Syria raised diesel prices 40% and gasoline prices by as much as 28% on Saturday, and protesters blocked the highway linking Damascus to Aleppo and burned tires along the road to Turkey within 24 hours, the widest unrest since Bashar al-Assad’s fall in December 2024.
Diesel now costs 175 Syrian pounds a liter and household and industrial gas prices climbed roughly 9%.
Protests also broke out in Hama, Khan Sheikhoun and Maarat al-Numan, and crude tanker convoys bound for refineries were halted en route. Syria’s Energy Ministry called the increase a “temporary measure driven by higher global procurement costs,” spokesperson Abdulhamid Salat said.
Syria produces about 102,000 barrels of oil a day against domestic demand of roughly 325,000 barrels, the country’s energy minister said, a shortfall Damascus has covered by importing roughly 60,000 barrels a day of Russian crude this year. Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries have cut that output and pushed Moscow to restrict diesel and gasoline exports, tightening the supply reaching Syria just as domestic refining capacity fell.
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The Baniyas refinery, Syria’s largest, closed this month for a three-month overhaul, its first comprehensive maintenance since Assad’s fall, under a project the Syrian Petroleum Company says will raise capacity from 80,000 to 130,000 barrels a day. The UN Development Programme estimates 90% of Syrians now live below the poverty line, up from about a third before the 2011 civil war.
The U.S. has backed a $5.7-billion, 1,000-mile pipeline from Basra to Baniyas, led by Chevron with TotalEnergies and Syrian and Qatari investors, that would carry 2 million barrels a day and is intended to render the Strait of Hormuz an afterthought, envoy Tom Barrack has said. Iraqi refineries already truck roughly 5,000 tankers of crude to Baniyas daily under an interim arrangement that began in April. Damascus has also retaken oil and gas fields in Deir ez-Zor and Hasakah from Kurdish-led forces this year, domestic barrels that could ease Russia’s remaining foothold in Syrian energy even as the Baniyas overhaul squeezes near-term supply.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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