A US military convoy crossing from Syria into Iraq. Photo: USA Today.
The Syrian Oil Ministry has accused the US forces occupying north-eastern Syria of being responsible for the theft of most of the country’s oil.
“The amount of oil production during the first half of 2022 amounted to some 14.5 million barrels, with an average daily production of 80,300 barrels, of which 14,200 are delivered daily to refineries,” said the Oil Ministry in a statement released on August 9, reported The Cradle.
The statement went on to say that “the US occupation forces and their mercenaries”—referring to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)“—steal up to 66,000 barrels every single day from the fields occupied in the eastern region,” amounting to around 83% of Syria’s daily oil production.
According to the Syrian Oil Ministry’s data, the Syrian oil sector has incurred losses amounting to “about $105 billion since the beginning of the war until the middle of this year” as a result of the US oil stealing campaign.
RELATED CONTENT: Vladimir Putin: Washington Should Stop Stealing Syrian Oil
Apart from the financial losses suffered by the oil sector, the country has suffered “losses of life, including 235 martyrs, 46 injured and 112 kidnapped” during the first six months of this year alone.
On August 10, footage filmed by a Russian air force helicopter was released on social media, showing a convoy of trucks operated by the US military, smuggling stolen oil destined for Iraq, out of the Syrian city of Raqqah.
New footage of a US military convoy smuggling stolen oil out of Raqqah, Syria.
The US army has been consistently looting the country's oil and smuggling it into their Iraq bases.
Washington steals over 80 percent of Syria's oil output per day
MORE https://t.co/s1z2uIjzJk pic.twitter.com/ko7EsxTRdh— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 10, 2022
The US military, which presently occupies north-east Syria where the majority of the country’s oilfields are located, has been regularly looting Syrian oil and smuggling it to its bases in Iraq through illegal border crossings. Only in July of this year, almost 200 tanker trucks filled with looted oil were smuggled out of Syria by US troops, as Washington has intensified its practice of stealing Syrian resources and selling them abroad.
RELATED CONTENT: UNSC: NATO ‘Humanitarian Bastards’ Bleat over Syria’s ‘Needs’
This is the real motive of the US invasion and occupation of Syria, as revealed by former US President Donald Trump in 2019, “We’re keeping [Syria’s] oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil.”
Until April this year, US energy company Delta Crescent Energy (DCE) operated in north-east Syria, fulfilling the promise of “keeping” Syria’s oil, The Cradle reported. Although the Biden administration did not renew DCE’s license waiver to continue drilling in Syria which is under a unilateral sanctions regime imposed by Washington, Biden confirmed on June 8 that “a small presence of United States Armed Forces remains in strategically significant locations in Syria to conduct operations, in partnership with indigenous ground forces.”
The US military has also plundered Syria’s wheat, converting a wheat-exporting country into a region where three-quarters of the population is now facing starvation.
(Misión Verdad) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/JRE
