DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – The United States has smuggled a new batch of stolen Syrian oil into Iraq, continuing to plunder Syria’s natural resources through a number of illegal border crossings.
“A convoy of the U.S. occupation forces, consisting of 88 tankers loaded with stolen Syrian oil, left from the illegitimate Mahmoudiya crossing and entered Iraqi territory,” Syrian media cited local sources from Yarubiyah countryside as saying on Friday.
According to the sources, U.S. forces have transferred the convoy to their bases in northern Iraq.
Last month, the Syrian oil ministry said the U.S. and its proxy militant groups pillaged over 80 percent of Syria’s daily crude production in the first half of 2022.
The ministry said in a statement that the amount of oil production during the first half of 2022 “amounted to some 14.5 million barrels, with an average daily production of 80.3 thousand barrels, of which 14.2 thousand are delivered daily to refineries.”
“U.S. occupation forces and their mercenaries steal up to 66,000 barrels every single day from the fields occupied in the eastern region,” the statement added.
According to the ministry’s data, the Syrian oil sector has lost “about 105 billion dollars since the beginning of the war until the middle of this year” as a result of the U.S. oil theft campaign.
The U.S. military has for long stationed its forces and equipment in northeastern Syria, with the Pentagon claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the area from falling into the hands of Daesh terrorists.
Damascus, however, maintains the deployment is meant to plunder the country’s natural resources. Former U.S. president Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in the Arab country for its oil wealth.
In 2019, Trump said: “We’re keeping [Syria’s] oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil.”
Several countries, including Russia and China, have condemned US actions in plundering the Syrian resources and have called on Washington to stop its continued looting of the war-torn country’s natural resources.
Meanwhile, Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad has censured the United Nations for failing to help the victims of terrorism, saying his country deserves international support and the removal of U.S.-led economic sanctions.
Addressing a UN international meeting on the victims of terrorism via a video conference from Damascus, Mekdad said Syria has fought global terrorism on behalf of the whole world and paid “unprecedented prices” from its human and economic resources.