French oil major TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy and ConocoPhillips have signed a deal with the Syrian Petroleum Company to launch a technical review of the offshore Block 3 area near the Syrian city of Latakia, TotalEnergies said on Tuesday.
The memorandum of understanding establishes a framework for discussing commercial exploration, and is part of a broader push by Syria's new government to attract foreign investment into the country's battered energy sector after years of civil war and sanctions.
In 2011, TotalEnergies produced 53,000 barrels of oil-equivalent per day in Syria, comprising mostly natural gas, before leaving the country to comply with European Union sanctions.
Syria exported 380,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) in 2010, a year before protests against Bashar al-Assad's rule spiralled into a nearly 14-year war that devastated the country's economy and infrastructure - including crude production.
"We are pleased to enter into this new partnership with the Syrian Petroleum Company with which we had a long and fruitful relationship from 1988 to 2011, and we look forward to cooperating with QatarEnergy and ConocoPhillips to assess Syrian offshore exploration opportunities in the Mediterranean Sea," Julien Pouget, Total's upstream senior vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
Interest among energy majors for new Syrian projects has grown since al-Assad's ouster in late 2024. On Monday, Chevron selected a site for Syria's first deep-water oil and gas project, with technical operations starting this summer.
(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro, Zakarya Meliani; Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Louise Heavens)
