Since its intervention in the Syrian civil war in 2015, Russia has been working towards creating a corridor for the safe extraction and transportation of Syrian energy resources. Despite holding relatively low reserves of oil and gas (an estimated 2.5bn barrels of oil, for example, compared with Saudi Arabia’s estimated 297bn), the Assad government nonetheless relies on natural resource exports. In 2007, oil alone accounted for approximately 20% of GDP after the cost of production.
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