Newspaper Questions Oil Pipeline Sabotage

An oil pipeline in Syria is has been sabotaged frequently, yet the government is not doing anything significant to stop it happening, the Communist Party newspaper Kassioun reported on November 28.



The 160-kilometre pipeline between Homs and Adra has been damaged 11 times in the past three months, but little effort has been made to protect it, the newspaper said.



Last month, the Syrian oil workers’ union recommended that the government use helicopter surveillance to catch the saboteurs.



In an interview with Kassioun, Ali Murie, the head of the oil workers’ union, said he was astonished that no concrete steps had been taken to protect the pipeline, and said the current methods used to monitor it were ineffective.



Kassioun criticised the oil ministry for being “asleep”, noting that no arrests had been made and that the amount of stolen oil had not been recorded.