{"id":21843,"date":"2016-09-25T12:53:34","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T17:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21843"},"modified":"2016-09-25T12:53:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T17:53:34","slug":"the-natural-gas-war-burning-under-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21843","title":{"rendered":"The Natural Gas War Burning Under Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Natural Gas War Burning Under Syria<\/a><\/h3>\n\"Syria<\/picture>\n
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Qatar always wanted to punch above its weight. In Syria, it got the chance.<\/p>\n

In 2009,\u00a0Qatar<\/a>, a leading natural gas producer, approached Syria about routing its planned 1,500 mile pipeline to the gas markets of Europe through Syria\u2019s Aleppo province. Qatar wanted a\u00a0pipeline<\/a>\u00a0straight to Europe as its current gas transport modes were limited to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tanker, mostly to Asia with limited spot\u00a0shipments<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Europe<\/a>\u00a0or the Dolphin pipeline to the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The pipeline would head north and end in Turkey after crossing Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. Syria\u00a0declined<\/a>\u00a0Qatar\u2019s offer, which would have cut the European market share of its partner, Russia, and instead agreed to participate in the\u00a0\u201cFriendship Pipeline\u201d<\/a>\u00a0between Iran and Iraq that was considered a \u201cShia Pipeline\u201d to some and a target for the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf. Not understood, or ignored, was Syria\u2019s longstanding support of the Iranian regime, especially during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, and its long relationship with Russia, dating from 1944, which should have been a warning of who might appear if things hotted up.<\/p>\n

In 2010, Israel and Syria held\u00a0back-channel<\/a>\u00a0talks that reportedly included Israel\u2019s return of the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for security guarantees. The talks lagged due to mutual suspicions about the other side\u2019s ability to deliver and, by early 2011, the Arab Spring had erupted across the region and leaders\u2019 attentions turned to more immediate concerns. At this point, America had the opportunity to strike a blow against the Islamic Republic\u2019s ally, the Assad regime. In 2011, Turkey provided a home for the opposition Syrian National Council and, in August 2011, the U.S., its allies, and the UN were calling on Bashar Assad to\u00a0step down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Natural Gas War Burning Under Syria Qatar always wanted to punch above its weight. In Syria, it got the chance. In 2009,\u00a0Qatar, a leading natural gas producer, approached Syria about routing its planned 1,500 mile pipeline to the gas markets of Europe through Syria\u2019s Aleppo province. Qatar wanted a\u00a0pipeline\u00a0straight to Europe as its current […]<\/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":[3,5],"tags":[281,14385,3790,441,442,14384,554,5332,5963,1026,694,776,2428,862],"class_list":["post-21843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-europe","tag-gas-exports","tag-gas-pipeline","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-james-durso","tag-natural-gas","tag-oilprice-com","tag-oman","tag-qatar","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21843","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=21843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21844,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21843\/revisions\/21844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}