A new fuel crisis sweeping Syria

ARK News… The streets of the Syrian capital, Damascus, and the rest of the Syrian cities under the control of the regime have been emptied, and fuel stations have turned into a parking lot for cars that queue to fill in fuel, while the government is taking measures to address the shortage of this vital substance.

The queues of cars extended kilometers in the vicinity of petrol stations to fill 30 liters of gasoline, according to the German news agency, and a number of car owners spoke, saying that “some car owners stood for more than a day in the petrol queues, and when they approached the station the gasoline ran out. Forcing them to wait for the truck carrying the fuel to return.

A taxi driver in the Abbasid area said: “For 12 hours, I have been waiting for me to fill my car with fuel. I am no longer doing anything. We spend our day to fill in fuel and even the streets are empty of pedestrians, and we talk that this matter will continue until the end of the month.

In Tartous Governorate, a car owner said, "I spent more than 24 hours waiting to fill my car with fuel, and the queue of cars extended more than 5 kilometers, not to mention half the distance for motorcycles."

Walid Shahin, who works as an employee in the Suwaidaa governorate, said: "Public transport cars in the city raised the value of the fare by 1,000 Syrian pounds ... which greatly affected the people who want to move and follow their daily work."

On Saturday, the Ministry of Oil announced, through its social media pages, “Each car will be filled once for each special mechanism, with a time difference of seven days from the last sale, whether from the subsidized or unsupported segment, according to its monthly allocations, which are 100 liters of Subsidized petrol and once every seven days for motorcycles, according to the amount allocated to them, starting today Sunday”. It pointed out that “this procedure is temporary until the Banyas refinery returns to work at the end of this month and the arrival of new supplies”.

The Syrian government lost more than 80 percent of its oil and gas resources after the US-backed "Syrian Democratic Forces" took control of the oil production areas in the governorates of Hasaka and Deir Al-Zour in northeastern Syria.

Syria suffers from frequent crises, ranging from electric power to butane gas, gasoline, and diesel for heating and cars.

On Friday, Prime Minister Hussein Arnous issued a circular to reduce the allocations for September of this year for gasoline for government cars for all levels.

Oil Minister Bassam Tohme said, "The suffocating crisis that his country is witnessing in the shortage of benzene is caused by the American blockade of production and supply, in addition to the suspension of the Banyas refinery for maintenance."

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