SPEAKING
FREELY The oil road through
Damascus By Ronnie Blewer
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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Middle East oil transit routes are
at risk from Islamist revolutions and Iranian
threats. Does Syria present an opportunity for the
West to bypass the most troubling oil chokepoints?
Is that a strong driver behind the West's interest
in the Syrian rebellion? Instability all along the
oil road is at its highest point in decades, and
Syria's history as a perennial spoiler and
location as a potential energy path cannot have
been missed.
Is a post-Assad
Iraq-Syrian mega-pipeline in the works?
Consider the recent pressures on Middle
East oil shipping routes:
Iranian influence on the Shi'ite-dominated
government in Iraq has caused significant worry in
Washington. Iran's influence in
Iraq can be viewed,
Stratfor notes, as a greater "arc of influence"
from Iran to Iraq, extended through Syria and into
Lebanon. The West's strategy is to contain Iran's
foreign influence and prevent Iran's development
of nuclear weapons. Syria would be a natural
target for this strategy.
Iran has threatened to close the Strait of
Hormuz in response to economic sanctions or
military action aimed at its nuclear program. Over
17 million barrels of oil per day flow through the
Strait , and the mere threat of closure has kept
oil prices elevated.
Somali pirate activity has expanded well
beyond Somalia into the Red Sea, and northeast
into the Indian Ocean as far as Oman, Pakistan and
India. In 2008, these pirates captured the
Sirius Star, a tanker that carried 2
million barrels of oil.
Yemen, which sits in a key position on the
Bab-el-Mandab strait, separating the Arabian
peninsula from the horn of Africa, struggles with
a rebellion against the Saleh regime. It has also
been a hot zone of internecine conflict between
Sunni and Shi'ite communities and has also been a
hotbed of al-Qaeda activity and drone attacks
against Islamist militants.
The Arab Spring in Egypt has seen the rise of
Islamist interests inimical to the West and
Israel, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which is
highly-anti-Western. Since then, diplomatic
tensions between Egypt and the US have risen
dramatically. Because the Arab Spring was largely
stoked and triggered by the explosion of food
prices in a very poor part of the world, and they
have not abated, the level of desperation and
radicalism displayed in Egypt to the West is
likely to worsen.
A single "Suezmax" tanker sunk in the Suez
Canal would cause an explosion in world energy
prices. If the Suez Canal and/or the SUMED
pipeline, were closed, as the Suez was by Nasser
in 1957 , then oil tankers would have to travel an
additional 9,600 kilometers around Africa to reach
its destination. This fact has never been lost on
Western logisticians .
As a result, Middle
East oil shipping lanes have always attracted a
strong, expensive and provocative Western military
presence.
An overland
alternative? Good generals study
tactics, great generals study logistics. -
General Omar Bradley
The search for
non-naval oil routes is not a new topic. In 2003,
shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon
requested a feasibility study on the possible
revival of the long-defunct Mosul-Haifa oil
pipeline route. This pipeline was activated by the
British in 1935 to transfer Iraqi oil to the
Mediterranean. It was shut down in 1948 by Iraq in
the aftermath of Israel's founding.
While
there was much discussion on the pipeline's
revival, the general conclusion was that such an
effort would be entirely infeasible, because such
a pipeline would be a magnet for terrorist attacks
due to the regional stigma attached to Israel.
This concern is confirmed by the recent rash of
pipeline attacks on Egyptian energy flows to
Israel. Thus, most pipelines in the region
entirely bypass Israel.
The
defunct Mosul-Haifa pipeline
.
However,
properly secured, a pipeline through Israel, Syria
or Lebanon to the Mediterranean would be of
tremendous value. The important phrase here is
"properly secured". Otherwise, one choke point
would be exchanged for another, potentially more
vulnerable one.
Such a route would only be
feasible if it were shielded from the blackmail
and sabotage so common to the region. Until now, a
major Syrian pipeline would have been a pipe
dream.
Why not Syria
already? Although there are pipelines
through Syria today, they are of miniscule
importance compared to major arteries such as
Egypt's SUMED and would do little to replace the
Strait of Hormuz-Suez route. For decades, the
Assad regime effectively locked itself out of any
meaningful commercial links with the West through
a combination of wars, dark alliances and support
for terror groups across the region.
In
the Cold War, Syria's strong alignment with the
USSR, repeated attacks against Israel, both
militarily and through its support and shelter of
anti-Western terror groups, made it extremely
unreliable as a host for pipelines upon which so
many nations would depend. In particular, the
alignment with the USSR was seen as a political
threat by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation
Council nations. [1]
During the Lebanese
Civil War, Syria actively supported Shi'ite
factions and came to dominate Lebanon in the
aftermath of the country's civil war. Furthermore,
the country harbored Imad Mugniyeh, the prime
suspect in the 1983 bombing of a US Marine Corps
barracks in Beirut, in which nearly 300 US and
French servicemen were killed. He was finally
assassinated in 2008, in Damascus.
After
the Cold War, Syria continued to dominate Lebanon,
and was allegedly a key player in the
assassination of president Rafic Hariri, a Sunni.
Though this led to the "Cedar Revolution" that
drove most of Syria's uniformed troops out of
Lebanon and loosened its grip on the country,
Syria's continued support of terror organizations
in Lebanon and the political wing of Hezbollah
kept it at odds with the West.
Hopes that
Bashar al-Assad would initiate a new era of peace
and openness with the West were dashed early on.
He sheltered a number of key leaders from Saddam
Hussein's Ba'athist Party, and did almost nothing
to stem the flow of money, fighters and weapons
back into Iraq.
Assad's Syria continued to
pursue the development of weapons of mass
destruction, which included the attempt to
construct a secret nuclear reactor, with the
assistance of North Korea, in violation of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The reactor was
destroyed by Israeli bombers on September 6, 2007
as part of Operation Orchard .
Syria
worked hard to earn its status as a pariah nation,
which is why even whispers of a super-pipeline
route are so belated. Even with an Assad-dominated
Syria, and there are feasibility studies underway
to add significant additional crude oil pipeline
capacity from Iraq through Syria, as well as an
underwater pipeline to Turkey.
There is also an
opportunity for Syria in the natural gas transport
space. Syria would be the logical choice to host a
branch for Egyptian liquefied natural gas into the
Nabucco pipeline network.
Nabucco
gas line - Syria is seen as a key transit point
for Egyptian LNG exports. Source: SeaNews
Turkey
The dangerous road
ahead At this point there is little Bashar
can do to save his regime. The high food prices
that lit the fires of the Arab Spring remain, and
the slaughter of so many demonstrators has made
untenable any hopes Assad would have to live
peacefully in Syria even if he resigned. With the
exceptions of Russia and Iran, Syria's traditional
commercial partners, including oil companies, have
unified to isolate and starve the regime.
The ultimate question for the outcome of
the overland super-pipeline is what will fill the
power vacuum after Assad's collapse? If Syria
descends into sectarian civil war, it would be
some time before such a project could proceed.
Iran will fight for control of the country in the
same way it did for Lebanon and Iraq - through a
combination of supporting political movements and
terror tactics. Some of these have allegedly
already come into play to fight for the Assad
regime.
Similarly, Turkey has a major
stake in the outcome in Syria. Its most immediate
interest there is to prevent a destabilizing tide
of refugees from Syria, but the more strategic
interests are manifold. Turkey's leadership,
embodied by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, wants to see
Turkey re-assert a dominant economic and political
position in the region. To have that role in
Syria, Iranian influence would have to be driven
away. Likewise, Russian influence in Syria,
projected from its military hub of Tartus, is not
desirable from the Turkish point of view.
Add in the discovery of huge offshore
natural gas reserves in Lebanon and Israel, and
the precedent of Iranian natural gas embargos to
Turkey , and the overall potential impact Syria
can have on energy transport, and it becomes clear
that Syria carries huge weight in Turkish foreign
policy formulation.
How far will Turkey
go? Is it prepared to offer its troops as
peacekeepers? Will the US and its allies accept
the costs of a long-term Turkish presence to
contain Iran, and/or guard a critical energy
artery as they guard naval routes from the Persian
Gulf? The Syrian people - Alawi, Shiite, Sunni,
Christian and Kurd alike, do not have fond
memories of Ottoman domination. Whatever happens,
the iron law remains: the spice must flow.
Note: 1. Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab
Emirates
Ronnie Blewer is an IT
security and systems management professional with
a strong interest in global economic and foreign
policy issues. Mr. Blewer has degrees in Russian
language and Political Science from Louisiana
State University. To contact him via e-mail, he
can be reached at ronnie.blewer@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2012 Ronne Brewer
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing. Articles submitted for
this section allow our readers to express their
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