The Syrian civil war began in early 2011 as part of the Arab Spring protests, which originated in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly spread to neighbouring countries such as Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In July 2014, Syria’s oil minister stated that the country’s oil sector had lost around $23.5 billion due to damage to facilities and pipelines, looting and production delays since the start of the country’s crisis. As of July of last year, Islamist militants and other rebel groups were in control over most of Syria’s oil producing regions and were showing no signs of slowing down the pace of their assault on the country’s oil and gas fields. According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, Syria’s […]