Syrian President Bashar Assad told that Russian oil and gas companies will work in Syria, said a member of the State Duma Dmitry Sablin after the meeting with Assad on February 8, 2017.
According to Sputnik, which quoted Dmitry Sablin, Assad told a visiting Russian delegation of lawmakers that neither Iran nor China has companies with a worldwide reputation in the oil and gas sector like Russia has.
Therefore, Assad «sees only the work of Russian companies», Sablin said.
According to Sablin, quoted by TASS, Assad had said at their meeting that Syria was ready for direct talks with representatives of all the opposition groups, including armed ones.
Another Russian Member of Parliament, Sergey Gavrilov, told the news agency after the meeting with Assad that the Syrian president hoped there would be «serious changes» in many sectors in Syria, including oil and gas production and transportation.
Last week Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis claimed that terrorist attacks over the past 2 months have cost the country’s oil sector a total of $2 billion.
Khamis said the Syrian government was working hard to secure oil production and restore electricity to the minimum level, promising that by the middle of February, consumers will see marked improvement in terms of the availability of electricity.
At the beginning of this year, Iran and Syria signed 5 memorandums of understanding (MoU), one of them related to construction of oil and gas storage facilities and terminals in Syria.
The move is said to be an Iranian vow of support for Syrian political initiatives that will help to guarantee independent and territorial integrity.
To read this news in Russian.
