at liberation, when homes got 1–2 hours a day in winter, to 3,500 MW including hydro, giving 18–20 hours in most governorates and round-the-clock supply to industrial cities. That gain, however, rests on purchased gas the treasury says it can no longer fund.

On renewables, the Minister revealed that about 4,000 MW of renewables have been signed, 2,500 MW solar and 1,500 MW wind, including Wadi al-Rabi’ in Rif Dimashq (200 MW), Furqlus (200 MW), al-Taim in Deir Ezzor (300 MW) and Aleppo (300 MW), with land already handed over (S2 7:02). Set against the roughly 8,000 MW of fossil capacity envisaged for 2030 (S2 7:25), that is about a third of installed capacity, and a smaller share of actual generation. That is close to the 20–30% ceiling the Minister set himself for grid stability, citing last year’s Iberian blackout.

The Minister also provided an overview and various figures on water, thanks to questions by the very active Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais. Inflow from Türkiye rose from about 200–220 m³/s to about 1,000 m³/s, double Syria’s 500 m³/s share under the 1987 agreement, as one MP noted. The Euphrates riverbed was designed for 3,000 m³/s, but encroachments by farming and building mean even 2,000 would cause problems, and the protection zone set in the water law has been widely violated. The Minister also hinted to coordination struggles between Damascus and Ankara, saying that Türkiye gave just one day’s warning before raising releases and that, as a result, too little water became too much water, with no coordination framework to manage either.

As always with such disclosures, however, many additional questions remained unanswered, while others naturally came as interrogations of the disclosure. The most important question is why the SPC remits money to the treasury, yet loses money on every liter of mazout it sells and is owed USD 1.65 billion by the Syrian Electricity Company (SEC), which it supplies with gas at USD 9/MMBtu while paying USD 22.

Finally, the Minister was mostly candid, sometimes strikingly so, on empty warehouses, unpaid tankers waiting at sea and the Central Bank’s FX priorities. But he was also defensive, at times ironic. That edge sharpens considerably in the open-floor exchanges covered in Part 2.

How to read Part 1

Part 1 covers the Energy Committee’s prepared questions and Minister Mohammad al-Bashir’s presentation, which ran through Session 1 and the first 39 minutes of Session 2. Questions are grouped by theme, and each keeps its original number and the name of the MP who asked it.

• Sessions and timestamps: S1 is Session 1 (morning) and S2 is Session 2 (afternoon). Each timestamp marks where the point begins in that session’s recording. The committee asked all questions in S1.

• The minister’s answers appear in quote blocks headed “Minister al-Bashir”: He answered through a presentation rather than question by question, so his remarks match the questions they address.

• Sources: Each claim ends with its source in brackets: session and timestamp. When consecutive claims come from the same passage, a single timestamp follows the last one.

• Paraphrase and quotation: Questions and answers are condensed and paraphrased for clarity and length. Only passages in quotation marks are verbatim.

• Editorial clarifications: Where the audio was unclear, or a speaker appears to have misspoken, the likely intended meaning is given in square brackets. These are the author’s interpretations, not the speaker’s words, and readers are encouraged to check them against the recording.

• Unanswered questions. Questions the presentation did not address are listed at the end.

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1. Oil and gas: production, fields and data

Q1.1 and Q1.2 — Abdullah Majeed al-Hajj Abd (S1 2:34, 2:56): Transparent figures on domestic production: number of wells, number of fields, barrels produced per day, and daily consumption of oil, gas, and electricity. Why do official statements keep contradicting each other?

Minister al-Bashir

At liberation, the state held 14 fields west of the Euphrates, about 140 producing wells and 7,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) (without accounting production in the Northeast), plus about 6 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) of gas from central-region fields and al-Taim (S1 51:18). In the northeast, the state only really entered the fields around the end of Q1 this year (S1 50:06). It began receiving ready oil fields on January 17, 2026, took over major fields in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor on 18–19 January, and entered Hasakah in March 2026 after the settlement east of the Euphrates (S1 52:40). Oil output then rose briefly to 135,000–140,000 bpd and has settled around 110,000 (107,000–112,000), depending on wells and transport (S1 57:03–58:26). Gas rose to 8.1 mcm/d after part of the Conoco plant came online, reached 8.4–8.5 mcm/d the day before, and had touched 9 (S1 57:03–58:26). Drilling was reactivated: 4,840 meters drilled, two rigs returned to service, 21 wells repaired, 152 wells brought online and 10 new wells drilled (S1 57:03–58:26).

In total, Syria has 78 oil fields and 28 gas fields, with reserves of 2.5 billion barrels of crude and 241 of gas [unit unclear, billion m³?], based on old surveys. A geology committee was formed to commission a new oil and gas survey, a geothermal map and an updated groundwater map; many offers came in, but some raised “security sensitivities” (S1 50:31).

On the “contradictions”, people confuse natural gas for power plants with household LPG. LPG demand is 1,300–1,500 tons/day, domestic output is about 100 tons, and the rest is imported (S1 51:43).

The reduction [from 140,000 bpd to around 100,000 bpd today] came following 70 wells shutting in one area and 172 in another because of heavy water cut, radioactive material, and formation water reaching a stream locals call the “river of death” (S1 53:52). Local notables in the Jarzi Region (منطقة الجرذي) told about 100 cancer cases linked to pollution, burners and bad extraction; the wells are shut for repair and reassessment (S1 53:52). The main challenges are sustaining output and securing crude, chemicals and spares; at liberation all warehouses were empty, with no transformers, valves or pipe (S1 54:35).

Daily consumption is about 10,000–11,000 tonnes of mazout (about 12 million litres) and about 8 million litres of gasoline [spoken as “6–7 million tonnes” but likely meaning 6,000–7,000 tons]. Power plants and industry use about 8,500 [ton/day] of fuel oil, subsidised at USD 400 per ton against import costs of USD 550–570, and LPG demand is 1,300 tons/day. The rest is imported: crude when Baniyas is running, products while it is down (S1 1:12:49–1:14:11).

2. Demand, refining and the road to self-sufficiency

Q3.2 — Omar Fawaz al-Mohammad (S1 9:50). How many years until self-sufficiency in oil, gas and electricity, and the start of exports? Outline the ministry’s plan.

Minister al-Bashir

Syria needs about 300,000 bpd of crude equivalent; when the ministry was founded, need was 150,000 bpd and the two refineries covered it (S1 58:34). Need doubled for three reasons: Hasakah, Deir Ezzor, Raqqa and parts of Aleppo now take products from the ministry; the burners (harraqat/حراقات) that supplied 5–10% of the market were stopped; and demand grew, with Aleppo’s industrial city going from 900 to 1,500 factories and vehicles from 2.5 million (2025) to 3.6 million (S1 59:31). Demand ranges from 270,000–280,000 bpd in spring to 325,000–350,000 bpd in winter (S1 1:00:27).

Refining capacity is about 150,000 bpd in total: Baniyas 90,000–100,000 bpd before the overhaul and Homs 40,000–50,000 bpd. The remaining ~150,000 bpd is imported as diesel and gasoline. With local output of 112,000 bpd at the time of the report, the crude gap is about 200,000 bpd (S1 1:00:52).

Of roughly 100,000–110,000 bpd produced, about 80,000 is heavy crude that Baniyas, designed for light crude, cannot process (S1 1:02:08). About 20,000–25,000 of light crude goes to Baniyas, topped up with about 100,000 bought (130,000 at full capacity); Homs takes about 50,000 of heavy; and the ~30,000 bpd surplus heavy was stored and exported by the shipload (S1 1:02:08). Exports have now stopped: the surplus will go to local “electric” refineries (burner-type units) to make diesel, which are uneconomic and environmentally harmful, which is why such refineries were not in use until now (S1 1:03:06).

The target is oil self-sufficiency by 2028, if nothing unexpected happens, and half of gas needs by end-2030; offshore gas takes about seven years from signing the contract to production (S1 1:33:48). Gas turbines from Siemens, Ansaldo, GE and Mitsubishi are booked until 2033–35, but through the UCC partnership turbines will arrive in 2029, because UCC pre-purchased them (S1 1:34:31).

Exploration blocks are promising: firms that declared force majeure in 2012 are returning, such as Gulfsands, while some have withdrawn (S1 1:35:52).

Q2.1 — Laith Waheed al-Balous (S1 7:14). Could the Baniyas refinery overhaul have been postponed to avoid the price and market impact? What were the real reasons for the delay? Give technical information on the facility. Will the works guarantee a return to full capacity of 135,000 bpd, with stable output?

Minister al-Bashir

Baniyas has a design capacity of about 130,000 bpd and Homs 110,000 (S1 1:08:21). Homs currently produces 30,000–40,000 bpd, rising to 50,000 bpd by month-end, and its reformer unit has problems. SPC wanted to close Homs as uneconomic, but the Minister kept it as an energy-security asset able to refine heavy crude until a new refinery is built (S1 1:08:21).

Baniyas’s turnaround had been postponed for years, with repeated shutdowns during the revolution, sanctions, and a lack of spares. Technicians called it “a ticking time bomb” and asked him to sign that he took responsibility for worker and plant safety. The decision to stop was “100% technical”: much equipment is past its design life, and the overhaul will lift output from 90,000 to about 130,000 (S1 1:09:07).

Contracts were signed, and the work should have started in early summer, when turnarounds are done (before winter when demand increases) (S1 1:10:36). It was delayed repeatedly because of Hormuz, the Russia–Ukraine war, and supply chains, until it reached a critical point (S1 1:10:36).

Q6.2 — Mohammad Saeed AbdulQader al-Hasso (S1 15:20). Why not small and medium refineries near the fields, supplying the same governorates, to save transport costs, employ locals and reduce reliance on Baniyas and Homs?

Minister al-Bashir

On Friday, a team abroad was offered a ready-built refinery of 30,000–50,000 bpd, installable in months; it will go to Deir Ezzor (S1 1:35:02). A new refinery for Homs will be built at Furqlus, and a site is being sought in Aleppo. The plan is four or five refineries of about 50,000 bpd each, plus Baniyas (S1 1:35:02).

Transport and storage are being rehabilitated (S1 1:36:21). Bringing the private sector into distribution and storage is “very sensitive” in both electricity and petroleum; it is being studied, and the ministry welcomes consultancy input (S1 1:36:21).

Q3.3 — Omar Fawaz al-Mohammad (S1 10:14). Crude is trucked from the far east to the Homs and Baniyas refineries, and products trucked back east. This adds transport costs, damages roads, and creates traffic hazards. Why not fast-track a refinery in the east?

Q8.4 — Omar Issa al-Hayes (S1 20:44). Why the delay in rehabilitating the Rmeilan–Homs refinery oil line? Is there a maintenance plan, what progress has been made, and are alternative internal lines proposed?

Minister al-Bashir

The Baniyas and Homs refineries were rehabilitated several times, the main pumping groups in Homs were restarted, and many pipes were replaced; details will be sent. Trucking crude is “unhealthy”: it brings theft, oil swapped for water, congestion and road damage (S1 1:19:21–1:20:57).

More than 1,400 illegal taps on the heavy-crude line were removed, and the line is 80% rehabilitated. The end-of-September target slipped by 10–15 days after a minefield was found; demining teams from Defense or the Emergency ministry are needed (S1 1:19:21–1:20:57). Some points were missed and will be answered in writing (S1 1:37:10).

(On the eastern refinery raised in Q3.3, see also the answer to Q6.2 above.)

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3. Fuel pricing and diesel grades

Q1.3 — Abdullah Majeed al-Hajj Abd (S1 3:10). What is the actual cost of a liter of gasoline, a liter of diesel, and a gas cylinder?

Q1.7 — Abdullah Majeed al-Hajj Abd (S1 4:34). What formula and criteria does the pricing committee use?

Q8.3 — Omar Issa al-Hayes (S1 20:37). How far does the exchange rate enter the pricing formula, and how is it calculated?

Minister al-Bashir

The price is built from the exchange price on market platforms, an import premium, the product price, customs, profit margins, transport, storage, administrative costs, a renewable-energy fee, and a vehicle-registration fee. “The profit margins are now loss margins” (S1 1:31:43).

For diesel, the last cargo cost was USD 1,570 per ton (now USD 1,590); adding USD 250 in fees gives USD 1,840 per ton. At 1,200 liters per tonne, that is USD 1.53 a liter, or 206 SYP at about 135 SYP per USD. With a selling price of 175, SPC loses SYP 31 per liter (S1 1:31:39).

Q2.3 — Laith Waheed al-Balous (S1 8:10). Details of the fuel pricing committee: composition, mechanism, meeting frequency, how decisions are taken, how costs are calculated.

Minister al-Bashir

A decision formed the pricing committee from the Ministry of Economy, the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance, [geology?], the Energy Services Administration, and SPC. It proposes pricing policy; details will be provided (S1 1:31:22).

Q1.6 — Abdullah Majeed al-Hajj Abd (S1 4:05). Three diesel grades invite adulteration and corruption: stations can mix the poor grade into the standard one.

Q6.1 — Mohammad Saeed AbdulQader al-Hasso (S1 15:00). Provide data, statistics, and success metrics for the experiment of selling several diesel grades: economic feasibility, fairness of distribution, whether it reaches those entitled.

Minister al-Bashir

Some MPs asked why they didn’t introduce multiple grades from the start. The risk is adulteration: during a four-day gasoline crisis, 172 violations were recorded at stations, and three grades make monitoring much harder. Several countries and companies sought the cheaper 150-SYP grade; when prices rose, no one agreed to export it, and it was secured only afterward. Offering only the improved grade, priced at SYP 115, would have concentrated pressure on it. The price rise is “still a subsidized increase” (S1 1:03:22–1:04:34).

4. Procurement, contracting and partners

Q1.4 — Abdullah Majeed al-Hajj Abd (S1 3:12). Disclose the purchase contracts for oil products. Are they tendered? Governed by competition or monopoly? “We now have a phobia of the Qaterji and Hamsho phenomenon.” Is it recurring?

Minister al-Bashir

The crisis is now a refining crisis as well as a supply one: Russian refineries were struck, and refineries in Kuwait and the Gulf were affected. Brent was USD 103 that morning while diesel stood at USD 1,570 per ton; at that Brent level, diesel would normally be USD 1,050–1,150 per ton (S1 1:10:59–1:12:49).

“Where are the tenders?” someone asked. We are buying diesel at auctions at sea. A Moscow refinery was hit that day, and Cuba (9 million people) went dark the day before. Syria is somewhat cushioned by local output, its sea access, and friendly countries prioritizing it (S1 1:10:59–1:12:49).

Q3.1 — Omar Fawaz al-Mohammad (S1 9:18). SPC’s contracts with local service companies for maintaining wells, lines, and sites: what is the contracting mechanism and legal basis? Is it true they were awarded by direct/negotiated contract (التراضي), which violates Contracts Law No. 51 of 2004?

Minister al-Bashir

Tendering for ten transformers would leave a neighborhood without power for two months, and an external tender alone takes 50 days; so sometimes a justification memo is used to contract directly. For example, contaminated formation water was heading for the Euphrates, flagged by Deir Ezzor governors and in UN photographs, and a company was contracted directly (التراضي) to build tanks and reinject it (S1 55:21–56:14).

Other challenges include decades-old vehicles (the newest in the former electricity ministry dates from 2005), no data or databases, hard financial procedures, and FX allocation from the Central Bank. Moreover, building stocks needs money, FX, and tanks (See Q4.2) (S1 56:14).

Q5.3 — Khaled Jamal al-Khalaf (S1 14:20). Several companies entered joint investments in oil fields, such as HKN, Novaterra, and ConocoPhillips. What are their completion rates and partnership terms? Provide field names and contracts.

Q7.3 — AbdulKarim Saleh Ukaidi (S1 18:15). Why are energy investments confined to the state or kept secret? “We are surprised by a contract here and an MoU there with various parties.” Would offering them to others give better results?

Minister al-Bashir

Several MoUs for offshore oil and gas exploration have been signed with major companies. Tenders are the main method, but some contracts follow the state’s “political orientation”: Chevron, Eni and ConocoPhillips carry weight, and an Arab energy Minister told him that Chevron and Conoco “will open the doors to all companies”. Contracts must be fair, not exploitative, and the ConocoPhillips MoU is being converted into a contract amid intense negotiations on shares (S1 1:26:56–1:29:34).

Direct contracting (التراضي) is used when products are scarce: if a company offers a product below market, there’s no need to leave people without fuel to run a tender. At first, all crude purchases were tendered; now companies submit price offers, a method the Contracts Law allows, with direct contracting kept for exceptional cases such as government companies (S1 1:26:56–1:29:34).

Partners include ConocoPhillips, Chevron, TotalEnergies, and QatarEnergy, as well as regional firms: ADES [Holding], Kuwait Drilling, and UCC (S1 1:29:10).

5. Supply security: FX, storage, stations and regional pipelines

Q4.2 — Mahid SeifEddin Issa (S1 12:10). Energy security: what strategic and emergency plans exist for a sudden supply shortage or production stop? How large is the current strategic stock of products, and how long would it cover the country?

Minister al-Bashir

SPC buys crude and products in dollars but sells in lira, which it deposits at the Central Bank; the Bank’s FX priorities are health, education, defense and interior, so SPC is served late. During the gasoline queues, three gasoline tankers sat at sea, ready to discharge but unpaid (S1 1:14:11–1:16:20).

The norm should be government-to-government supply contracts with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, and other producers, for example, 200,000 bpd of crude, or 100,000 bpd of light crude plus diesel and gasoline. Sanctions effects linger, though SWIFT access has been regained. Syria needs USD 831 million a month to buy crude and products (S1 1:14:11–1:16:20).

Homs holds about 102,000 m³ of diesel in tanks in poor condition. A delegation went to South Korea to inspect ready-made tanks, since building new ones takes 1–1.5 years, and reported that they can be bought directly; underground tanks also exist in Deir Ezzor. Effective storage is 312,000 m³ of diesel and 188,000 m³ of gasoline (S1 1:21:44–1:24:44).

Depots at Adra and in rural Aleppo (Khan Touman, Khan al-Asal, Ramousseh) are dilapidated, and Kafr Battikh in Idlib is destroyed (S1 1:21:44–1:24:44). Investment budgets can’t cover everything, because the Ministry of Finance demands SPC’s revenue immediately: USD 250 million a month since the oil came under state control, which helped fund wage rises. “If they left us four or five months, a billion dollars, we’d build reserves, tanks and supply lines” (S1 1:23:09).

Q2.4 & Q2.5 — Laith Waheed al-Balous (S1 8:28). Is there a plan for real-time digital tracking of gasoline and diesel supplied to and sold at stations, to reduce queues and control the market when prices change? What criteria govern allocations to stations? Are some stations favored, for example, Tayba company stations?

Minister al-Bashir

A Petroleum Sector Regulation Department and a services regulation department were created, and new licensing criteria for fuel stations cover safety and service quality. A committee is drafting criteria for EV charging stations, though electricity itself is insufficient (S1 1:16:20–1:17:27).

The Minister gave no direct answer on Tayba stations.

Q4.3 & Q4.4 — Mahid SeifEddin Issa (S1 12:33). How can Syria maximize the benefit from Iraqi oil crossing its territory: transit, refining, storage, export via Syrian ports? Are there actual talks with Iraq? Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline: is there a rehabilitation plan and a technical-economic study (works needed, duration, operating capacity, revenues for Syria)? He asks for answers with numbers and timelines.

Minister al-Bashir

A section of the Arab Gas Pipeline between Homs and Aleppo is missing; price offers were requested, and completion, costing about USD 250 million from SPC’s own budget, is under way (S1 1:17:27).

Kirkuk–Baniyas is old, low-capacity and idle since the Iraq war; a technical study says it needs full replacement. A company consortium signed an MoU with Iraq, and Syria signed one with the consortium. Iraq is first, since Syria is only a transit country, and Iraq’s prime Minister recently urged the companies to speed up (S1 1:18:07).

Syria will be a party to the contracts. No tender is needed because the same consortium builds from Kirkuk to Baniyas. Syria will earn transit fees and may seek priority to buy oil from the line, local labor, and stations (S1 1:18:07).

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6. Governance: the ministry and SPC

Q5.1 — Khaled Jamal al-Khalaf (S1 13:36). There is much talk of SPC covering up corruption, extravagance and waste of public money. Provide a complete database on SPC: founding, structure, rights and powers. He requests a live hearing with SPC’s head before the Energy Committee.

Minister al-Bashir

The merger responded to bureaucracy and overlapping powers between oil, electricity and water; other countries merge these files, some with the economy ministry. Before the merger, investment attraction was weak and decisions poorly aligned (S1 43:31). The ministry was created under [Presidential] Decree No. 150 of 2025, and its institutions were restructured into holding economic entities (S1 44:44).

Three companies were created: the SPC [via Presidential Decree No. 189 of 2025], the SEC [via Presidential Decree No. 45 of 2026] and the SMC [via Presidential Decree No. 44 of 2026], all public holding companies and 100% state-owned. “Some thought we went towards privatizing the energy sector: no.” After years of stability and a capital valuation, some shares could be floated on local or international markets, as with Aramco’s roughly 4% float (S1 44:52).

A new General Establishment for Drinking Water and Sewerage in Damascus now oversees water companies in each governorate; previously, each governorate’s establishment reported directly to the Minister (S1 45:48). The subordinate bodies are the support directorates, the Renewable Energy Support Fund, the General Establishment of Geology, the General Authority for Water Resources (dams, irrigation canals, pumping stations), the General Establishment of the Euphrates Dam, and the water establishment (S1 46:29).

The three companies [SPC, SEC, SMC] are linked (مرتبطة), not subordinate (تابعة). They have their own administrative and financial systems, are not subject to the ministry’s law or the Basic Employees Law, and their boards were appointed by presidential decree (S1 46:58). The boards are drafting statutes and financial regulations, but none has yet been adopted. SPC’s statute is with the General Secretariat for a decree: it was returned with comments, amended, resubmitted, and is “under issuance”, with electricity and mining to follow (S1 47:31).

The ministry’s digital transformation covers an official website, an “Energy Portal”, automated transactions, linked entities and databases (S1 48:03).

7. Electricity: grid, generation, private sector and renewables

Q7.4 — AbdulKarim Saleh Ukaidi (S1 18:40). What is the status and completion rate of maintenance at thermal and hydro plants, and when will maximum capacity be reached?

Minister al-Bashir

Syria has 460 transmission lines at 400, 230 and 66 kV, and 29% of high-voltage lines are out of service, as is 29% of distribution network length in war-damaged villages and towns (S2 0:06). Of 458 transformer substations, 17% are out of service (S2 0:38). Of 12 generation plants, about 37% of capacity is unavailable: Zayzoun and Mhardeh are wholly out, and Aleppo lost all five units, two since rehabilitated (S2 0:46).

At liberation, generation was 915 MW, giving 1–2 hours of supply a day in winter and 4–5 in spring. It is now 3,500 MW including hydro, giving 18–20 hours in most governorates and 24-hour supply to industrial cities. “We multiplied generation three and a half times” (S2 1:18).

Spare parts are scarce, and most substations must be made to order, taking 18 months to two years. Deir Ezzor, which had a single substation at al-Taim, got an unused substation moved from elsewhere in Syria. The same lead times explain delays on large solar projects: nine sites have been handed to companies, but they need substations and imported equipment (S2 2:34–4:12).

Rehabilitation raised Jandar from 200 to 850 MW, brought Deir Ali to 700 MW after maintenance of an idle unit, and returned one 100 MW unit at Mhardeh after about ten years offline (S2 3:55). Deir Ali will gain a new 750 MW unit (S2 4:12). A USD 98 million contract was signed for two 200 MW units at Tishreen thermal, the first due in Q1 next year and the second in Q2, giving 400 MW by mid-year (S2 4:20).

Rastan (526 MW) was started by the [Iranian] company MAPNA [Group], which stopped after the revolution’s victory; negotiations are under way to complete it (S2 4:43). Price offers for Aleppo’s three idle units went to a Turkish company for USD 115 million. A cheaper bid was rejected on technical grounds because it would lose about 10 MW per unit in efficiency, which the law allows [rejecting a cheaper bid contract]; the contract is expected by year-end (S2 4:58).

Demand will roughly double by 2030, and existing plants are old and inefficient, so the ministry signed a contract for four new combined-cycle gas plants. They are in Aleppo (al-Tarifawi), Zayzoun (replacing the destroyed plant), Hama (Mhardeh) and Deir Ezzor (al-Taim), a governorate with no plant of its own beyond a very small one at al-Suwaidiyah near Hasakah. Together they total 4,000 MW, three ready in 2029 and one in 2030 (S2 5:59).

Transmission towers are all imported (S2 9:08). When Idlib and rural Aleppo were fed from Türkiye, a storm felled four towers in Türkiye and the area went 18 days without power (S2 9:08). About 7–8% of transmission lines have been rehabilitated, including the Türkiye interconnector, which is in progress, and the Jordan interconnector, financed by the World Bank and under execution (S2 9:54). Completed works include 156 km of high-voltage lines (8 km at 400 kV, 16 km at 230 kV, 132 km at 66 kV), seven substations, and rehabilitation of the Aleppo 400 kV substation (S2 10:11).

Q7.1 — AbdulKarim Saleh Ukaidi (S1 16:39). Involve the national private sector in production, transport, and distribution, with incentives, with the state only regulating. Specifically, private alternative-energy generation: what incentives exist, and is the price the ministry pays solar producers adequate, especially in industrial zones?

Minister al-Bashir

The aim is eventually to bring private companies into distribution, but the legislative framework isn’t ready, and the electricity law is being amended. Private distributors would add a profit margin borne by the state or citizens, so this has been postponed until the transmission company recovers (S2 10:36).

A Saudi company was contracted for a national control center and SCADA system, costing about USD 60 million (S2 11:09). Losses are high because of old plants and substations, network losses, illegal connections and theft (S2 11:39). Distribution works have replaced 784km of medium- and low-voltage lines and equipped or replaced 861 transformer centers (S2 11:59).

Q9.3 — Khaled Arafat Aarabi (S1 22:53). Brief Parliament on studies and plans for new dams, and for exploiting rivers and wind as alternatives to fossil fuels.

Q10.12 — Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais (S1 36:26). Hybrid and electric energy: the world is moving away from oil; over 30% of Jordan’s vehicles are electric [as stated]. What steps will the ministry take on infrastructure, draft laws, coordination with other ministries, public awareness, and customs cuts?

Minister al-Bashir

About 4,000 MW of renewables have been signed: 2,500 MW solar and 1,500 MW wind. Examples include Wadi al-Rabi’ in Rif Dimashq (200 MW), Furqlus (200 MW), al-Taim in Deir Ezzor (300 MW) and Aleppo (300 MW), with land already handed over (S2 7:02).

A private firm was contracted to study Syria’s energy mix across wind, geothermal, solar and fossil sources. Its draft result is 2,500 MW of solar and 1,500 MW of wind, plus about 8,000 MW of fossil generation by 2030, including UCC’s plants (S2 7:25).

Renewables are part of the solution but should not exceed 20–30% of generation for grid stability. He cites last year’s Spain–Portugal blackout as the risk of exceeding that share (S2 7:48).

8. Gas costs, the electricity tariff, smart meters and the budget

Q7.6 — AbdulKarim Saleh Ukaidi (S1 19:05). How will higher fuel and gas costs affect future electricity prices?

Q9.1 — Khaled Arafat Aarabi (S1 21:46). Gas arriving via Türkiye (he calls it “European gas”): stations are out of service, reception is irregular, metering is lacking. What has been done?

Minister al-Bashir

Syria needs 24 mcm/d of gas, produces about 8.5 and buys about 6.3: 5.3 from Azerbaijan via Türkiye, and 1 mcm via a Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) at Aqaba, piped through the Arab Gas Pipeline to Deir Ali. This costs about USD 140 million a month. About half (3.2 mcm) was a Qatari grant that ended in August, so the country now buys all gas. The Ministry of Finance has not budgeted the full gas bill, so purchases may be cut by 2–3 mcm/d, reducing supply hours (S1 1:04:34–1:08:12).

SPC had been transferring about USD 250 million a month to the treasury; last month it asked the Ministry of Finance to cover its deficit, but the Ministry said it could not. The options are to live with fuel crises, or to stop buying gas and return to 2–3 hours of power as under the old regime, when 6 mcm produced about 950 MW and 1–2 hours in winter (S1 1:06:24). Industrial and commercial users take about 40% of power, so cutting supply would close reopened factories and reverse growth (S1 1:07:50).

Under the old system, 6 mcm/d of domestic gas generated about 950 MW with no purchases; when industrial cities and tourism and commercial users demanded power, the ministry started buying gas at about USD 140 million a month (S2 13:18). SPC buys the gas and supplies the SEC, which should generate, collect and pay SPC (S2 14:09). SPC’s receivable from SEC stood at USD 1.65 billion “as of yesterday”, because collections fall short through plant and network losses, theft and the high cost of gas (S2 14:09).

The tariff aims to sustain gas purchases with a financial return and to reduce load (S2 15:06). When the Qatari grant came, supply rose from 2 to about 8 hours, and longer continuous supply overloaded transformers and lines, which had “no time to cool”, so explosions multiplied. The tariff was also a technical measure to curb consumption (S2 15:06).

Q7.7 — AbdulKarim Saleh Ukaidi (S1 19:13). Subsidize the first electricity block above 300 kWh (per billing cycle), or halve it, or create a middle block, giving three tiers (low-income, middle, others).

Minister al-Bashir

The tariff emerged from dozens of workshops and three meetings with governors, with options narrowing from four tiers to three, then two. The first block is 300 kWh per two-month cycle, or 150 kWh a month, priced at 4.5 US cents/kWh, for a bill of about USD 6.5 a month. Engineers measured that 150 kWh covers lighting, a fridge and a washing machine for a limited-income family, though not heating (S2 16:24). Heating and water heating fall in the second block; a third subsidized block would mean going back to three or four hours of supply (S2 17:51).

An MP visited and told him, “you got Damascus to 20 hours, but it’s expensive”; he replied that price is what got it there. The easy option was to burn only domestic gas for two hours of power a day, as before, when, the MP said, people “used blankets” (S2 18:07).

The second block costs 11 cents, compared with SEC’s 18 cents. SPC transfers gas to SEC at USD 9/MMBtu while buying it at USD 22/MMBtu today (S2 18:58). Syria will therefore cut gas purchases by 2 mcm/d, reducing service, because SEC’s deficit to SPC is USD 1.65 billion (S2 19:41).

In the first billing cycle after the rise, collection reached 72% in Damascus and 76% in Aleppo, with Tartous similar and some governorates much lower; the cycle stays open until year-end (S2 19:47). Good collection means more gas and better service (S2 19:47).

At today’s prices, even industrial and commercial power is subsidized, though both were at break-even when set. Subsidy rates are 75% on the first block, 42% on the second, 30% on “golden lines” exempt from rationing, and 26% on industrial and high-voltage users such as smelters, so overall electricity subsidy runs from 26% to 75% (S2 21:02).

The goals are to rehabilitate lines and substations, raise generation, add renewables, and continue tariff reform. The tariff might suit SEC once self-sufficiency is reached, but with purchased gas at world prices it is “very burdensome”, and cutting gas purchases is “the only solution” for now (S2 21:52). Some want 4–6 hours of power, but reopened factories can’t be told there is no power: “no going back”. He has asked the Ministry of Finance for more FX for gas and fuel oil (S2 22:25).

Q7.5 — AbdulKarim Saleh Ukaidi (S1 18:47). What is the plan and timeline for smart electricity and water meters?

Minister al-Bashir

A contract was signed with a Saudi meter company; supply has started, and pilot meters are installed. This year, 300,000 meters will go into Damascus and Idlib, with all governorates from early next year, plus a control center. The meters will run on cards, Wi-Fi or telecom networks, easing top-up and billing and cutting losses (S2 12:15–13:10).

Separately, bids for smart water and electricity meters were awarded to a Chinese company; delegations went to China twice, and the contract, for about 6 million smart meters of each type, is in its final stages (S2 28:18).

Q8.1 — Omar Issa al-Hayes (S1 20:10). Detailed 2026 budget for the Ministry of Energy: revenues, expenditure and deficits since its adoption after the one-twelfth provisional budgets.

Minister al-Bashir

Detailed budgets for all companies, covering investment, current spending, surplus, income and losses, will be provided. “Electricity has declared a loss of USD 1.65 billion to date; on August 1 it was USD 1.3 billion” (S2 23:30).

In mining, the vision is to move into processing industries such as phosphate and silica rather than exporting raw ore. Geological activity so far: 1,302 field trips, 2,700 tests, 1,400 licenses, 93 industrial licenses and 190 investment contracts (S2 24:20).

9. Water, dams and irrigation

Q1.8 — Abdullah Majeed al-Hajj Abd (S1 4:49). Euphrates Dam: only four of eight turbines work; the other four are out of service.

Q10.9 — Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais (S1 31:09). Halabiyeh–Zalabiyeh dam on the Euphrates: power, water and agriculture. These projects could go to investment or into the budget.

Minister al-Bashir

Syria has 164 dams with a total capacity of 19.03 billion m³, the largest being the Euphrates and Tishreen dams, plus other dams providing irrigation for about 18 [thousand?] km of irrigation networks and 285 pumping stations (S2 29:33).

The Euphrates Dam has eight units, four of which are out of service. Technical studies for two are ready and included in the Euphrates Dam establishment’s investment plan; if the 2027 budget is approved, rehabilitation of those two will begin. Tishreen Dam has six units: one was out and has returned, with some technical problems (S2 30:30).

A fourth Euphrates dam, Halabiyeh–Zalabiyeh, is under study and will be offered for investment. It is a regulating rather than storage dam, generating about 75 MW from three units and supporting irrigation and land reclamation (S2 30:06). It would irrigate 30,000 ha, produce 78 MW and benefit about 87,000 families (”about 60,000 people” [as spoken]) (S2 34:47).

Q10.1, Q10.3 & Q10.4 — Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais (S1 25:03). Syria wastes about 90% of its water potential; 60–70% of arable land is not farmed. Syria’s Euphrates share is 500 m³/s under the 1987 agreement, but only about 200 m³/s arrived in recent years. After four years of drought, last winter’s rains turned the river into a burden.

Last winter’s flood crisis was managed only with warnings and media statements, with no prior plan. The Euphrates now carries 1,200 m³/s in summer; in winter it could reach 2,000–2,500, risking dam failure and floods in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, destroying crops, homes, and bridges. Flash floods in the Badia also destroyed bridges. What measures (not plans) has the ministry taken?

What coordination or agreement exists with Türkiye on flows? Last year’s releases were unilateral, hence the surprise.

Minister al-Bashir

Inflow from Türkiye rose from about 200–220 m³/s to about 1,000 m³/s (S2 31:16). The riverbed was designed for 3,000 m³/s, but encroachments by farming and building mean even 2,000 would cause problems; the water law defines a 3,000 m³/s protection zone that people have violated (S2 31:16).

Last time, dams were refilled after severe depletion that had stopped some plants; once refilled, Türkiye gave one day’s warning that it would increase releases. Releases had to rise, and in Raqqa the al-Rashid bridge would have been lost. Earthen causeway bridges worsened the crisis by holding water back; with the al-Siyasi, al-Rashid, and al-Mayadin bridges restored, the problem should ease (S2 32:21).

Q10.5 — Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais (S1 28:39). Have irrigation and land-reclamation canals been dredged, and how many km? Have the Badia dams been repaired?

Minister al-Bashir

Since the start of the year, 1,974 km of irrigation canals have been dredged round the clock, after the old regime left them uncleaned for 15 years; this absorbed heavy rains without floods (S2 33:21). The al-Sayha dam between Aleppo and Idlib was a collection dam built by locals, not the water authority, but the ministry took responsibility and is working with the Emergency Ministry on the damage (S2 33:51).

Water points and drinking-water samples are being monitored. Four dams are being completed, and two or three more are in the 2027 plan (S2 34:22).

Q10.7 & Q10.8 — Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais (S1 29:40). Strategic projects: artificial reservoirs, smart canals, and modern irrigation (as in Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, India) could cover over 1 million ha. The “Euphrates Renaissance” idea to revive the Khabour: a 30-year tragedy, whole villages emptied by drought. What is the plan?

The 2006 Tigris diversion project: the Tigris runs about 50 km inside Syria and goes unused, despite having a higher flow than the Euphrates. It could irrigate all of Hasakah and revive the Khabour.

Minister al-Bashir

Under international law, Syria has an unused share of the Tigris. The Tigris–Khabour diversion would irrigate about 215,000 ha, 150,000 of them new and 65,000 formerly irrigated from the Khabour, at a cost of USD 2 billion. It is branded the “Green Renaissance” for Hasakah and Deir Ezzor (S2 34:55).

Q10.10 — Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais (S1 31:44). Sewage flows into rivers and lakes, especially in the east, where river water is undrinkable. Treatment plants would yield methane, fertilizer, and about 700 million m³ of reusable water from three plants, for fodder and afforestation. (He mentions an Agriculture Ministry deal with a Saudi company (”3,000 or 300,000 ha, I don’t remember”)).

Minister al-Bashir

Syria has 5,700 water sources, about 65,000 km of networks and 123 wastewater treatment plants, yet most sewage goes untreated into rivers, lakes and the sea. Treatment plants are a priority for agricultural water and pollution control (S2 24:57). In the investment budget, he has requested at least five wastewater treatment plants per governorate, since sewage flows into the sea in Latakia and Tartous, the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor, and the Orontes in Idlib and Hama; he asks MPs to prioritize them when voting on the budget (S1 1:23:53).

The Adra plant is being rehabilitated. Aleppo’s Ramousseh plant costs USD 400 million and is being marketed to the World Bank and others, or may be financed by a loan, because the Ministry of Finance says it cannot allocate that sum (S2 25:46). Waste is huge: “a cubic meter of water costs 7 old lira, i.e. 0.007 SYP” under the tariff, so people waste it, with rooftop tanks overflowing and cars washed (S2 26:02).

Works include maintaining 6,000 pumps and 1,462 generating sets; drilling 38 new wells; rehabilitating 1,051 wells, 110 elevated tanks, and 206 pumping and treatment stations; and installing 416 solar systems, 406 of them at water pumping stations. On networks, 10,000 rehabilitations or replacements, 11,000 repairs, and 126,000 violations were recorded, plus 92 lines exempted from rationing and 136 transformer centers for water stations (S2 27:10).

Service was restored to about 2.3 million people through the Wadi Marwan, al-Jarrouh, Alouk (Hasakah), and Maarat al-Numan projects, which had been idle for 12–13 years (S2 27:52). Sixteen wastewater plants were built, and more than 2,686 km of sewer lines were replaced. Partnerships include Ain al-Zarqa in Idlib, whose system serves 80% of the governorate, agreed with the World Bank and humanitarian partners; an upper Orontes project; and the Adra treatment plant, with about 2.2 million beneficiaries, in execution (S2 28:43).

Q10.11 — Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais (S1 33:13). Euphrates-to-Hisyah water project (phosphate plant, industrial city), announced on the 30th of last month: he supports it but questions it. It runs 410 km at an initial USD 571 million; he expects USD 1–1.5 billion, citing Jordan’s Aqaba–Amman carrier at over USD 3.5 billion. It needs protection and maintenance and takes water from Raqqa’s and Deir Ezzor’s share. Alternatives: desalination near Baniyas (110–120 km away, USD 500–600 million), a line from Lake Quttinah (80 km, under USD 100 million), or local wells (about 1,200 meters deep, about USD 2 million, lasting 10–15 years). He asks for a neutral committee to compare options before bids close on 30/9.

Minister al-Bashir

The USD 571–572 million cost of Euphrates–Hisyah is accurate for 3 m³/s; converting it to agriculture would need 12 m³/s and about USD 1.5 billion. It draws from Lake Assad, not from Deir Ezzor’s or Raqqa’s share: 3 m³/s against about 1,000 m³/s of flow. It mainly serves industry and drinking water, supplying Palmyra, a branch back to Deir Ezzor for livestock, and a branch to Hisyah for the industrial city, the phosphate mines, and the Furqlus refinery site. The ministry posts offers on its platforms, and companies are enquiring (S2 35:56).

The “national carrier” would capture freshwater along the coast, from the al-Sinn river, submarine springs, and groundwater, and pump it to the Qutayfah reservoirs, then by gravity to Damascus, Daraa, Suwayda, Quneitra, and Rif Dimashq. A study contract has been signed, but the project has not yet been studied, with an initial estimate of about USD 9 billion. It would reduce Ain al-Fijeh from 40 m³/s to about 1.5 m³/s. Some desalination may be included, but desalination costs about USD 0.50/m³, or 37 cents in the best case he has seen (S2 37:24).

Unanswered questions

Sixteen of the committee’s questions received no answer in the presentation. All were asked in Session 1.

Abdullah Majeed al-Hajj Abd

• Q1.5 (S1 3:46): What justified the sudden price rise, “as if it was planned overnight”? We woke up to prices up “insanely”.

• Q1.9 (S1 5:05): Maskanah East pumping station (Japanese-built): only two of six motors work. Its irrigation network (17,700 ha) is worn out, and nobody responds.

• Q1.10 (S1 5:39): Rusafa transformer station (his constituency) is down, idling about 110 wells (he first says 120); only 10 run on diesel. It also feeds al-Safih, al-Mamlaha and al-Wahhab. When will it be repaired?

Laith Waheed al-Balous

• Q2.2 (S1 7:45): Why not announce a public subsidy policy for fuel and electricity that targets the neediest, as a transitional measure until living standards improve?

Omar Fawaz al-Mohammad

• Q3.4 (S1 10:59): Request a circular obliging ministries to ration and cut back in civilian and military sectors, cancel open personal fuel cards, and apply strict monitoring.

Mahid SeifEddin Issa

• Q4.1 (S1 11:51): How long will the latest price increase last? Given the protests, will the ministry set clear criteria for any future increase or decrease?

Khaled Jamal al-Khalaf

• Q5.2 (S1 13:59): Is there a plan to install high-accuracy meters from the fields through to shipping, refineries, and ports, to reconcile figures and prevent manipulation?

• Q5.4 (S1 14:38): Are all oil and gas fields fully under Syrian government control?

Mohammad Saeed AbdulQader al-Hasso

• Q6.3 (S1 15:40): Create a stabilization fund that intervenes when prices exceed a threshold and brings them back down.

• Q6.4 (S1 15:56): What is the estimated percentage of energy waste, both governmental (motorcades, events, displays) and by citizens (unpaid bills, grid theft)?

AbdulKarim Saleh Ukaidi

• Q7.2 (S1 17:33): Public debate over contracts such as UrbaCon’s: what are the company’s obligations, and what is the legal basis? Provide Parliament with a full copy of that contract and others.

Omar Issa al-Hayes

• Q8.2 (S1 20:25): Is importing crude or products overland from the Gulf possible and economically feasible?

Khaled Arafat Aarabi

• Q9.2 (S1 22:24): The decision to close the oil secondary schools: postpone it two years so first- and second-year students can finish.

• Q9.4 (S1 23:23): Does the pricing committee distinguish between products by their impact on citizens? Diesel hits people in many ways; gasoline less so.

Mahmoud Saleh al-Owais

• Q10.2 (S1 26:26): Modern irrigation networks are lacking. Farming stops 2–5 km from rivers and lakes; beyond that, it is rain-fed. No state drip systems; much Badia land is unused.

• Q10.6 (S1 29:02): Proposal: a spillway into Badia depressions like Egypt’s Toshka, with at least three candidate storage areas.

Partly answered

• Q2.5 (S1 8:44), Laith Waheed al-Balous: the point on Tayba company stations got no direct answer (see section 5).

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The announcement that Syria has achieved wheat self-sufficiency for the first time since 2010, with the Syrian Grain Establishment receiving 2.7 million tons of wheat, marks a significant milestone for the nation’s food security. However, a rigorous assessment of this achievement requires not only an evaluation of total tonnage but also a detailed compositional breakdown of the harvest, specifically, the proportions of soft (Triticum aestivum) and durum (Triticum durum) wheat (also known as hard wheat), as this directly determines the crop’s functional utility for domestic consumption, particularly for Arabic bread production.

The stakes are real: Syria’s wheat import requirement for the 2025/26 marketing year had been forecast at around 3 million tons, which at recent global prices of roughly USD 220 per ton would imply an import bill in the high hundreds of millions of dollars, the bill this year’s harvest is intended to avoid.

A note on terminology before proceeding: the Grain Establishment’s self-sufficiency benchmark, 2.55 million tons, is narrower than Syria’s total wheat requirement, and this is not a one-off figure. The Grain Establishment cited essentially the same 2.5 million-ton “consumption” benchmark a full year earlier, in September 2025, and Syria’s Central Bureau of Statistics has historically described pre-war average local consumption the same way: roughly 2.5 million tons, against production exceeding 4 million tons and an export surplus of 1.2–1.5 million tons.

Set against this, a Ministry of Agriculture official put Syria’s total annual wheat requirement closer to 4 million tons in 2026, a figure that closely echoes an FAO/GIEWS estimate from as far back as 1999, which put domestic wheat requirements at 3.8 million tons. The consistency of both figures across nearly three decades suggests the roughly 1.3–1.5 million-ton gap between them is a real, structural feature of Syrian wheat demand likely taking the form of non-bread uses such as seed stock, animal feed, and bulgur production. An independent estimate, built from an FAO ration standard of 275 grams of flour per person per day scaled to Syria’s population and converted to wheat-equivalent at typical extraction rates, puts minimum bread-wheat need in the range of 2.6–3.1 million tons, consistent with, if slightly above, the 2.55-million-ton figure. This triangulation supports treating the 2.55-million-ton benchmark primarily as a bread-wheat proxy in the analysis that follows, though it remains an assumption rather than an officially confirmed figure.

Thus, based on available procurement data up to mid-July 2026, which recorded a total intake of 2,076,754 tons, the partial harvest was distributed as follows:

• Soft wheat: 1,129,462 tons (54.4%)

• Durum (hard) wheat: 947,293 tons (45.6%)

If these same proportions are applied to the final reported total of 2.7 million tons (acknowledging that the definitive breakdown for the full amount has not yet been officially published), the estimated breakdown would be approximately:

• Soft wheat: ~1.469 million tons (54.4%)

• Durum wheat: ~1.231 million tons (45.6%)

The functional distinction between these two wheat classes is critical, as Syria‘s primary food staple—Arabic flatbread—requires a specific flour blend. Based on Syrian milling practices, Syrian flour blending for Arabic bread in Syria typically comprises approximately 75–80% soft wheat and 20–25% durum wheat. Without going into too many details, this ratio is designed to optimize dough strength, elasticity, and high-temperature baking performance. For the purpose of this analysis, a conservative blend of 80% soft wheat and 20% durum wheat is assumed.

Based on the above figures, a significant structural imbalance is evident. Given the total wheat required to meet the national annual consumption requirement of 2.55 million tons of wheat, and applying the 80/20 blending specification, wheat needs would stand at :

• Required soft wheat: 2.55 × 0.80 = ~2.04 million tons

• Required durum wheat: 2.55 × 0.20 = ~0.51 million tons

Comparing this with the estimated actual production based on the 54.4/45.6 split:

• Actual soft wheat available: ~1.47 million tons

• Actual durum wheat available: ~1.23 million tons

This yields the following deficits and surpluses:

• Soft wheat shortfall: 2.04 − 1.47 = ~0.57 million tons (roughly 570,000 tons)

• Durum wheat surplus: 1.23 − 0.51 = ~0.72 million tons (roughly 720,000 tons)

Turning to the harvest composition itself, while the 2.7-million-ton total does exceed the Grain Establishment’s 2.55-million-ton benchmark, aggregate sufficiency masks a compositional imbalance. The harvest contains a disproportionately high share of durum wheat and an insufficient share of soft wheat to meet the standard Arabic-bread milling specification, even though total volume clears the government’s headline benchmark.

In practical terms, this composition points in two directions at once: Syria’s durum surplus is a potential export opportunity, although the estimated surplus should be treated as a gross quantity rather than a directly exportable volume, since the final grain-quality, grade, moisture, and other quality characteristics of the full crop have not yet been publicly verified. Meanwhile, its soft wheat shortfall means the country will likely still need to import wheat for bread, even in a year officially declared self-sufficient. Both implications are explored in detail below.

Global Production Context and the Scarcity of Durum Wheat

To fully appreciate the strategic significance of Syria‘s durum wheat production, it is essential to situate it within the broader context of global wheat output. Worldwide wheat production is overwhelmingly dominated by soft wheat (Triticum aestivum), which accounts for approximately 95% of global production. Durum wheat (Triticum durum), by contrast, constitutes only the remaining 5% of global wheat output. Some estimates place the durum share slightly higher, at approximately 5–6% of total production and less than 10% of cultivated area. Regardless of the precise figure, the fundamental reality remains: durum wheat is a minority crop on the global stage, representing less than 10% of total wheat production.

This scarcity is a primary driver of the persistent price premium that durum wheat commands over soft wheat in international commodity markets. The limited global supply, combined with the specific and non-substitutable end-uses of durum, underpins its higher valuation. On Euronext (the only exchange with a liquid durum futures contract), European Durum Wheat futures (September 2026 delivery) settled at EUR 290 (about USD 335) per ton in August 2026, against approximately EUR 229 (about USD 265) per ton for the equivalent Euronext Milling Wheat (soft wheat) contract, a premium of roughly USD 70 per ton. This is consistent with the physical market: in March 2026, Tunisia’s state grain agency purchased soft wheat at approximately USD 272 per ton (cost and freight (C&F)) and durum at approximately USD 334 per ton (C&F) in the same international tender, a durum premium of nearly USD 62 per ton.

Beyond the scarcity factor, the price premium of durum wheat is also rooted in its unique technological and culinary properties, which render it irreplaceable for a range of food products. Durum wheat possesses a distinct protein composition that gives it exceptional firmness, elasticity, and cooking stability. These properties make durum the essential raw material for:

• Pasta (spaghetti, macaroni, penne, and other extruded products), where its high protein content and firm texture are indispensable.

• Couscous, a staple across North Africa and the Levant, requires durum semolina for its characteristic granular texture and ability to absorb flavors without disintegrating.

• Bulgur, a cracked wheat product widely used in Middle Eastern cuisine, is where durum's firmness and nutty flavor are preferred.

• Specialty flatbreads in the Middle East and North Africa use durum, either pure or blended, to achieve the desired texture and structure.

Critically, soft wheat cannot substitute for durum in these applications. Pasta made from soft wheat lacks the firmness, yellow color, and cooking quality that consumers expect. Couscous produced from soft wheat fails to achieve the proper granularity and tends to become mushy during cooking. The technological specificity of durum wheat means that for these product categories, there is no viable alternative. This non-substitutability further reinforces durum‘s strategic value and its elevated position in global markets.

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Syria as a Durum Wheat Producer: Historical Context and Strategic Positioning

Over the years, with available governorate-level data (2011–2025), Syria’s durum share has consistently exceeded half of total wheat production, ranging from roughly 53% to 65%. The 2026 harvest’s 45.6% durum share falls below this entire historical range, with the reasons for this large year-on-year drop remaining unclear.

Based on figures from the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform (MAAR), Syria’s wheat production held above 4 million tons a year through most of the 2002–2007 period, peaking at 4.93 million tons in 2006, when the country remained self-sufficient and a net exporter. That run broke sharply in 2008, when frost and a severe spring drought cut production to 2.14 million tons, roughly half the prior year’s crop. Production partially recovered through 2009–2013, but never returned to the pre-2008 peak, averaging closer to 3.4 million tons even before the war’s effects compounded the underlying climate volatility. From 2014 onward, output became substantially more erratic, swinging between lows near 1.1–1.2 million tons (2018, 2022) and highs above 3 million tons (2019, 2023). This volatility culminated in 2025’s collapse to 934,000 tons, the worst year on record, before the sharp 2026 rebound.

The production data underscore why irrigated capacity functions as a buffer against Syria’s chronic rainfed volatility. Across the 21 years of complete data from 2002 to 2023, in the 13 years when non-irrigated yield fell from the prior year, it did so by an average of roughly 35%, while irrigated yield, in those same years, fell by an average of only about 7%, and in four of the thirteen years actually rose despite the rainfed collapse (see charts below).

The pattern is starkest in Syria’s worst individual drought years: in 2008, non-irrigated yield fell 79% year-over-year against a 32% decline in irrigated yield; in 2021, non-irrigated yield fell 84% against an 18% irrigated decline; and in 2018, non-irrigated yield fell 71% while irrigated yield was essentially flat. Irrigated wheat has not been immune to Syria’s droughts, but it has consistently absorbed a fraction of the damage that rainfed cultivation sustains in the same year — a resilience gap of roughly five to one across the full series.

Beyond self-sufficiency, Syria was also a net exporter of wheat. The country’s durum wheat was competitive in international markets, and Syria’s position in the world wheat trade was growing. UN Comtrade data (see chart below) traces the shape of this trajectory precisely: durum exports were negligible in 2000, seemingly worth just USD 770 for a token 4.3 tons, before climbing rapidly to USD 116.7 million (608,091 tons) by 2002 and peaking in 2007 at USD 237.8 million for 961,645 tons, implying an average export price of roughly USD 247 per ton that year. That peak coincided with the onset of the 2008 drought, and exports collapsed the following year to USD 21 million on just 59,147 tons, even as the implied per-ton price rose to around USD 356, consistent with a tighter domestic crop pushing up the value of what little was still shipped abroad, against the backdrop of the 2007–08 global food price spike.

A brief partial recovery followed in 2010 (USD 6.9 million, 29,085 tons), but by 2011, as the war began, Syrian durum exports had fallen to USD 761, effectively zero, a complete reversal of the trade position built up over the preceding decade.

Strategic Implications of the Durum Surplus

The compositional imbalance identified in the 2026 harvest—a surplus of approximately 720,000 tons of durum wheat alongside a deficit of approximately 570,000 tons of soft wheat—means that Syria’s wheat mix remains structurally misaligned with its own consumption needs, aggregate self-sufficiency notwithstanding. The government’s headline claim is accurate on its own narrow terms: 2.7 million tons does exceed the 2.55-million-ton benchmark, but it describes volume, not composition. On that basis, Syria has not achieved the kind of self-sufficiency that reduces its dependence on trade; it has reproduced the same structural pattern that has defined Syrian wheat production for decades.

On the one hand, the durum surplus cannot be fully utilized in the standard Arabic bread flour blend without compromising product quality. Substituting durum for soft wheat beyond the 20–25% threshold would alter the dough’s properties, potentially affecting consumer acceptability. It should also be noted that the 720,000-ton figure, calculated only against the bread-flour blend requirement, is an upper bound rather than a precise net-exportable volume, since it does not separately account for domestic durum demand from bulgur and pasta production, meaning the true exportable surplus likely sits somewhat below 720,000 tons.

On the other hand, durum wheat’s price premium over soft wheat, established earlier, means this is not a new problem for Syria, nor an unmanageable one. Pre-war Syrian agriculture already lived with this dynamic as the country’s standing trade pattern: since Syria produces a higher ratio of hard to soft wheat than is ideal for bread-making, and hard wheat commands a higher price internationally, the country would export hard wheat in years of surplus and import soft wheat in years of deficit. The 2026 harvest fits this pattern exactly. Today, then, the question is whether Syria can afford to resolve this imbalance through trade, as it did routinely before the war.

At current international prices of approximately USD 330–335 per ton for durum, the surplus could yield export revenues in the range of USD 238–241 million; revenue that could be strategically deployed to finance the roughly USD 151–155 million in soft wheat imports the shortfall implies, grossing to a commodity-value differential on the order of USD 85–90 million before freight and logistics differentials, and before accounting for the smaller, bulgur-adjusted surplus noted above.

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Conclusion and Recommendations

The 2.7-million-ton harvest represents a remarkable agricultural recovery and a significant step toward food security. But a complete evaluation of Syria’s wheat self-sufficiency must extend beyond aggregate tonnage. On its own narrow terms, the government’s claim holds: total procurement exceeds the stated 2.55-million-ton benchmark. But whether that translates into practical bread-wheat self-sufficiency depends on the final soft-to-durum composition, milling requirements, grain quality and the availability of stocks and trade. On the assumptions used in this analysis, the 2026 harvest appears to reproduce the same structural pattern that has characterized Syrian wheat production for decades: a relatively high share of durum alongside a potential soft-wheat deficit, a mismatch that has historically been managed through trade.

In fact, the first wheat shipments arriving through Tartous in August underscore the distinction: Syria can simultaneously meet its aggregate domestic production benchmark and remain an active participant in the wheat trade. The policy question, therefore, is not simply whether Syria produces enough wheat, but whether it produces the right wheat, in the right qualities, and at the right cost.

Strategically, Syria should consider:

1. Exporting the durum surplus to capture its international price premium, and using the proceeds to finance soft wheat imports. This swap, netted against itself, points to a gross foreign-currency gain of about USD 85–90 million before freight and logistics differentials, and before accounting for the smaller, bulgur- and pasta-adjusted surplus discussed above.

2. Investing in value-added processing (pasta, couscous, bulgur) to capture additional value from domestic durum production, rather than exporting raw grain alone.

3. Re-establish trade corridors that lapsed with the conflict by building on Syria’s pre-war track record as a competitive, quality durum exporter.

4. Weighing the case for shifting some procurement incentives or seed distribution toward soft wheat against the comparative-advantage logic of the current pattern. While, given durum’s price premium, exporting durum and importing soft wheat is, in principle, more profitable per hectare than growing soft wheat domestically to substitute for imports, a good case for rebalancing is resilience through the reduction of Syria’s exposure to a strategy that depends, every single year, on functioning trade execution for a bread-critical staple.

5. Prioritizing investment in irrigated wheat cultivation, which has consistently outperformed rainfed production in both yield and resilience. This should be pursued carefully, given competing demands on Syria’s water resources and the risk that poorly managed expansion could deplete or degrade the same water sources the strategy depends on.

6. Managing the communications gap between the self-sufficiency announcement and the wheat imports that are likely to continue regardless. Having publicly declared self-sufficiency for the first time since 2010, the government risks a credibility cost if Syria continues importing wheat in the months ahead. Framing imports as a targeted response to a specific compositional gap, rather than as a reversal of the self-sufficiency claim, would be both more accurate and less likely to erode public trust than an unexplained resumption of imports following a headline declaration of food security.

Official publication of the final, fully verified soft-to-durum breakdown for the entire 2.7-million-ton crop remains essential to resolve the remaining uncertainties in this analysis and to inform evidence-based policy decisions regarding imports, exports, milling strategies and agricultural planning for future seasons. As established earlier, the roughly 1.3–1.5 million-ton gap between the Grain Establishment’s narrower benchmark and Syria’s broader annual wheat requirement likely reflects non-bread uses and other components of wheat demand.

Further Reading: Syria’s 2025–2026 Agricultural Season

This piece builds on ongoing coverage of Syria’s wheat sector in The Syria Dispatch. For more on how this season unfolded month by month:

May 2026 — Wheat Price Protests Force Bonus as Stronger Harvest Season Tests Grain Procurement

June 2026 — Stronger Agricultural Harvest Prospects Meet Fuel, Storage, and Marketing Bottlenecks

July 2026 — Strong Wheat Harvest Exposes Storage, Payment, and Marketing Constraints

These articles are part of the Syria Monthly Economic Digest, a monthly publication tracking Syria’s economic developments across a wide range of topics. You can access the full archive here.

The Syria Dispatch is an independent publication covering Syria’s economy, politics, and society, founded and edited by Benjamin Fève.

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Looking for research, analysis, or advisory support on Syria? Benjamin Fève provides independent consulting on Syria’s political economy, reconstruction, and economic governance — including research design, briefings, interviews, and tailored analysis for organizations, investors, and policymakers. Get in touch to discuss a project.

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A European delegation sent to Syria to prepare a new development financing package came back with a blunt diagnosis. Funds were available, sectors had been identified, and political willingness existed on both sides. Yet implementation was slow. European procedures were difficult to navigate. Coordination between Syrian planning bodies and implementing agencies was weak. And European instruments struggled to compete with other partners offering cheaper, simpler, and faster financing.

This assessment was not made in 2026. It dates back to 1982. But that is precisely the point: it reads as though it could have been written today. As Europe re-engages with Syria through recovery support, technical assistance, institutional capacity-building, and renewed cooperation frameworks, an old problem is returning. The extent of the European Union’s (EU) willingness to provide support is not the issue. What remains to be understood, however, is whether its instruments can be understood, absorbed, used, and accepted inside Syria’s rebuilding state.

An Old Lesson from the 1980s

In late April 1982, a joint delegation from the European Commission (EC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) visited Syria to prepare the second financial protocol under the EEC-Syria cooperation framework. The exercise was classic European development cooperation: identifying sectors, appraising projects, defining indicative allocations, and matching financing instruments to national priorities. Agriculture, irrigation, energy, sewerage, education, telecommunications, and technical assistance all featured prominently. But the same archival record also captured something else.

Even when political willingness existed on both sides, implementation lagged. According to the European mission’s report, by mid-1982, only 20.3% of the grant element of the first financial protocol had actually been disbursed, while EIB loans remained effectively unused.1 Among the reasons, the joint delegation listed Damascus’ weak familiarity with Community procedures, poor coordination between Syrian planning bodies and implementing agencies, and a preference for cheaper or easier financing available elsewhere, such as from the Eastern Bloc (see screen captures below).

These three limitations remain relevant today, nearly half a century later.

As a result, there is a risk that Europeans may once again design instruments that are formally generous but practically difficult for Syria to absorb. The problem is therefore not only financial (Europeans can mobilize huge sums of money) but rather administrative, institutional, and competitive.

The EU has lifted most economic sanctions on Syria while retaining security- and Assad-regime-related measures, and has announced financial support of around €620 million for 2026 and 2027, including humanitarian aid, early recovery support, and bilateral support. Politically, the EU is also moving in the right direction, as shown by the organization of the EU-Syria High-Level Political Dialogue and the full restoration of the EU-Syria Cooperation Agreement.

On this latter point (and though nobody expected anything else), it can be considered that Europe is not reinventing the wheel by building a new relationship with Syria; it is reactivating an older institutional framework… whose tools were already marked by uneven implementation. Given this context, the question today is whether European support can be operationalized under the current conditions to avoid previous pitfalls.

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Damascus and the European Learning Curve

One of the less visible obstacles to EU-Syria cooperation concerns a simple but consequential issue: understanding how European support actually works.

European engagement is often discussed in terms of headline figures, funding envelopes, and political commitments. Yet behind these announcements lies a complex architecture of institutions, instruments, procedures, and funding channels that is not always easy to navigate, even for specialists. European officials acknowledged that EU mechanisms can be difficult to understand from the outside, particularly when different Directorates-General, implementing partners, financing instruments, and decision-making processes operate simultaneously.

This complexity shapes how support is received and absorbed. One EU official recalled that Syrian counterparts frequently referred to the often-cited figure of EUR 37 billion in European support to Syria and the region since 2011 (now EUR 38 billion), yet struggled to understand where this money had gone, through which channels it had been disbursed, and what portion had actually reached activities inside Syria. Explaining the architecture behind the figure reportedly proved difficult even for European officials themselves.2

The challenge is amplified by the current state of Syrian institutions. Following the collapse of the Assad regime, ministries have undergone extensive restructuring; responsibilities remain fluid; staff turnover is high; and many officials are encountering European institutions for the first time. European officials described a situation in which ministries are simultaneously attempting to rebuild internal administrative systems and learn to engage with a complex external donor ecosystem.

That complexity matters more than it may initially appear. European instruments are often presented as self-explanatory: grants, technical assistance, institutional support, trade facilitation, and de-risking mechanisms. In practice, however, none of these are automatically legible from the Syrian side, especially at a moment when the state itself is being rebuilt, responsibilities remain fluid, and technical capacity remains uneven across ministries and agencies.

The issue extends beyond financing. Discussions surrounding trade illustrate a similar pattern. A Syrian official at the Ministry of Economy and Foreign Trade expressed strong interest in expanding access to European markets, including the possible reactivation of trade provisions in existing agreements (prior to the EU-Syria Cooperation Agreement's reactivation). Yet Syria appears to make only limited use of certain preferential trade arrangements already available through European schemes. This suggests that the challenge may not always lie in the absence of instruments, but sometimes in awareness, technical understanding, or the administrative capacity required to use them effectively.

In such a context, slow uptake does not necessarily signal unwillingness. It can also reflect unfamiliarity, fragmentation, institutional transition, or simple administrative overload. The historical record from the early 1980s already pointed to this dynamic. More than four decades later, the risk appears not to have disappeared. The challenge facing European policymakers is therefore not only to mobilize resources, but also to ensure that Syrian institutions are capable of identifying, understanding, accessing, and ultimately absorbing them.

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The Coordination Problem

The second limitation concerning coordination between central planning bodies and implementing agencies also remains real today. Here too, the historical parallel is striking. But the problem today is not simply that coordination is absent. In some respects, there may be too much coordination at the center and too little operational ownership further down the chain.

The current system is built around an external engagement model routed through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, even when projects concern sectoral ministries. Requests to meet with line ministries, discuss technical cooperation, or move forward on specific projects often must be cleared through MOFA first. Mission agendas in Syria often end up being lists of meetings “to be confirmed” until the last moment, with appointments shifting during the visit itself.3 And even when engagement concerns local or sectoral institutions, proposals are repeatedly sent back through MOFA, making the process “hyper long.”4

This centralization is partly understandable. The new authorities face a crowded field of foreign governments, donors, agencies, consultants, and companies seeking access to Syrian institutions. From Damascus’ perspective, some filtering is necessary. But central control does not automatically produce effective coordination. If every sectoral discussion must return to the same political channel, the result can be delay, duplication, and weak ministry-level ownership.

The risk is that planning and implementation become separated. MOFA may control the external interface, but it is not necessarily the institution best placed to define priorities in health, agriculture, public finance, trade facilitation, electricity, or social protection. Coordination can be controlled centrally, but sectoral content still needs to come from the relevant ministries.5 Without that division of labor, European support may be politically approved without being technically prepared.

This matters because EU instruments require prepared counterparts. Financing, technical assistance, trade facilitation, and possible future EIB engagement all depend on project pipelines, data, ministry-level planning capacity, and stable interlocutors. Yet, staff turnover, weak administrative capacity, fragmented authority, and the absence of reliable planning data on the Syrian side are obstacles to implementation.6

In this sense, the current coordination problem is not identical to that of the early 1980s, but it rhymes with it. Then, European officials worried about weak coordination between Syrian planning bodies and implementing agencies. Today, the danger is that centralized political control may again slow the translation of priorities into executable projects. For European support to be absorbed, Syria does not only need a central point of contact. It also needs empowered ministries, clear project ownership, and a functional chain between planning, approval, and implementation.

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Aid Is Also Competitive

Finally, there is a third limitation: a competitive dimension that European debates often understate. External support is never offered in a vacuum. Syrian authorities compare options, weighing speed, flexibility, visibility, and political cost. The 1982 archives already captured this logic when European officials noted Syria’s reluctance to use EIB loans because more favorable terms could be secured elsewhere. Even if the current Syrian preference is not to take on loans, the underlying point remains valid for support more broadly: when one partner can deliver faster, with fewer procedural burdens and more attractive terms, that partner is likely to gain ground over a slower and more layered European offer, however sound the latter may appear on paper.

The currency file is not a development-aid case in the narrow sense, but it offers a revealing contemporary example of the same operational logic. In March 2025, Syria received a fresh shipment of banknotes from Russia. In May 2025, there were reports that Damascus was considering shifting printing to the UAE and Germany. Yet by August 2025, Syria had finalized a deal with Russia’s Goznak to print the redesigned notes.

The sequence is instructive because when a service is urgently needed and technically straightforward, the decisive factor is often not geopolitical preference but the ability to deliver quickly, concretely, and on terms that local authorities consider more favorable. Several European companies had initially positioned themselves to print the new Syrian Pound; however, the Syrian authorities, citing limited financial resources, asked for extremely favorable terms (essentially printing at production cost, if not for free), which European companies could not align with. Russia’s Goznak could. This is a prime example of a missed opportunity for the EU, which could have offered to print Syria’s new currency for free as part of, let us say, a socio-economic support package. But it was not meant to be.

The same dynamic appears across other sectors. European officials interviewed for this research repeatedly described the EU as procedurally heavy, risk-averse, and slow-moving.7 Accountability requirements, multi-layered approval processes, and the involvement of several institutions and offices often lengthen the time between political commitment and practical delivery. By contrast, other partners can sometimes move more quickly, whether because they operate through simpler administrative systems, face fewer domestic accountability requirements, or are willing to accept higher levels of risk. For Syrian authorities confronted with urgent reconstruction needs, such differences are not abstract bureaucratic details. They shape which offers are pursued and which relationships are prioritized.

The broader lesson is simple. If Europe wants its support to matter, it must not only be available. It must also be intelligible, operationally usable, and competitive with what other partners are prepared to provide.

That does not mean abandoning safeguards or pretending that all external financing should look the same. It means recognizing that effectiveness is partly comparative. A grant or loan facility that arrives too late, requires too many internal steps, or remains too difficult to navigate may be formally available yet practically marginal.

A Few Lessons for Bilateral Engagement

None of this absolves the Syrian side of responsibility. For European support to be absorbed, the Syrian government also needs to clarify who speaks for recovery planning, which ministries own which project pipelines, how priorities are selected, and how implementation will be monitored. A highly centralized administrative chain may help approve large announcements, but it does not automatically produce technically prepared projects, credible procurement systems, or ministry-level ownership. Nor does the broader fragility of a rebuilding state help, especially when institutional contradictions, staff turnover, and uneven administrative capabilities can slow even well-intentioned engagement.

Yet the European side also faces its own challenge. While broad objectives exist—including stabilization, economic recovery, institutional strengthening, and support for an inclusive transition—these goals do not yet amount to a fully coherent framework for engagement. Recent discussions still suggest movement through overlapping instruments, partial initiatives, and ad hoc decisions rather than through a clear hierarchy of priorities. That weakens the Union’s own leverage and makes it harder to match means to ends.

The striking aspect of the 1982 mission reports is how familiar they sound. More than four decades later, Europe and Syria are once again discussing financing, technical assistance, institutional reform, and economic recovery. The obstacles are remarkably similar: a limited understanding of European mechanisms, weak coordination between planning and implementation, and competition from actors who can move faster and more easily.

Political willingness exists on both sides. The question is whether that willingness can be translated into operational cooperation. Europe’s challenge in Syria today is not primarily one of resources. It is one of absorption. Unless both sides address the institutional constraints that have repeatedly undermined cooperation, they risk rediscovering the same limitations that European officials identified nearly half a century ago.

Executive Summary

Syria’s electricity sector is entering a new phase in which private investors may participate in the construction and operation of power plants. This development has sparked public concern that the introduction of private generation could lead to higher electricity prices or allow private firms to exercise excessive market power.

This policy paper argues that private participation in electricity generation does not inherently lead to higher prices. On the contrary, if new plants operate more efficiently than existing facilities, their introduction can reduce the overall cost of electricity generation and improve supply reliability. Such benefits, however, depend on the strength of the regulatory and procurement framework. Transparent dispatch rules, well-designed power purchase agreements, and effective oversight are essential to ensure that private participation helps expand electricity supply without increasing costs.

As such, the central policy question for Syria is not whether electricity generation should be public or private, but whether the institutional framework governing the sector ensures that all generators, whether public or private, operate efficiently and in the public interest.

Syria’s Electricity Crisis and the Need for Investment

Syria’s electricity sector has experienced a severe deterioration in generation capacity since 2011, driven by infrastructure damage, fuel shortages, aging power plants, and limited maintenance. Over more than a decade of conflict, large portions of the country’s power infrastructure were damaged or destroyed. Current generation capacity went from 9,838 MW in 2011 to 5,403 MW in 2023. This loss in generation capacity is broken down into about 1,771 MW (18% of 2011 capacity) being totally destroyed, and many other plants requiring major repair.1 Still, fuel constraints have reduced the country’s available generation capacity to around 1,800 MW in 2024, less than one-fifth (18%) of the capacity in 2011.

As a result, national electricity generation has declined dramatically. Total electricity production fell from approximately 49,260 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 20112 to around 16,454 GWh in 2024 (-67%).3 At the same time, technical losses in the network increased, going from about 26% in 2011 to 33% today. These losses reflect both physical damage to the transmission and distribution system and operational challenges, including maintenance deficits and electricity theft.

This state of play has left Syrians with only a few hours of electricity per day, pushing households and businesses to resort to alternative coping mechanisms, generally involving expensive off-grid solutions, such as privately operated diesel generators. These generators supply electricity through neighborhood micro-grids at extremely high prices, sometimes reaching ten times the estimated grid supply cost.

The relevant consumer comparison is therefore not only between state-owned and privately financed grid generation. In much of Syria, households and businesses already rely on private diesel generators, solar systems, batteries, and other off-grid solutions. These are often far more expensive than formal grid electricity. If private investment helps restore a reliable grid supply and displaces informal diesel generation, households may experience lower effective electricity costs even if official grid tariffs rise from their historically subsidized levels.

Recognizing electricity as a cornerstone of economic recovery, Syria’s interim authorities have prioritized the rehabilitation of the power sector, combining short-term fuel supply arrangements with longer-term infrastructure investment.

In the short term, authorities have sought to increase generation by securing natural gas imports from regional partners, including Qatar and Türkiye. Qatar had agreed to supply gas through Jordan to fuel the Deir Ali power plant, potentially generating about 400 MW of additional electricity, while Türkiye had arranged deliveries of roughly 6 million cubic meters of gas per day, enough to generate around 1,200 MW in Syrian power plants. These fuel imports were intended to temporarily raise generation and extend daily electricity supply, although they remain insufficient to restore pre-war output given the destruction of infrastructure and the limited operational capacity of many plants.

At the same time, the government is attempting to address the structural supply gap through large-scale investment projects. The most prominent initiative is a USD 7 billion memorandum of understanding signed in May 2025 with an international consortium led by Qatar’s UCC Holding, alongside Türkiye’s Kalyon Enerji and Cengiz Enerji, and supported by U.S.-based Power International Holding (PIH). The agreement initially outlined the construction of four combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plants with a total capacity of around 4,000 MW, together with a 1,000 MW solar project. In November 2025, the Syrian Ministry of Energy and the consortium signed the final concession agreements, allowing the projects to move toward implementation. The contracts provide for the construction of four large natural-gas-fired combined-cycle plants located in North Aleppo (1,200 MW), Deir Ez-Zor (1,000 MW), Zeyzoun (1,000 MW), and Mhardeh (800 MW), as well as four solar projects totaling 1,000 MW distributed across several regions.

It should be noted, however, that the contractual structure and pricing arrangements of these projects remain unclear. This has led to speculation about the future of the country’s electricity sector, with the emergence of private investment sparking public debate.

Even if new private plants produce electricity cheaply, their effect on consumer supply will remain limited unless transmission and distribution bottlenecks are addressed. Syria’s electricity crisis is therefore not only a generation crisis, but it is also a grid crisis. Damaged transmission lines, substations, distribution losses, theft, and limited system control can prevent low-cost generation from reaching consumers. In that context, generation investment and grid rehabilitation must be treated as complementary, not interchangeable.

Historically, Syria’s electricity system has been organized around vertically integrated public entities responsible for generation, transmission, and distribution. Electricity dispatch is coordinated centrally through the national control center, while the Public Establishment for Transmission and Distribution of Electricity (PETDE) acts as the system operator and effectively functions as a single buyer procuring electricity from generators and supplying it to distribution networks and major consumers, as per Legislative Decree No. 9 of 2020.

In such a system, concerns about generator pricing power are limited when generation assets are entirely state-owned. However, as privately owned power plants enter the system, questions may arise about how electricity will be priced and how potential market power will be regulated. It should be noted that although private participation in electricity generation is now becoming politically and commercially more significant, the legal opening is not entirely new. Law No. 32 of 2010 already allowed domestic and foreign private investment in generation and distribution. What is new is the scale, urgency, and strategic importance of private generation in the post-2024 recovery context.

Understanding whether these concerns are economically justified requires examining how electricity costs are actually determined within power systems. In practice, the cost of supplying electricity is primarily driven by generation costs and dispatch decisions, rather than by whether generation assets are publicly or privately owned. In systems where electricity is procured through centralized dispatch or long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), the relevant comparison is between the cost of electricity supplied by different power plants within the generation fleet. This distinction is central to assessing the potential impact of new private investments in Syria’s electricity sector.

Understanding Electricity Pricing: Marginal Cost and the Merit Order

Even in centrally dispatched electricity systems such as Syria’s, system operators typically schedule power plants according to their operating costs. In practice, plants with lower operating costs are dispatched first, while higher-cost plants are brought online only when demand exceeds the capacity of cheaper generators.

This operational logic is commonly referred to as the merit order. Under the merit order, generators are ranked from lowest to highest marginal cost of production, meaning the cost of producing one additional unit of electricity. As electricity demand rises, the system operator progressively dispatches plants along this cost curve until total supply meets demand.

In Syria’s electricity sector, new private generators are likely to sell electricity to the state through long-term PPAs with the PETDE. Under such arrangements, the state commits to purchasing electricity at a predetermined tariff, typically expressed in USD/MWh.4 The economic impact of such contracts depends largely on how the PPA tariff compares to the marginal cost of existing power plants in the national generation fleet.

To illustrate this principle, consider three hypothetical power plants that generate the same amount of electricity with marginal production costs of $40, $60, and $80 per MWh. If electricity demand is high enough that all three plants must operate, the system operator must dispatch the most expensive plant in order to meet demand. In that case, the state’s average electricity generation cost would be $60/MWh. During periods of lower demand, however, the system may only require the two cheaper plants. In that situation, the average cost of electricity generation falls to $50/MWh, since the $80 plant is no longer needed.

The fiscal implications are straightforward. If electricity tariffs are set below the actual cost of production, the government absorbs the difference through subsidies. The more expensive the plants that must be dispatched to meet demand, the higher the average cost of electricity generation and, therefore, the greater the fiscal burden on the state. Conversely, if electricity tariffs reflect production costs, as seems to be the current government’s aim, a lower generation cost will translate into lower electricity bills for consumers.

Now consider adding a new, more efficient power plant that can produce electricity at $20/MWh under a long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the state. Because this plant produces electricity at a lower cost than the existing generators, it would be dispatched first. As a result, more expensive plants would be pushed further down the merit order, and the $80/MWh plant might no longer be required to operate during periods of high demand. In that case, electricity would be generated by the $20, $40, and $60 plants, bringing the average electricity generation cost down to $40/MWh. By reducing the need to run the most expensive generators, the new plant would lower the overall cost of electricity supply and reduce the government’s fiscal burden and consumers’ electricity bills.

Illustrative electricity supply and demand curves. The addition of large-scale, efficient generation shifts the supply curve outward, lowering generation costs at a given level of demand. In this example, at a demand level of 4,000 MW, the introduction of a new power plant reduces the market price from P1 to P0. At a demand level of 7,000 MW, the price would also fall significantly, as power plants producing at price levels P1 and P2 would no longer need to be dispatched.

Of course, the magnitude of these savings ultimately depends on the terms of the PPA and the efficiency of the new plant, which determine whether the contracted tariff is actually lower than the cost of existing generation.

Building a more efficient plant should not be difficult in Syria, as the country’s generation fleet is largely composed of aging thermal power plants with widely varying efficiency levels. Indeed, older steam units and simple-cycle gas turbines, which account for a large share of Syria’s installed thermal capacity (see table above), consume significantly more fuel per unit of electricity than modern CCGT plants, the technology planned for the new facilities to be developed by the consortium.

Risks and Opportunities: Market Power and Regulatory Oversight

In the context of electricity sector reform, there may be concerns about private generators, given the possibility that a dominant firm could abuse its market position to raise electricity prices.

Indeed, electricity systems are often considered vulnerable to market power: firms can influence prices because demand is relatively inelastic in the short term, supply must match demand at all times, and generation capacity may be limited during peak periods. In fully liberalized electricity markets, these characteristics can allow generators to influence prices by withholding capacity or strategically bidding above their marginal costs.

However, Syria’s electricity system is unlikely to operate as a competitive wholesale electricity market in the near term. Instead, electricity from privately financed plants will most likely be procured by the state through long-term PPAs within a centralized single-buyer system.

In such systems, the primary risk is not real-time price manipulation but rather the possibility that electricity procurement contracts are poorly structured or negotiated at excessively high tariffs. If governments sign PPAs with prices that exceed the cost of existing or alternative generation options, the overall cost of electricity supply might not be as low as it could be, even if the private plants themselves operate efficiently.

These risks can take several forms:

• capacity payments: Many PPAs include payments for availability or capacity, not only for the electricity actually generated. The state may therefore pay even when the plant is not fully dispatched.

• take-or-pay obligations: The public buyer may be required to pay for a minimum quantity of electricity or plant availability regardless of actual system demand.

• currency risk: If the PPA is denominated in USD while consumers pay in Syrian pounds, the government carries exchange-rate risk.

• sovereign guarantees: Investors may require state guarantees if PETDE or the relevant public utility is not considered sufficiently creditworthy.

For this reason, the key policy challenge is to maintain a robust regulatory and procurement framework governing the sector. Governments typically rely on several mechanisms to ensure that private participation remains aligned with the public interest:

• transparent procurement processes, such as competitive tenders, which allow governments to benchmark electricity prices and select the most cost-effective projects;

• contractual performance obligations, including availability requirements and penalties for unjustified outages;

• regulatory oversight and monitoring, allowing authorities to review generator performance and ensure compliance with contractual obligations.

• well-designed PPAs, which define tariff formulas, payment structures, and operational responsibilities.

Under such conditions, private participation is most likely to lead to an expansion of generation capacity without necessarily increasing electricity supply costs.

In the Syrian context, new privately financed power plants could reduce electricity generation costs, particularly if they introduce, as promised, newer, more efficient technologies than those currently operating in the public generation fleet. Still, the economics of new gas-fired generation will depend heavily on fuel availability and pricing. Modern CCGT plants can reduce generation costs only if they have reliable access to gas at predictable prices. If gas must be imported, financed externally, or purchased in foreign currency, the apparent efficiency gains of new plants may be partly offset by fuel-price and exchange-rate exposure.

Today, much of Syria’s existing thermal generation capacity consists of aging power plants built between the late 1970s and early 2000s. Many of these facilities suffer from outdated turbine technology, low thermal efficiency, high fuel consumption per unit of electricity generated, and significant maintenance constraints after years of conflict and limited investment. As a result, the marginal cost of producing electricity at several existing plants is relatively high.

By contrast, modern CCGT plants generate electricity more efficiently by using both gas and steam turbines to extract additional energy from the same fuel input. This significantly reduces fuel consumption per unit of electricity produced, lowering generation costs. If new projects introduce such technologies under reasonably priced PPAs, they are likely to be dispatched before older, less efficient plants, thereby reducing the overall cost of electricity supply.

However, this outcome is not automatic. The potential cost benefits of private generation depend heavily on how investment projects are structured, negotiated, and procured. If electricity purchase agreements are signed at tariffs that exceed the marginal cost of alternative generation options, the introduction of private plants could increase the overall cost of electricity supply even if the plants themselves are technically efficient.

This risk is particularly relevant in contexts of institutional transition and urgent reconstruction needs. When governments face severe electricity shortages and strong pressure to rapidly expand generation capacity, large energy agreements may sometimes be negotiated quickly and with limited competitive procurement or regulatory scrutiny. In such circumstances, the absence of transparent tenders or benchmarking against comparable projects can make it difficult to ensure that electricity tariffs reflect the lowest achievable cost.

For this reason, the economic impact of private generation ultimately depends on the quality of procurement processes, contract design, and regulatory oversight, rather than the ownership structure of power plants. Transparent bidding procedures, cost benchmarking, and robust institutional review mechanisms are essential to ensure that private investment contributes to expanding electricity supply while keeping generation costs as low as possible.

Policy Implications for Syria

The debate over private participation in electricity generation should focus less on ownership and more on the institutional framework governing procurement, contracts, and system oversight. Private investment can help expand generation capacity and introduce more efficient technologies, but the economic outcome depends heavily on how projects are selected, negotiated, and regulated.

For this reason, strengthening governance and transparency in electricity procurement should be a central priority of Syria’s reconstruction strategy. Key priorities include:

Competitive and Transparent Procurement: Electricity generation projects should be awarded through transparent and competitive processes, such as international tenders. The Ministry of Energy has already issued dozens of tenders open to international bidders, mostly to procure energy resources, while tenders for infrastructure projects have been extremely limited. Competitive bidding via infrastructure-related tenders allows governments to benchmark electricity tariffs against comparable projects and select proposals offering the lowest cost of supply, reducing the risk of overpriced contracts. Going forward, encouraging multiple independent power producers and diversifying generation sources can prevent excessive reliance on individual suppliers, strengthen the government’s bargaining position in future procurement processes, and contribute to a more resilient and cost-efficient electricity system over time.

Careful Structuring of PPAs: PPAs should include clear tariff formulas, transparent indexation mechanisms for fuel costs and inflation, and well-defined performance obligations. Properly structured contracts can ensure that electricity tariffs reflect the actual cost of generation while protecting the public sector from excessive long-term financial commitments. Such contracts are frequent, and the Syrian government, especially the Directorate for Contracts and Loans at the PEEG, should refer to international best practices supported by international organizations.

International Technical Support and Benchmarking: Syria may benefit from technical assistance from international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and regional development banks to design procurement frameworks, benchmark electricity tariffs, and review major infrastructure contracts. Such cooperation can help ensure that new generation projects follow international best practices and remain financially sustainable.

Strengthening Regulatory and Institutional Oversight: A technically capable, independent regulatory framework is essential for supervising generator performance and monitoring contract compliance. Establishing or strengthening an independent electricity regulatory authority, or encouraging external audits, could play an important role in enhancing transparency and investor confidence. In that regard, support should be provided to the PEEG and PETDE in the lead-up to the implementation of large-scale private generation projects.

Parliamentary and Public Oversight of Major Energy Contracts: Given the long-term fiscal implications of large electricity projects, major PPAs and energy infrastructure agreements should be subject to appropriate parliamentary review, scrutiny, and oversight. Greater transparency in contract approval processes can strengthen public accountability and help build confidence that electricity investments serve the national interest.

Conclusion

The entry of private investors into Syria’s electricity generation sector does not inherently imply higher electricity prices. Electricity supply costs are determined primarily by generation efficiency and dispatch decisions, rather than by whether power plants are publicly or privately owned. As such, if new private plants operate at lower marginal costs than existing state-owned facilities, their introduction can reduce overall system costs while improving the reliability of electricity supply.

The key determinant of outcomes will be the strength of regulatory oversight. Transparent dispatch rules, effective cost monitoring, and well-structured contractual frameworks are essential to ensure that private participation helps expand electricity supply without increasing costs. Ultimately, the central policy challenge lies in establishing governance mechanisms capable of ensuring that all generators—public or private—operate in the public interest, not in the presence of private investors.

A Decade Marked by Two Phases

Between the signing of the EU-Syria cooperation agreement in 1977 and the early 1990s, only minimal amendments were made to the bilateral cooperation framework. Beyond the adoption of the Second Financial Protocol (1982–1986),1 the only technical amendment made to the cooperation framework before the launch of the Barcelona Process in 1995 was introduced on June 16, 1988. This amendment formalized the establishment of a Euro-Syrian Economic and Commercial Cooperation Committee to facilitate information exchange between the two parties, and also integrated Greece, Spain, and Portugal into the EEC-Syria agreement following their accession to the European Economic Community (EEC).2

During the early 1980s, EEC-Syria relations were stable and expanding, though largely one-sided, with Brussels steadily increasing its financial support for Damascus. This period of engagement culminated in the signing of the Second Financial Protocol in June 1982, reinforcing the EEC’s commitment to Syria’s economic development.3

However, this era of growing bilateral cooperation came to a sudden halt in April 1986. The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO),4 which operated with Syrian support, had intensified its attacks against European targets and interests in the meantime, leading to a sharp deterioration in relations. The fallout from ANO-linked terrorism, particularly a failed bombing in London, triggered an abrupt but short-lived diplomatic rupture between the EEC and Syria, marking the most severe crisis in their relations since they were first established back in 1964.

Bilateral Cooperation Flourishes

In April 1982, a joint delegation from the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) visited Syria to prepare the second financial protocol under the EEC-Syria cooperation framework. Led on the Community side by Maurice Foley, Christopher Lethbridge, and Ernest Lamers, and on the Syrian side by Vice-Minister for Planning Hamid Merei, the mission reached agreement on an indicative programme for future financing.5 The Community’s own programming paper made clear that its priorities in Syria were agriculture, small- and medium-industry, energy, infrastructure, and technical assistance.6

It is worth noting that the archival records of the time are strikingly technocratic and frame Syria almost entirely in terms of development needs, project pipelines, and implementation capacity. European diplomats make no mention of the security developments that unfolded throughout the late 1970s, culminating in the Hama Massacre of February 1982.7 While it can be understood that the mission was economic in nature, previous such economic missions did mention periods of turmoil and instability within the country, at least through an economic prism.

This omission can be understood within the broader geopolitical context of the time. Given the Iranian Revolution’s profound impact on Western policymakers, the dominant Western discourse shifted toward combating Islamism,8 leading to muted reactions to events like Hama. Likewise, Syria’s military intervention in Lebanon in 1976—which neither the EEC nor, more importantly, the United States actively opposed9—did not deter the EEC from maintaining its economic engagement with Damascus.

At the economic level, then, the joint Commission-EIB delegation painted a mixed picture of Syria’s economy and its needs. The delegation recognized Syria’s significant untapped potential in agriculture, industry, energy, and infrastructure, but also highlighted structural inefficiencies, poor planning, and weak coordination between government agencies and project execution bodies.10 While modernization efforts—particularly in agriculture and industrial development—were emphasized to reduce Syria’s dependence on foreign capital and increase employment, bureaucratic hurdles and mismanagement hindered the effective implementation of reforms.11

Without substantial external support and strategic reforms, Syria’s economy risked stagnation. In agriculture, the gap between food consumption and local production was widening, exacerbated by rapid population growth (3.3% per year12) and low irrigation levels, which leave the sector vulnerable to climate fluctuations and droughts. Meanwhile, the energy sector faced an impending crisis, as projections indicated that the electricity supply would become insufficient by 1985, unable to keep up with rising industrial, agricultural, and domestic demands.13

European officials also expressed frustration over the sluggish implementation of previously funded projects. Many investments, particularly in infrastructure and industry—both central to Syria’s import-substitution strategy aimed at fostering industrial development, modernization, and private-sector growth—had yet to yield tangible results due to delays in fund allocation, poor project execution, and a lack of financial discipline.14 Additionally, Syrian authorities hesitated to utilize EIB loans, preferring alternative financing options with more favorable interest rates.

Indeed, instead of fully engaging with European financial mechanisms, the Syrian government increasingly turned to Arab and international lenders offering more favorable terms. For example, through the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), Syria secured approximately USD 65 million in loans on highly preferential terms.15 This reluctance, combined with weak institutional capacity and administrative inefficiencies, created an environment where funding commitments often failed to translate into meaningful economic progress.

For instance, the first financial protocol signed between the EEC and Syria, which was supposed to cover the four-year period from 1977 to 1981, had been implemented only partially by June 1982. Despite a total allocation of ECU 60 million, only a small fraction of the funds had been effectively disbursed, with bureaucratic inefficiencies, delays in project execution, and reluctance to use EIB loans cited as major obstacles.16

By mid-1982, only 20.3% of the non-repayable grants had been disbursed, while EIB loans remained largely untouched. Some projects, such as the Tall Tamir-Tall Alo Road construction, were approved but had not yet received any funding. Others, such as the industrial study and dairy farm projects, suffered delays due to administrative bottlenecks and poor coordination between planning authorities and executing bodies.17

The Second Financial Protocol between the EEC and Syria, signed in 1982 for a period covering 1982 to 1986, aimed to address the shortcomings of the First Protocol while continuing financial cooperation in key sectors. With a proposed allocation of ECU 97 million, split among ECU 64 million in the form of EIB loans, and, from the Commission, ECU 22 million in the form of grants and ECU 11 million in the form of loans on special terms; that is, repayable over 40 years at an interest rate of 1% per annum, with a 10-year grace period on interest.18

Throughout the second protocol’s negotiations, the EEC emphasized the need to modernize Syria’s economy, including expanding irrigation, increasing livestock production, improving energy infrastructure, and upgrading telecommunications and education facilities.19 However, European institutions were reluctant to commit to funding specific projects without clearer guarantees of improved execution and oversight. European officials stressed the need for stronger financial discipline, arguing that many of the delays in the First Protocol stemmed from poor project planning and coordination between Syrian authorities and European donors.20

The early 1980s revealed the structural limits of the EEC-Syria relationship, which had been formalized since 1977. On paper, the cooperation framework appeared stable, institutionalised, and increasingly ambitious; in practice, however, it remained narrow, technocratic, and weakly transformative. European institutions approached Syria primarily through the language of projects, sectors, and implementation capacity, even as political violence, regional intervention, and domestic repression were reshaping the Syrian regime’s position. At the same time, Damascus viewed the Community as a useful but ultimately secondary partner: a source of finance, equipment, and technical expertise, but not one to which it was willing to adapt its broader strategic behaviour. The result was a relationship resilient enough to survive weak implementation, yet too shallow to withstand a major political-security shock.

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Short-Lived Severance of Ties

In that sense, the 1986 crisis did not simply interrupt an otherwise successful trajectory; it exposed the underlying contradiction of the relationship. The Community’s Mediterranean approach was built above all on economic instruments, with limited capacity to integrate hard political and security questions into its external action. Syria, for its part, had been able to compartmentalise its relations with Europe, benefiting from economic cooperation while pursuing regional policies that rested on very different calculations. Once terrorism entered the bilateral equation directly, that compartmentalisation became untenable for the Europeans, and the limits of the cooperation framework were suddenly laid bare.

It was in this context that EEC-Syria relations entered their deepest crisis to date. This rupture was all the more striking because it interrupted a relationship that, only a few years earlier, had been institutionalized through the 1982 Financial Protocol and a joint Commission-European Investment Bank mission.

The immediate trigger for the crisis was the attempted bombing of an El Al aircraft at London’s Heathrow Airport on 17 April 1986. The attack, carried out by the Jordanian national Nizar Hindawi, was widely understood in Western capitals as having involved Syrian official complicity.21

Indeed, although the ANO was responsible for a series of terrorist attacks across Europe—including in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy—the EEC targeted Syria because of Damascus’ well-documented support for the ANO’s activities.22 Syrian intelligence services had long provided operational backing to militant groups, and in the Hindawi Affair, direct Syrian involvement was deemed irrefutable. In response, the United Kingdom severed diplomatic ties with Syria, while the United States and Canada recalled their ambassadors from Damascus.23 Furthermore, the “Hindawi Affair,” as it became known, prompted the Twelve to adopt restrictive measures against Syria on 10 November 1986, shortly after Hindawi’s conviction by a British court.24 These measures included a ban on new arms sales to Syria, while allowing existing contracts to be honored; the suspension of high-level diplomatic visits; a review of Syrian diplomatic and consular activities in member states, with possible countermeasures; and tighter security measures for Syrian Arab Airlines operations within the Community.25

Yet the 1986 measures stopped short of a complete diplomatic rupture. The Community’s response was severe in symbolic and political terms, but limited in substance. The measures did not affect existing arms deliveries, and Syria primarily sourced its military equipment from the Soviet Union rather than from European suppliers.26 Even within the EEC, Greek officials openly questioned the effectiveness of the sanctions, with Deputy Foreign Minister Kostas Zouraris dismissing them as “three symbolic measures that mean nothing, plus a statement on arms sales.”27

However, Syria’s diplomatic isolation proved short-lived. By June 1987, just six months after the European measures were imposed, Damascus was able to re-engage with the international community following the closure of the ANO offices on its territory.28 Consequently, sentiment in Brussels shifted, and the European Commission, after several diplomatic exchanges (including contacts in Syria), proposed reviving negotiations for the Third Financial Protocol.29 Still, the United Kingdom remained firmly opposed, arguing that Syria’s involvement in terrorism had not changed. Given that financial protocols required unanimous approval, the Commission was unable to move forward with negotiations.30

Politically and diplomatically, EEC–Syria relations were effectively restored in the early 1990s. This normalization prompted the European Commission to reflect on the trajectory of the relationship. On May 24, 1991, in response to a written question posed a month earlier by a European Parliament member regarding the re-establishment of ties between Brussels and Damascus, the Commission outlined three key justifications for maintaining engagement with Syria.31

While acknowledging Syria’s shortcomings in human rights and democratic governance, the Commission argued that maintaining a framework for dialogue, information exchange, and vigilance was preferable to severing ties. Moreover, concerning Syria’s presence in Lebanon, the Commission emphasized the importance of avoiding Syria’s isolation, given its strategic influence in broader Middle Eastern conflicts. Finally, the Commission recognized that it could not unilaterally isolate Damascus, particularly when the United States and other Western powers had already begun to normalize relations in the context of the Gulf War.32

Conclusion

The 1980s marked the moment when EEC-Syria relations were tested against their own limits. The Second Financial Protocol (1982–1986) reinforced European financial support, but bureaucratic inefficiencies, weak implementation capacity, and Syria’s preference for more concessional external financing limited its practical impact. More fundamentally, the decade showed that the relationship remained politically shallow: substantial enough to sustain economic cooperation, but not deep enough to absorb a serious security crisis. The Hindawi Affair in 1986, therefore, not only triggered the first EEC-imposed sanctions on Syria; it also exposed the fragility of a partnership built on technocratic engagement and strategic ambiguity.

Yet Syria’s isolation proved short-lived. By 1987, Damascus had taken steps to restore ties with Europe, and by the early 1990s, bilateral engagement was resuming. The approval of two new financial protocols in 1992 and 1993, followed by Syria’s participation in the Barcelona Process in 1995, signalled a return to structured cooperation and set the stage for a more pragmatic, though still complex, relationship in the decade that followed.

This paper is the third of a series of six papers examining the relationship between the European Union (including its earlier institutional incarnations) and Syria. Drawing on diplomatic archives, grey literature, trade statistics, and contemporaneous policy documents, the series seeks to shed light on a scarcely documented relationship that has oscillated between strategic pragmatism and political estrangement.

By tracing the evolution of diplomatic contacts, trade flows, aid conditionality, and cooperation frameworks, the series aims to unpack how economic interdependence often preceded political alignment and how mutual caution repeatedly constrained deeper integration.

You can read Part 1, on the 1960s and the first diplomatic ties between Syria and the EEC, here, and Part 2, on the 1970s and the EEC-Syria Cooperation Agreement, here.

Launching the Global Mediterranean Policy

In the early 1970s, the European Economic Community (EEC) embarked on its so-called ‘Global Mediterranean Policy’ to unify the policies it had used to address its Southern neighbourhood to that point. While the bloc had already signed various agreements with some Southern European and Mediterranean countries, these agreements did not represent a unified approach. These case-by-case agreements resembled ‘uncoordinated responses to external stimuli’ rather than a coherent policy.1

To make up for this lack of unified policy, then, the Commission launched, in 1972, the ‘Global Mediterranean Policy’. At the time, several factors made such a policy necessary.

First, superpower rivalry in the Mediterranean pushed the EEC to assert a more coherent presence in what it increasingly viewed as its immediate strategic environment. Second, Western Europeans sought to secure their oil supplies, with about 18.5% of their oil coming from Mediterranean countries. Third, the Commission sought to preserve and expand access to Mediterranean markets, which already absorbed a significant share of Community exports. In addition, the Commission also had other economic factors in mind when devising this policy, such as investment opportunities and migrant labour–the former outbound, while the latter inbound.2

Within this context, in a communication to the EEC member states, the European Commission stressed that increased cooperation with Syria and the provision of additional financial support would be ‘beneficial for the Community itself, as it would facilitate the provision of capital goods, expertise, and the necessary technology for the implementation of the projects being financed.’3

Within the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict, the Global Mediterranean Policy also had a political dimension. The EEC sought to position itself as a mediator in the region, promoting stability through economic cooperation while gradually asserting a more independent role from the United States. This was particularly relevant following the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the ensuing oil crisis, which underscored Europe’s vulnerability to Middle Eastern geopolitics. By strengthening ties with Arab Mediterranean states, the EEC aimed to balance its relations with both Israel and the Arab world while ensuring continued access to vital energy resources.

Whether this ‘Global Mediterranean Policy’ was successful is not the argument of this research; however, it is within this context that the EEC would seek to develop its relations with Syria by signing a cooperation agreement.

While Syria had established diplomatic ties with the EEC in the 1960s (Read ‘The Relationship Between the EU and Syria (1) — The 1960s’), its engagement remained limited and primarily economic. Content with strengthening its ties with the USSR and wary of deeper Western alignment, Damascus had shown little enthusiasm for significantly expanding its relationship with Brussels until the mid-1970s, when political and economic pressures made cooperation with the EEC more attractive. Despite its closeness to Moscow, Syria’s alignment with the USSR was not blind nor absolute. A key moment illustrating this diplomatic flexibility came in August 1972, when Syria participated in the Georgetown Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), sending a delegation led by Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam. French observers interpreted Syria’s increased involvement in the NAM as a sign of its desire to avoid exclusive dependence on the Soviet Union.4

Damascus’ diplomatic flexibility also shone on March 26 and 27, 1974, during a series of meetings between the European and Syrian delegations in Damascus. At the time, the Syrians expressed their interest in opening negotiations with Brussels to deepen their diplomatic and commercial relations, something which greatly surprised Europeans diplomats, who, in a communication from the Commission to the Council, stated that Syria “has always shown a clear reservation in the past” regarding its desire to further its cooperation with the EEC.5

Damascus’s interest in deepening its ties with the EEC in early 1974 was not, however, especially surprising. Historically aligned with the Soviet Union and cautious in its dealings with Western entities, Syria began actively pursuing negotiations with the EEC as part of a broader strategy to balance its international relations, diversify its economy, and reduce its over-reliance on a single ally. The aftermath of the October War had placed a significant strain on Syria’s economy, and the rising cost of imports from Western countries, exacerbated by the 1970s energy crisis, further worsened the country’s trade balance. As a result, faced with these economic pressures, Syria sought engagement with the EEC to access new markets, secure financial aid, and obtain technological support, thereby addressing immediate economic concerns while maintaining its sovereignty and strategic interests.

In 1973, bilateral trade with the EEC accounted for 32.9% of Syria’s total foreign trade, and the following year reached EUA 231.1 million.6 Syria’s following year to reach EUA 231.1 million. The EEC’s favourable position as a supplier was primarily due to the high technical level of its industrial production, which aligned with Syrians' equipment needs. However, Syrian products’ limited reach in the markets of Community countries was due to the mediocre quality of many local industrial products and Syria’s delivery commitments to certain Eastern European countries under previous barter agreements.7

As a result, the growing economic difficulties due to an unfavourable trade balance meant that the Syrian government was doubtful that it could reach the objectives of this fourth five-year plan spanning (1976-1980)8–which most notably entailed the doubling of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) over the next seven years–without support from the EEC.

On February 4, 1976, the then Deputy Minister of the Syrian Ministry of Economy and Trade Ammar Jamal explained that “it is understood that Syria, besides the efforts it has to make to reach [its] objectives, must, on the one hand, count on cooperation and aid from friendly countries and, on the other hand, must revise its position regarding its commercial exchanges.”9 “Undoubtedly, as you know, our trade balance with the EEC is in deficit,” declared Mr. Jamal, who continued by arguing that “this deficit has increased very rapidly in recent years. It was around 126.8 million SYP in 1970; it rose to 885.7 million SYP in 1974. The deficit will undoubtedly exceed this figure in 1975.” At the same time, Mr. Jamal argued that reducing the deficit required a significant increase in Syrian exports, which in turn demanded investment to boost production, something the EEC could help finance10

In fact, the period during which the cooperation agreement between the EEC and Syria was negotiated was marked by other attempts by Damascus to address its trade balance. In the first nine months of 1974, Syria signed more than a dozen bilateral agreements with Western and Eastern countries, including several trade agreements.11

In parallel, 1974 was marked by Damascus’ significant opening vis-à-vis the West, as shown by growing trade flows and the resumption of ties with major Western Powers, including the United States in June and the Federal Republic of Germany in August. This thaw in the relationship between Damascus and Washington following the October War also enabled a significant American loan of 75,000 tonnes of wheat flour and 25,000 tonnes of rice, repayable over 20 years.12

In addition to these factors, the launch of the ‘Global Mediterranean Policy’ led the EEC to open negotiations on January 23, 1975, with four Mashreq countries—Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, 13 and Jordan.14 On February 4 and 5, 1976, the first bilateral negotiations between the EEC and Syria took place and were concluded in October of the same year.15

More broadly, the mid-1970s revealed a convergence of interests rather than a true political rapprochement. For Damascus, cooperation with the EEC offered a way to diversify external partnerships, ease mounting trade pressures, and secure capital, technology, and market access without abandoning its broader strategic posture. For the Community, Syria fit into a wider Mediterranean framework in which economic cooperation was expected to generate stability, interdependence, and influence. The result was the gradual institutionalisation of a relationship that remained pragmatic on both sides: more structured than before, but still largely confined to the economic sphere.

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The Cooperation Agreement

Once negotiations had been completed with Syria and the other Arab countries, except Lebanon, European officials again stressed the significance of the agreement, noting how sharply it contrasted with Syria’s reserved attitude toward the Community only a few years earlier.16 Moreover, the nature of the agreement was also considered a significant win for the European diplomats, who argued that, since the cooperation agreement was signed for an unlimited period, it fostered a common vision for long-term cooperation among the two parties.

Besides their unlimited nature, these agreements included two other “essential characteristics”: their comprehensiveness and their evolutionary nature, and provided for the establishment of common institutions.17

Summary of the EEC-Syria Cooperation Agreement

The main object of the agreement between Syria and the EEC signed in Brussels on 18 January 1977 is to establish a wide area of cooperation between the two sides and to promote Syria’s economic and social development. The agreement covers trade, economic and technical cooperation as well as financial aid totalling 60 million European units of account (1ua = 4.45 sp ).

As the agreement is for an unlimited period it provides a stable contractual framework for making long term planning decisions. Projects giving far reaching benefits e.g. investment in basic infrastructure such as roads and power supplies, can be implemented.

The agreement is also dynamic in the sense that it is capable of continuous improvement based on the principles of interdependence, equality and joint management. It is managed by a cooperation council which may set up specialist committees as required. A timetable has been set for examining the results of the agreement and introducing improvements. The first review will take place in 1979 and the second in 1984.

By virtue of its globality, the agreement provides for cooperation in the economic, financial, and commercial sectors. Economic cooperation encompasses infrastructure development and cooperation in industry, science, technology, environmental protection, research, and development, while financial cooperation relates to the bilateral financial protocol covering the period 1977-1981, granting Syria various loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and non-reimbursable aid of 60 million EAU, equivalent to 267 million SYP.18 As for trade cooperation, the cooperation agreement enshrines a most-favoured-nation clause between the bloc and Syria and ultimately aims to achieve the total and gradual abolition of customs duties between the European and Syrian markets.19

The evolutionary nature of the cooperation agreement is reflected in a general review clause that allows the agreement to be revised and improved, if necessary, on dates previously agreed by the parties. Regarding the monitoring of the agreements, a Cooperation Council was established, composed of representatives of both parties, responsible for ensuring compliance with and the proper functioning of the agreements and, as necessary, proposing certain reorientations.20

On January 18, 1977, the EEC and Syria signed a cooperation agreement that has served as the basis for relations between Brussels and Damascus to this day (when the context allows). This agreement serves as the primary channel for the bilateral relationship, encouraging dialogue, cooperation, and assistance between the two parties.

It should be noted, however, that this agreement concerns only trade, the economy, and technical cooperation and, in fact, does not include any provision for political dialogue. For this, we will have to wait for the “Barcelona Declaration” of November 1995, adopted by Syria jointly with the European Union, its fifteen Member States at the time21, and eleven other Mediterranean countries.22

But this limitation was not incidental, however. It reflected both the strengths and the constraints of the EEC’s Mediterranean approach in the 1970s. The Community had developed a more coherent framework for engaging Southern Mediterranean states, but it still lacked the tools and, in many respects, the unity to translate economic cooperation into a fuller political relationship. In Syria’s case, the result was a durable but bounded arrangement: broad enough to support trade, aid, and technical cooperation, yet too narrow to anchor sustained political convergence.

Conclusion

The 1970s marked the decisive institutional turn in EEC-Syria relations. The 1977 Cooperation Agreement transformed what had previously been a limited and uneven relationship into a structured framework for trade, financial assistance, and technical cooperation. Yet this deepening was driven less by political convergence than by a convergence of interests: Syria sought markets, capital, and technology amid mounting economic pressure, while the Community sought to fold Syria into a broader Mediterranean strategy centered on stability, access, and interdependence.

For that reason, the new framework was both significant and limited. It gave the bilateral relationship a stable contractual basis and created institutions intended to sustain long-term cooperation, but it remained overwhelmingly economic in character. The agreement broadened the scope of engagement without resolving its underlying narrowness: it institutionalised cooperation, but did not produce a genuinely political partnership.

As Syria entered the 1980s, relations with the EEC continued under the same cooperation framework, with few substantial changes. A second financial protocol (1982–1986) provided further economic support, yet diplomatic tensions continued to surface. The Hindawi Affair in 1986, in which Syrian intelligence was implicated in an attempted terrorist attack, led the EEC to impose sanctions on Damascus. Though largely symbolic, these measures revealed the vulnerability of a relationship whose institutional foundations were stronger in the economic sphere than in the political one.

This paper is the second of a series of six papers examining the relationship between the European Union (including its earlier institutional incarnations) and Syria. Drawing on diplomatic archives, grey literature, trade statistics, and contemporaneous policy documents, the series seeks to shed light on a scarcely documented relationship that has oscillated between strategic pragmatism and political estrangement.

By tracing the evolution of diplomatic contacts, trade flows, aid conditionality, and cooperation frameworks, the series aims to unpack how economic interdependence often preceded political alignment and how mutual caution repeatedly constrained deeper integration.

You can read Part 1, on the 1960s and the first diplomatic ties between Syria and the EEC, here, and Part 2, on the 1970s and the EEC-Syria Cooperation Agreement, here.

First Diplomatic Ties

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Syria had no relationship with the European Economic Community (EEC). Leading up to the establishment of the EEC in 1957, Syria’s ties with the soon-to-be member states were tepid. In November 1956, Syria severed all ties with France, its most important partner in Western Europe, following the Suez Crisis.1 At the same time, hostility towards Israel, growing ties with the Soviet Union (USSR), and the short-lived union with Egypt distanced Syria from the Western bloc and limited the scope for any early engagement with the newly created EEC.

Following the coup d’état that brought the leftist Ba’ath Party to power in Syria in 1963, Syria’s ties with the USSR grew stronger. Yet, early Ba’athism also advocated some form of neutrality between the two blocs, meaning that, ultimately, Damascus’ refusal to be tied to any foreign state, at least symbolically, allowed it to maintain ties with the West until the Six-Day War.

In the meantime, Damascus and Paris had mended their relationship, with Syria viewing rapprochement with Gaullist France, and by extension with the EEC, as a way to diversify its Western ties without falling into dependence on the United States, while also benefiting from access to the European common market. 2

While Syria had already engaged with EEC member states,3 the first official contact with the EEC occurred in February 1964, when Syria expressed concern about the conclusion of a trade agreement between the EEC and Israel, ultimately resulting in the Syrian government summoning the Six’s representatives to Damascus.4 This was noteworthy: Syria’s first formal engagement with the Community emerged not through alignment, but through objection, underscoring how political distance and economic relevance coexisted from the outset.

Still, the first demand to establish an official diplomatic relationship between the EEC and Syria came on April 10, 1964. On this date, the Syrian embassy in Brussels conveyed, by verbal note, Damascus’s wish to establish a diplomatic mission to the EEC.5 On May 25, 1964, the EEC’s Council of Ministers approved the opening of the Syrian diplomatic mission. The small office remained mostly inactive in the years that followed. Syria did not appoint a Chargé d’Affaires, Selim Al-Yafi, until January 11, 1967—three years after the Commission approved the Syrian mission.6

Initially, the establishment of diplomatic ties failed to materialize into anything concrete. Syria’s involvement in the Six-Day War in 1967 strained its newly established relationship with the EEC, and the Syrian authorities would then wait three years—until June 23, 1970—to send a full-fledged head of mission, Adib Daoudy, to the EEC.7 Alongside sending Mr. Daoudy, Damascus expressed its desire to strengthen its diplomatic ties with the European Communities by extending the Syrian diplomatic mission to the EEC to include the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC).8 The Council of Ministers approved the expansion of diplomatic ties with these two communities on July 20 and August 18, 1970, respectively.9

This marked an important milestone in the bilateral relationship and gave real substance to what had until then remained a mostly nominal diplomatic connection. Up to that point, chronic instability within Syria, together with its image in European eyes as a disruptive regional actor, had made the Community cautious about deepening engagement with Damascus.

Shortly after strengthening ties with Brussels, Damascus seized the opportunity to request food aid from the EEC, amounting to 80,000 tonnes of wheat, on July 20, 1970.10 This demand came at a time when the Syrian agricultural sector had suffered from neglect and political instability.11 The nationalization of most of the country’s economic sectors, which led to stagnation in the agricultural sector and rapid population growth (+40 percent between 1960 and 1970), also increased food needs.12 This, coupled with the fact that most of the country’s agriculture was rainfed and thus subject to potentially significant annual fluctuations, allowed food aid to act as a buffer against extreme weather events.

Two years later, the EEC acceded to this request and granted Syria food aid, albeit under conditions. On April 11, 1972, the two parties signed the “agreement between the EEC and the Syrian Arab Republic on the supply of common wheat as food aid,” ultimately equivalent to 7,500 tonnes of wheat. Provided under strict conditions, the agreement stipulated, among other things, that the profits linked to the sale of the European food aid—in case Damascus acquired food aid that was not needed to meet the Syrian population’s needs at the time—were exclusively deposited in a specific account intended to cover Syria’s expenses in terms of financing development projects.13 In subsequent food aid agreements, the Europeans reinforced this conditionality by requiring that any development projects financed through the proceeds of these sales receive prior approval from the European Commission.14

Fluctuating Trade Relations

Despite the lack of significant diplomatic and political ties, EEC-Syria trade ties were important for Damascus. Before 1957, Western Europe was Syria’s most significant trading partner. Afterward, the situation evolved so that the largest purchasers of Syrian goods were no longer the largest suppliers (Western Europe at the time). Arab and ‘communist countries’, particularly China, became significant buyers of Syrian goods, such as cotton. Still, Western European countries, specifically those within the EEC, remained Syria’s primary suppliers. According to European trade data (see table below),15 Syria’s imports from EEC countries accounted for about one-third of its total imports, while about one-fifth to one-quarter of its total exports went to the EEC.16

Although these percentages were already significant, the potential for bilateral trade was much higher. Despite the general non-discrimination in trade regulations between EEC member states and Syria, Western exporters faced difficulties due to delays in currency transfers from Syrian importers. At the time, the lack of a bilateral payment agreement between the EEC and Syria meant that Syrian importers had to wait longer to secure export currency. Thus, Syrian importers were inclined toward countries with which Syria had signed such agreements, such as China and Eastern European nations, to circumvent currency issues. This delay in currency transfers led to Western products being more expensive, as importers had to secure currency through the parallel monetary market (black market), where foreign currency was about 8 percent more expensive.17

At the same time, the USSR had seized the opportunity offered by the Syrian coup of February 1966 to strengthen its ties with Syria,18 thereby leading to a significant increase in trade between the two countries. Between 1965 and 1967, Syrian imports from the USSR multiplied by four, while exports to the USSR increased by 15 percent.

Overall, the 1960s revealed a structural feature that would long shape relations between Damascus and Brussels: political hesitation coexisted with economic interdependence. Syria remained wary of closer alignment with Western Europe and continued to deepen its strategic ties with the Soviet bloc, yet the EEC and its member states retained a central place in Syria’s external economic relations, particularly as suppliers of industrial goods and, increasingly, as a potential source of development support. In that sense, the first decade of EEC-Syria relations did not produce a full-fledged partnership, but it did establish the basic pattern on which later cooperation would rest: political caution on both sides, combined with a persistent Syrian need for European markets, technology, and finance.

The start of the 1970s, marked by Hafez al-Assad’s consolidation of power and the beginning of a relative economic and political opening (infitah) in Syria, seemed to have facilitated a diplomatic rapprochement with Western powers. Relations with the West, hitherto fluctuating due to various conflicts with Israel, thus seemed to warm up from 1974 onward.

A delegation from the EEC was sent to Damascus on 26 and 27 March 1974 to discuss the possibilities of cooperation between Syria and the EEC.19 Around the same time, Syria had signed two agreements with France in July and November 1974,20 and resumed diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom in May 1973, the United States in June 1974, and with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) the following month.21

The development of trade relations between the EEC and Syria mirrored this apparent political rapprochement. The EEC once again became Syria’s largest trading partner, accounting for 32.9 percent of Syria’s total foreign trade, compared with 26.7 percent for the Eastern Bloc.

Compared to the Eastern Bloc, the EEC benefited from technological and industrial advances, enabling it to produce goods essential to Syria’s development plans that were not available domestically or in neighboring regions at the required quality and scale. While it is true that Syria benefited from significant development aid from the socialist bloc, such as roads, dams, and ports, under conditions that were difficult for Western Europeans to compete with, the long construction times and limited profitability still made it necessary for Syrians to seek equipment elsewhere in the short term. Syrian imports from the EEC included high-tech industrial goods, machinery, and equipment needed to develop Syria’s infrastructure and industrial base.22

Thus, the share of Syria’s imports coming from the EEC rose from roughly one-quarter in 1970 to nearly 40 percent in 1974. As for exports, Syria primarily exported raw materials and agricultural products, which were in less demand in EEC countries (see table below).23 Moreover, the quality of Syrian industrial products was often not competitive enough for the demanding European markets, which limited their attractiveness as imports in the EEC. As a result, only one-fifth of Syria’s total exports reached the EEC markets.

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In the early 1970s, the main goal of Syrian economic policy was to improve the “terms of trade” by enhancing the quality and finishing of local industrial productions, aiming to reduce the export of raw materials in favor of finished and semi-finished goods.24 It was with this objective in mind—which could be accomplished with European development aid—that Damascus would seek to expedite the signing of a bilateral cooperation agreement.

Showing its willingness to develop deeper ties with its European counterparts, the Syrian government would even use the ‘trade argument’, among others, to push for the conclusion of a cooperation agreement between Damascus and Brussels, which would eventually come into effect in 1977.

During the first session of negotiations on a cooperation agreement between the EEC and Syria, the Syrian delegation presented this expansion in trade not as a passive trend, but as the result of a deliberate political choice by Damascus. Ammar Jamal, then Deputy Minister of the Syrian Ministry of Economy and Trade, declared that:

Syria, under the presidency of Mister Hafez Al-Assad, has shown its goodwill towards the Common Market25 by considerably increasing the volume of our trade with the Member States of the E.E.C. Our imports from the E.E.C. constituted in 1970, 26.6 percent of our total imports; this percentage rose to 39.2 percent in 1974.26

Conclusion

The 1960s marked the beginning of Syria’s engagement with the EEC, yet this relationship remained tentative and largely driven by economic pragmatism rather than political alignment. While Syria was deepening its ties with the Soviet Union, it also saw the EEC as a potential economic partner, particularly as a source of trade and development support. However, the diplomatic engagement was hesitant—Damascus took years to fully establish its mission to the EEC, and political instability in Syria, coupled with its role in regional conflicts, made European policymakers wary of deepening ties.

Despite these limitations, the decade laid an essential foundation for future cooperation. Syria’s uneven trade relationship with the EEC highlighted the country’s dependence on European markets for imports, while the challenges it faced, including currency transfer delays and reliance on food aid, underscored the economic vulnerabilities that would later shape its approach to European partners.

More fundamentally, the 1960s revealed a pattern that would endure for decades: political caution coexisted with economic relevance. Syria did not move closer to the EEC in strategic or ideological terms, yet the Community was already becoming an important economic interlocutor, as a supplier of industrial goods, a potential source of development support, and eventually a diplomatic channel worth cultivating. As Syria entered the 1970s, these limited openings gradually evolved into a more structured framework for cooperation, culminating in the 1977 Cooperation Agreement. While political convergence remained limited, the foundations laid during this earlier period helped shape the trajectory of EEC-Syria relations for the decades that followed.

This paper is the first of a series of six papers examining the relationship between the European Union (including its earlier institutional incarnations) and Syria. Drawing on diplomatic archives, grey literature, trade statistics, and contemporaneous policy documents, the series seeks to shed light on a scarcely documented relationship that has oscillated between strategic pragmatism and political estrangement.

By tracing the evolution of diplomatic contacts, trade flows, aid conditionality, and cooperation frameworks, the series aims to unpack how economic interdependence often preceded political alignment and how mutual caution repeatedly constrained deeper integration.

You can read Part 1, on the 1960s and the first diplomatic ties between Syria and the EEC, here, and Part 2, on the 1970s and the EEC-Syria Cooperation Agreement, here.