Syria’s oil industry, like most of its industries, is in a state of collapse. And even recent gains, according to analysts, won’t come close to bringing it back. “We have great necessity to have oil production to make the economic wheel go forward,” said Afif Dalla, a political analyst in Damascus, but “I think in general we won’t be able to reproduce the [former levels of] oil production again at the same time of the existence of these terrorist groups.” As long as the war drags on, he adds, no sector of the Syrian economy will recover fully. Since the onset of the Syrian war in 2011, government oil production has nearly stopped, with current production estimated at less than three percent of pre-war levels. In recent days, some local authorities have re-opened one of the country’s largest oil fields, more than doubling the country’s small output. But the […]