A natural gas project allocated by Syria to Conoco of the United States and Elf of the French TotalFinaElf group will be operational by the end of July, Oil Minister Mohammad Majer Jamal said Saturday, July 21.
Quoted by the official SANA agency, Jamal said that the gas from the Deir Ezzor oil fields to the east of the country will no longer be burned off from July 31, marking the project's coming on stream.
Syria reached a half-and-half deal in 1998 with a joint venture formed by Conoco and Elf, offering them a contract of $430 million to collect and process the gas currently being burned off at Deir Ezzor—estimated to be some five million cubic meters per day.
The project allows for the establishment of a 250 kilometers (150 mile) gas pipeline to deliver 4.25 million cubic meters of gas per day to the network which feeds the urban areas in the west of the country, including Damascus.
Nearly 750,000 cubic meters of gas per day should also be re-injected into the gas field of Tabiyeh, run by Elf, inthe Deir Ezzor region, to increase the output. Elf also plans to export a part of the recovered gas to Lebanon.
Conoco, which is lead manager for the engineering work, is the only US oil company operating in Syria, while Elf is extracting from several fields in the north-east, producing 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day. (AFP)
© Agence France Presse
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
