The US-Russia gas pipeline war in Syria could destabilise Putin
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/us-russia-gas-pipeline-war-syria-could-destabilise-putin-103505758As Orenstein explained, “in 2009, Qatar proposed to build a pipeline to send its gas northwest via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to Turkey… However, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad refused to sign the plan; Russia, which did not want to see its position in European gas markets undermined, put him under intense pressure not to”.
Russia’s Gazprom sells 80 per cent of its gas to Europe. So in 2010, Russia put its weight behind “an alternative Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline that would pump Iranian gas from the same field out via Syrian ports such as Latakia and under the Mediterranean.” The project would allow Moscow “to control gas imports to Europe from Iran, the Caspian Sea region, and Central Asia.”
Up to this point, US policy toward Assad had been ambivalent. State Department cables obtained by Wikileaks reveal that US policy had wavered between financing Syrian opposition groups to facilitate “regime change,” and using the threat of regime change to induce “behaviour reform”.
Then in July, a $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline deal was announced, and a preliminary agreement duly signed.
By late 2011, the US, UK, France and Israel were ramping up covert assistance to rebel factions in Syria to elicit the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within”.
“The United States… supports the Qatari pipeline as a way to balance Iran and diversify Europe’s gas supplies away from Russia,” explained Orenstein in Foreign Affairs.
Russia moved quickly to support the parties in signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in July 2012. By the end of 2013, Russia had signed an offshore gas deal with Syria to explore the eastern Mediterranean, estimated to contain a total of about 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.
The move was seen as “unhelpful” by the US, which has worked with Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Cyprus and Lebanon to develop an Israeli-dominated regional gas export architecture capable of supplying eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe.
“Natural gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean… have the ability to undermine Russia’s dominant position as a natural gas supplier to Western Europe,” wrote Simon Henderson, director of the Washington Institute’s Gulf and Energy Policy Programme.
Civilian killed, 12 others injured in terrorist mortar attacks in Damascus and its countryside
http://sana.sy/en/?p=59619Update- Army establishes control over new areas, air strikes inflict heavy losses upon terrorists
http://sana.sy/en/?p=59651
