Syria's first crude shipment in 14 years arrives at Italy's Trieste port

Syria's first crude shipment in 14 years arrived at Italy's Trieste port on Sept. 15 after a partial discharge at Italy's Sarroch Oil Terminal on Sept. 10, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data.

Just over 200,000 barrels of heavy sour crude were unloaded at the Sarroch terminal on Sardinia's southern coast on Sept. 10 from the Nissos Christiana ship, which left Syria's Tartous port Sept. 1 with about 640,000 barrels on board. The remaining 440,000 barrels are on the ship moored at the SIOT Terminal as of Sept. 16, according to CAS data. The ship is operated by Kyklades Maritime Corp., which did not respond to a request for comment.

Vitol owns Saras, which operates the 300,000 b/d Sarroch refinery, the second-largest in Italy. Vitol declined to comment.

CAS data show that crude shipments to the Sarroch terminal, totaling 136,000 b/d in August, typically arrive from Libya and Turkey, with Russia also supplying some volume throughout most of 2025. In August, flows from the country stopped after the EU, in mid-July, banned imports of Russian seaborne crude and refined petroleum products.

Syria is in the early stages of recovering from a 14-year civil war, and the US lifted sanctions on the country in July, opening the door to doing business with nations that abide by US sanctions. Experts have said that potential revenue from oil and gas sales will be crucial to funding rebuilding activities.

It is unclear how much Syria earned from the crude sale. A tender for the crude in July stipulated FOB Tartous, in $/b, and the average of the mean for Dated Brent spot assessments over five days.

The Platts-assessed Dated Brent was at $68.91/b on Sept. 1 on the ship's departure date. Dated Brent was $67.60/b on Sept. 15. Platts is part of S&P Global Energy.

Platts previously assessed Syrian Light and Syrian Heavy but discontinued the assessments in 2022. Syria also used to issue official selling prices for its crude before the civil war began in 2011.

Before the war, oil production stood around 380,000-400,000 b/d, and the country exported some barrels predominantly to Mediterranean markets. However, in recent years, production has been a fraction of that, and damage to oil fields and energy infrastructure will be costly to redevelop to ramp up production.

Syria was a net oil exporter before the 2011 uprising, and demand for oil derivatives was met by refining crude domestically. Syria became a net oil importer in 2012.

The country's oil fields currently have the capacity to produce up to 200,000 b/d but cannot operate at full capacity due to damaged pipeline infrastructure and refineries, according to Minister of Energy Mohammed al-Bashir. Crude production now stands at 80,000-100,000 b/d, according to various estimates.