Syria's energy consumption

Official Name: Syrian Arab Republic.

Summary: Although it does not have primary energy sources comparable to those of other countries in the Middle East, Syria was still a significant producer of oil and natural gas and an exporter of electricity. Its favorable location helped Syria play a significant role in energy transmission and trade. However, the civil war and related conflicts beginning in 2011 seriously damaged the country's energy industry.

Syria is a Middle Eastern country with a Mediterranean Sea coastline, and borders Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel. In 2021, about 95 percent of Syria’s electric power came from thermal power plants fueled by oil and natural gas. Syria planned to become a key transit state between the resources produced in the Middle East and North Africa and the growing economies of Europe. While its own leg of the Arab Gas Pipeline initially helped that aim to some degree, the pipeline was shut down in Syria after it became the target of sabotage attacks during the country's civil conflict after 2011. Plans for further exploration and development of energy resources, as well as production and transportation, declined dramatically due to the infrastructure damage and administrative upheaval caused by the struggle between government forces, rebels, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Oil

The Syrian oil industry emerged as foreign firms prospected its deposits as early as the 1920s, with serious production starting in the 1950s. Nationalization of the industry came in 1964. Total proved reserves as of 2015 were 2.5 billion barrels of petroleum. In the peak production year of 1996, Syria’s crude oil output reached 582,000 barrels per day (bpd). Production fell rapidly afterwards but leveled off; crude oil production was 383,000 bpd before the outbreak of the 2011 conflict. Syria’s main customers for crude oil export in 2010 were Germany and Italy, each taking about one-third of total volume, followed by France at 11 percent, the Netherlands at 9 percent, and minor shares to Austria, Spain, and Turkey, among other nations. However, oil exports declined to essentially zero as the conflict heightened, significantly impacting the government's energy revenues.

Domestic shortfalls due to infrastructure damage also limited domestic supply. In 2013 Syrians consumed 224,000 bpd of oil and other liquid fuels. Syria supplied only about 25,000 bpd in 2015—a 90 percent drop in production from 2011. Iran became Syria's main supplier of oil at 60,000 bpd, but demands were still not met. Syria's efforts to become a key transit state between the resources produced in the Middle East and North Africa and consumers located in Europe were also halted by the outbreak of civil conflict in 2011. Oil's share of Syria's energy supply fell 44 percent between 2000 and 2021 to 68.5 percent.

Natural Gas

Syria’s natural gas fields held proved reserves of 1.5 trillion cubic feet in 1980, rising to 8.5 trillion cubic feet in the 1990s. In 2009, the country produced 218 billion cubic feet—down from peak production of 250 billion cubic feet in 2004—but consumed somewhat more. For electric generation, Syria beginning in 2007 depended in part on imports of gas, mainly from Egypt, to make up its shortfall. Syria’s natural gas is also used in re-injection for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques in its older oil fields. Although the natural gas industry was not as hard hit by the civil conflict beginning in 2011, it too underwent significant decline. Production in 2013 was 187 billion cubic feet, while consumption was 200 billion cubic feet. In 2021, natural gas represented 56 percent of domestic energy production.

Syria is at one end of the Arab Gas Pipeline, which originates in Egypt. The 750-mile conduit goes through Jordan, then passes through Damascus and Homs, where it branches off to Syria’s port facilities at Baniyas, and to Tripoli in neighboring Lebanon. The Syrian segment of the pipeline was built with Soviet and then Russian cooperation, being completed in 2008. Repeated disruptions in Egyptian territory at the onset of the Arab Spring popular uprisings in 2011, culminating in the Egyptian Revolution, made the Arab Gas Pipeline showed the risks in relying on an international pipeline as a primary source of fuel. The development of the conflict in Syria further damaged the project, which was effectively shut down. Although plans had been laid to extend the pipeline in Turkey, possibly Lebanon, and even potentially Europe, the conflict made such expansion impossible.

Electricity

As it entered the twenty-first century, Syria began rapidly expanding its electric power generation facilities; installed capacity reached more than 10 million kilowatts in 2022, compared with a little over 4,000 megawatts in early 1998. Syria’s annual demand for electricity also grew, on average, at 10 percent for several years; it reached 29 terawatt-hours in 2008, up from 12 terawatt-hours a decade earlier. In 2012 electricity generation stood at 29.5 kilowatt-hours while consumption stood at 25.7 kilowatt-hours. However, electrical infrastructure became a common target for sabotage during the country's civil crisis after 2011. Many power plants, transmission lines, and substations were damaged or destroyed; by 2013 at least 40 percent of the country's high-voltage lines had experienced attacks and over thirty of its power stations were out of operation. Blackouts became common throughout the country. In 2021, Syria's total electricity production was 16,916 gigawatt-hours, a decrease of 33 percent since 2000.

Syria produces hydroelectricity to meet domestic power needs to some extent. However, Turkey’s sprawling, complex Southeastern Anatolia Project—which will tap the energy of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers through 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants, as well as supply drinking water and irrigation systems for up to 9 million people—has had an impact on Syria in terms of how it must plan for reduced water flow feeding into its own infrastructure. The Euphrates flow volume is approximately 88 percent controlled by Turkey, 9 percent by Syria, and 3 percent by Iraq. In 2021, 4.5 percent of Syria's electricity was generated using hydropower.

Syria’s state run General Establishment for the Euphrates Dam operates three major hydroelectric plants, providing about 4.5 percent of the country’s total electricity production. Syria has 141 dams with a total storage capacity of 9.8 cubic miles (15.8 cubic kilometers) of water, the largest being the al-Tabaqah (or Tabqa) Dam on the Euphrates at al-Assad Lake, with a storage capacity of 7 cubic miles (11.2 cubic kilometers). Syria must improve its relations with both Turkey and Iraq if all three nations are to make equitable use of their shared rivers, but increasing efficiency and new technology ultimately may prove a safer route to supplying Syria’s water needs than increasing its dependency on the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Renewables

Before the outbreak of civil war in 2011, Syria was looking into renewable energy resources, and it is a member of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Projects on which it has consulted with other IRENA members include wind turbine parks, solar water heating installations for residential and commercial building use, and photovoltaic solar electric generation schemes for rural areas (thereby cutting the need for additional transmission lines in those areas). Syria has also worked with the Cairo-based Regional Center for Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE). According to RCREEE, Syria’s preconflict master renewables plan included tentative year 2030 targets of 1,000 to 1,500 megawatts of wind power, 250 megawatts of biomass-based power, 250 megawatts of solar photovoltaics output, and 1 million tons of oil equivalent per annum of solar heat energy. However, progress toward these goals was disrupted by the civil conflict.

The turmoil led to several renewable energy projects undertaken out of necessity. For example, when in 2012 the government cut off the city of Douma's access to the power grid, the local council worked out ways to provide electricity through biofuels and solar power. The conflict has also caused extensive damage to the power grid, leaving hospitals to rely on diesel generators to provide power to medical equipment. Diesel fuel is expensive and scarce in the country. As a result, a medical charity founded the Syria Solar Initiative to provide solar power to hospitals throughout the country. Work was completed on the first hospital in this project in May 2017. As a stopgap method to keep the diesel generators running, hospitals have also taken to making a fuel similar to diesel by melting down plastic bags and containers.

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