The recent history of Syria’s economy is completely connected to the exploration of natural resources in Syria.

 The recent history of Syria’s economy is completely connected to the exploration of natural resources in Syria.  The natural resources generate the most money for economic development. Billions of dollars every year, more than taxes.  The most valuable natural resources in Syria are the waterways, the phosphate, and the oil.  These industries are essential to the economic wellbeing of the country.  Damascus rises and falls with the revenue generated from these natural resources and in a survival adaptation they have learned to use the pharmaceutical market as a large force of trade revenue.  Unfortunately Damascus has not used any of the revenues to support the economic infrastructure of Damascus as it is clear the economy in Damascus is unable to self-sustain.  The economic downfall of Damascus in the presence of billion dollar revenues incoming to the presidential palace demonstrates that the economy is being separated from the presidential and the parliamentary life.  When economics and governance are separated, we don’t bestow the title of country.  Its not fair to say that the people of Syria are not one people who identify with each other as a community.  The people are the engine that brings the natural resources to the surface of the earth and transforms it into a better quality of life that befits the human intellect.  The natural resources belong to the people as a whole.  We can not allow businesses to roam the earth freely buying up governments for their personal ambitions.

Syria is strategic to the movement of trade across four continents.  Syria’s wealth in ancient times has been derived from agriculture because of the fertility of the long river basin.  The mining of natural resources in Syria is a phenomenon of the past one hundred years.  In 1900 there was an oil race between a handful of countries which most greatly emphasized in three wars which are oil wars but were named world wars.  Oil has bubbled to the surface of the earth since ancient times.  Metals have been moulded by ironworkers since ancient times.  The iron-workers trade has contributed to the value of oil.  Today those trades are greatly interdependent with advanced technology which are elements of the highly advanced lifestyle we live today.  The ironworkers contributed the idea of using heat and pressure in a chamber to generate a propulsion.  It is the foundation for the human development of the steam engine, a catalyst for lifestyle advancement.  At the outset of the development of the steam engine the iron-workers trade became part of the foundation together with the steam engine that provided transportation.  If the trade of iron and the trade of the power for steam engine are separation it will cause underdevelopment of the transportation systems of the country.  The electrical supply of the country is also linked to the trade of iron and trade of fuels for engines because these are fundamental for the technology of electrical generation.  For the advancement of trade power and economic strength of the country it is vital to have the support of the transportation and electrical power supply. 

In world war one the British started attacking the Turks.  The British tried to control the waterway at Istanbul but were unsuccessful.  The British went to Egypt to secure the waterway at the Suez Canal.  The British went to Basra, Iraq to secure oil fields. To Iran to maintain security forces around the oil that was known to bubble to the surface there.  The British sent Lawrence of Arabia to sabotage the Hejaz railway and prevent the Turks from establishing strong trade connections with Arabia.  The Germans encouraged the Turks to try to secure the oil fields in Georgia. The British took control of Palestine and declared it to be a new Jewish state in the heart of the Arab Muslim lands. 

In world war one Germany and the British began to bomb each others homelands with the new engines and propulsion system technology they had developed using the power of iron and fuel.  In world war two Germany sent armies to the middle east to capture the same territory that the British had attacked in world war one because they represent the location of vital natural resources.  The waterways for trade and the raw materials for transportation and electric power which increase the strength of economy.  Mankind had an idea of using iron, heat, propulsion and engines which mankind raced out in all directions providing steam engines, combustion engines, transportations systems, and electric power utilities.  All of these technologies contributed to the theatre of the oil wars which were named world wars one and two, and the quality of life that followed it. 

After world war two, billions upon billions of dollars every year are sold in natural resources from the land of Syria.  1950 an oil refinery was built in Homs, Syria to refine crude oil.  The oil supply was from Iraq’s oil fields and refined in Syria for industrial use.  Saudi arabia completed the Tapline pipeline that traveled through Syria to get to Lebanon.  Syria was given money in exchange for permission to place part of the pipeline on Syrian land.  Syria nationalized the electrical power industry for the country to bring electrical power under the control of the government.  In the northeast part of Syria near the border with Iraq an American businessman found oil and a German businessman found oil fifteen kilometers away.  The oil had high sulfur content and therefore was a poor quality. 

1960 the Syrian government nationalized the oil industry with the name Syrian General Petroleum.  The Russians (Soviet union) helped build a 600 kilometer pipeline to transport oil from Iraq’s oil fields to the refinery at Homs, Syria.  Petroleum was transported out of the refinery to the terminal at Tartus and exported via the Mediterranean Sea.  In 1970 iraq built a new pipeline to transport Iraqi oil through Turkey as a strategy to expand the Iraq oil industry.  1971 Syria opened their first phosphate mine in tadmur/palmayra. 1973 Israel bombed the Homs refinery doing damage that took years to repair. 1974 two more phosphate mines were opened. 1974 the electric power came under the control of the ministry of electricity.  The national electric company became an agency of the ministry. 1974 a Romanian company was given a contract for oil exploration in Syria. 1976 Iraq cut oil supply to the pipeline in Syria.  Saudi arabia supplied the oil for the homes refinery during this time. 1977 Royal dutch shell won a contract under the name Pecten. 1977 American Coastal States Gas corporation won a contract under the name Samoco which was shared in a joint contract with The Syrian American Oil Company.  1977 syria suspended pumping in the pipeline from Saudi arabia to Lebanon.  1979 a west Germany company won a contract under the name Deminex. 1979 iraq resumed pumping through the pipeline in Syria but at one-third of the amount of oil.  1979 the new Baniyas refinery was connected to the pipeline system it had cost 1 billion to build.  1979 hydroelectric power generated 75 percent of the electricity of the country. Over the next five years Syria increased thermal power generation. 85 percent of the population in the cities had electricity.  10 percent of the countryside had electricity. 

At this time the revenue from pumping oil is far more valuable than taxes collected from the population.  The earnings from the pipeline became more important source of budget revenue.  1980 was the outbreak of the iran Iraq war and Syria stopped pumping oil from Iraq.  Syria said the Iraqi pipeline cost more money to operate than Syria was earning in the transit fees.  In 1981 Syria's giant triple super phosphate plant, built by Romanian contractors at Horns, began production with a capacity of 450,000 tons of triple super phosphate and 800,000 tons of phosphate and phosphoric acid. 1982 syria closed the pipeline to all petroleum exports from Iraq after they had made a new agreement to purchase oil from Iran. 

Since 1982, when Syria closed its oil pipeline from Iraq and stopped purchasing Iraqi oil as a show of support for Iran in the Iran-Iraq War (see Regional Foreign Relations, ch. 4), Iran has supplied large quantities of oil to Syria on concessionary terms and as outright gifts. Marathon Oil finding a gas potential of 450 million cubic meters a day in 1982 at Sharif-2 and 400 million cubic meters a day at Ash Shair 1 . The economic viability of Marathon's gas discoveries combined with uncertain market forces to cloud future exploitation of these resources. In 1982 Syria awarded major contracts to Technoexport of Czechoslovakia to build a gas treatment plant at Jubaysah and a gas trans- mission line to Horns for use in the Horns ammonia-urea plant. France also began construction on a gas treatment plant at Rumaylan.

1983 the west german company name deminex joined operations with royal dutch shell under the name pectin and the original royal dutch shell.  This essentially split the contract into three and gave royal dutch shell and their subsideray two thirds of the contract because they were using an alias to hide the identity of the owners of the contracts.  1984 the electrical grid had only gained one thousand mega watts capacity in ten years time bringing the countries electric power to 3000 megawatts. The electrical grid was migrated from hydroelectric power to thermal power sources of electricity generation. 

BANIYAS annual production value of LS4 billion. Principal products included high octane and regular gasoline, butane gas, jet fuel, asphalt, and sulfur. The plant employed 2,250 workers in 1984, including 73 Romanian technicians—a sharp decline from the 450 Romanian technical advisers who assisted operations at the Baniyas refinery in 1982.

In 1984 Iran provided Syria with 6.4 million tons of oil, discounted by US$2.50 per barrel, and 1 .6 million tons free, 149 Syria: A Country Study for a total of 8 million tons. In 1985 Iran supplied Syria with 6 million tons of oil, including a 1 -million ton gift. However, Iran interrupted supplies in October 1985 because of Syria's estimated US$1.5 billion payment arrears and price disagreements. Syria turned briefly to Arab suppliers on the spot market, further depleting foreign exchange reserves, before Iran negotiated a new agreement with Syria in July 1986, guaranteeing the supply of 2.5 million tons of oil between October 1986 and March 1987.

1986 Syria signed an agreement with Turkey establishing joint ventures for mineral exploration, and Soviet and Polish scientific missions dis- covered sizable iron ore deposits near Az Zabadani and Tadmur. In late 1986, the government also announced the discovery of significant quantities of diamonds.

In the mid-1980s, there was an electricity crisis caused by expansion of electric power distribution and usage in the 1970s, sectoral mismanagement, lack of spare parts for power plants, technical impediments, and declining water levels in Lake Assad. However, with only one 25-megawatt unit at the Baath Dam scheduled to come on line in late 1986, ambiguous plans for 1987, a 320-megawatt increase projected for 1988, and a 400-megawatt increase expected when the Tishrin station begins production in 1989, Ministry of Electricity plans fell far short of satisfying demand. The ministry's plans for the 1989-95 period projected a production increase to 2,970 megawatts to meet an anticipated demand ranging from 1,800 to 2,400 megawatts. The theoretical excess production, however, would barely meet the accumulated short- ages of the mid-1980s. Electricity shortages, blackouts, power cuts, and rationing remained a prominent feature of Syrian life in the late 1980s, frustrating industrial development and impeding eco- nomic growth.

1980s Chevron, Pennzoil, and Marathon Oil won contracts for oil exploration. Thayim field came on stream in late 1986. In 1985 the SGPC and Pecten formed the Furat Oil Company to operate the concession with the state. In 1986 Czechoslovakia's Technoexport completed a ninety-two-kilometer spur line linking the Thayim field to the Iraqi-Syrian pipeline, unused since 1982. 1985, blending one-third of its heavy sul- furous domestic crude with two-thirds imported light oil.

Oil contributed about 10 percent to Syria's GDP through the 1980s. Following the rapid rise of world oil prices in 1973, oil became Syria's chief source of foreign exchange. The value of Syria's oil exports rose from LS291 million in 1973 to LSI .6 billion in 1974 and almost doubled to LS2.6 billion in 1976, accounting for 63 percent of total exports. In 1979 the total export value of oil reached 68.9 percent before declining to 51.4 percent in 1982 and rising slightly to about 55 percent in 1984 and 1985. However, Syria's oil and petroleum products' trade surplus of the late 1970s (and 1980) turned into a deficit in the 1980s. Syria exported about two-thirds of its phosphate in the 1980s, largely to East European countries as part of barter arrangements concluded between the governments. 1990 Syria becomes a world leading producer of phosphate.  2000 Syria is in the top ten for trade revenue in phosphate production.  2010 Syria is the fifth largest producer of phosphate in the world.