{"id":14944,"date":"2015-12-01T16:47:42","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T21:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14944"},"modified":"2015-12-01T16:47:42","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T21:47:42","slug":"western-firms-plan-to-cash-in-on-syrias-oil-and-gas-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14944","title":{"rendered":"Western firms plan to cash in on Syria\u2019s oil and gas \u2018frontier\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US-led coalition forces carry out a large-scale attack on Syria\u2019s Omar oil field<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Western firms plan to cash in on Syria\u2019s oil and gas \u2018frontier\u2019<\/a><\/h3>\n

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US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to rollback the power of the \u2018Islamic State\u2019 (ISIS) and, potentially, the Bashar al-Assad regime.<\/p>\n

A study for a global oil services company backed by the French government and linked to Britain\u2019s Tory-led administration, published during the height of the Arab Spring, hailed the significant \u201chydrocarbon potential\u201d of Syria\u2019s offshore resources.<\/p>\n

The 2011\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0was printed in\u00a0GeoArabia<\/em>, a petroleum industry journal published by a Bahrain-based consultancy, GulfPetroLink, which is sponsored by some of the world\u2019s biggest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Total, and BP.<\/p>\n

GeoArabia\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0content has no open subscription system and is exclusively distributed to transnational energy corporations, corporate sponsors and related organisations, as well as some universities.<\/p>\n

Authored by Steven A. Bowman, a Senior Geoscientist for the French energy company CGGVeritas, the study identified \u201cthree sedimentary basins, Levantine, Cyprus, and Latakia, located in offshore Syria\u201d and highlighted \u201csignificant evidence for a working petroleum system in offshore Syria with numerous onshore oil and gas shows, DHIs (direct hydrocarbon indicators) observed on seismic, and oil seeps identified from satellite imagery.\u201d<\/p>\n

France\u2019s secret affair with Assad\u2019s Syria<\/span><\/h4>\n

At the time, when civil unrest was sweeping across Syria, CGGVeritas was contracted to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Sources.<\/p>\n

The French company is one of the world\u2019s largest seismic surveyors. Backed by the French government which owns 18% voting rights in the firm, CGGVeritas had acquired seismic data on offshore Syrian resources in 2005, and since then has been the main point of contact for geophysical and geological datasets on behalf of the Syrian regime.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US-led coalition forces carry out a large-scale attack on Syria\u2019s Omar oil field Western firms plan to cash in on Syria\u2019s oil and gas \u2018frontier\u2019 US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to rollback the power of the \u2018Islamic State\u2019 (ISIS) and, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[35,93,10889,333,6113,1239,446,447,1049,2092,1729,776,834],"class_list":["post-14944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-assad","tag-britain","tag-energy-interests","tag-france","tag-insurge-intelligence","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-israel","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-syria","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14945,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944\/revisions\/14945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}