Question

The Syrian Civil War: A Conspiracy of Competing Pipelines?

Answer 1

Six years after a conflict that killed at least 400,000 people, there is a common perception that Syria's bloodshed is yet another battle for Middle Eastern power resources. As the theory goes, the bloodshed is a proxy war over two planned pipelines that would run across the world, and on to Turkey and Europe. Although neither pipeline left the drawing board, or indeed was ever practical, this did not dampen the popularity of the theory as a key explanation for the conflict in Syria.

The first pipeline is ostensibly sponsored by the US and runs across Saudi Arabia and Jordan from Qatar to Syria. The second is a pipeline supposedly backed by Russia, which goes from Iran to Syria, through Iraq. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it is said, at Moscow 's request in 2009 vetoed the Qatari pipeline to ensure that European reliance on Russian gas will not be undermined.
As a result, some analysts say that the US and its allies in Europe and the Gulf, including Qatar, have decided to orchestrate a rebellion against Assad to ensure that their pipe dreams become a reality rather than the Iranian alternative. In turn, Russia backed Syria with the aim of ensuring that its own energy interests prevailed.

Syria introduced a strategy in 2009, at the time, which received little attention outside its borders. Called the 'Four Seas Strategy,' it aimed to turn the country into a gas transit center between the Atlantic, the Black Sea, the Caucus and the Mediterranean by extending the 6,300 kilometers of gas and oil pipelines that span the country and using the Euro-Arab gas pipeline Mashreq (AGP). The AGP is not a central feature in the narrative about Pipelineistan, but it does show the problems faced when it comes to developing pipelines in the region.

Since 2013 onwards, the pipeline narrative also makes much mention of Damascus rebuffing a supposed Qatari offer to build a pipeline in 2009. This part of the story focuses on comments made by anonymous diplomats in an article about a meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Bandar bin Sultan from Saudi Arabia in a 2013 Agence France-Presse report.

In fact, Saudi opposition to the Qatari gas pipelines was so intense that instead Doha changed its policy from dry gas pipelines to liquefied natural gas (LNG). As a result, over the last 15 years Doha has been the world's biggest exporter of LNG. China has spent more than $11bn on a fleet of LNG container ships, independent of fixed pipeline facilities and capable of carrying LNG anywhere. Asia, particularly Japan, China , South Korea and India, has the fastest-growing gas markets. LNG is also a more competitive option than dry gas piping to Europe, where demand for gas is flat and predictions are depressed compared to Asia and within the Middle East itself.