October 31, 2019

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Business October 31, 2019

Opinion: Syria’s Oil Output Is Low, But Here’s Why It Matters

A convoy of U.S. military vehicles, arriving from northern Iraq, drives past an oil pump jack in the countryside of Syria’s northeastern city of Qamishli on Oct. 26.

Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images


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Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images

Roger Diwan is vice president of IHS Markit and director for energy and financial markets. Daniel Yergin is vice chairman of IHS Markit and author of The Prize and The Quest.

Syrian oil is suddenly a hot topic in Washington, D.C. The announcement that U.S. forces in Syria, while generally withdrawing, would remain to protect the oil fields has focused a spotlight on the significance of those resources.

Syrian oil has always been of prime importance to President Bashar Assad’s regime. It provided about 25% of government revenues prior to the civil war. But that oil had hardly any importance to the world oil market. At 385,000 barrels per day before the civil war began in 2011, it was barely a footnote for the global market — less than half a percent of world supply.

But the rise of ISIS did suddenly make Syrian oil important to the world community — not in terms of volume but because of what it allowed ISIS to do. During the ISIS “caliphate,” production plunged by 90% to about 40,000 barrels a day in 2015. Yet ISIS was able to turn the barrels under its control into money, smuggling them into Turkey, selling in local markets — and selling to the Assad regime. Still, that minuscule amount of oil earned, at the peak, about half a billion dollars a year for ISIS, giving it the financial heft that no terrorist organization had ever had before, indeed making it by far the richest terrorist organization in the world. Among other things, it enabled ISIS to lure fighters from other groups in Syria and from abroad with higher wages.

With the rollback and then the defeat of ISIS, control of most of the oil fields passed into the hands of the Kurdish forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces. During the campaign against ISIS, the above-ground infrastructure was a target of bombing, aimed at depriving ISIS of revenues, and was further damaged in battles. There was no normal maintenance of the oil system. There are no hard numbers, but it is thought that the total output today is in the 15,000-30,000 barrels a day range. As such, it would still be an important source of revenues for the SDF and the Kurds.

It will take a lot of investment — and time — to bring back the production to the pre-civil war level, and there will be few companies willing to commit even when the sovereignty issues are resolved between the various factions controlling the oil fields.

Syria had a relatively diverse foreign investor mix before the war — from large companies like Total and Sinopec to small companies such as Gulfsands — working alongside the state Syrian Petroleum Company in production-sharing agreements. The ramp-up in violence and European Union sanctions imposed on Syria at the end of 2011 led to an exodus of nearly all the foreign companies.

Yet even prior to the civil war, Syria was not a particularly attractive destination in commercial terms for oil companies. The government took 85% of the revenues from operations, compounded by heavy-handed administration by the regime. The oil fields are concentrated in two regions in the vast eastern desert — one in the northeast of the country and the other along the Euphrates River — and are in no way comparable to the bountiful oil provinces of Iraq or the ones in the Persian Gulf. The reserves in Syria are small, dispersed and far from export facilities on the Mediterranean. Altogether, Syria’s oil resources are marginal in the great oil game of the Middle East and for the world industry.

There are several possible rationales for maintaining U.S. forces in the oil fields. One is to assure that some of these fields do not again fall into the hands of a resurgent ISIS. While ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died a few days ago, and the group’s spokesman was killed, there are still many thousands of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria, plus more held in makeshift prisons. Even if there is little chance of the “caliphate” being restored, these fighters could still cause further damage to the fields, which are the most tangible resource that Syria has.

A second possible reason is to keep the oil fields out of the hands of Assad, and possibly the Russians, and maintain as a bargaining chip for the opposition in the course of working out some kind of settlement with the Assad regime. A third would be to preserve these fields as an engine of recovery for the day when there is a post-Assad regime. But, whatever the course, it would be a long time before those fields can begin to even approach the pre-civil war level of production.

And, from the perspective of the global market, they will remain insignificant. Just look at the scale. Syria was at that 385,000 barrels per day in 2011. That same year, the United States produced 5.7 million barrels per day. Since then the U.S. has grown to 12.6 million.

What happens to Syrian oil will be important to the future of Syria itself — as a revenue source for a country that will desperately need money. That, rather than its impact on global supply, is what will make what happens to Syrian oil of significance to the world.

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Health October 31, 2019

Fate Of Missouri’s Only Abortion Clinic To Be Decided

A hearing this week will determine the fate of Missouri’s only remaining abortion clinic. State officials are fighting against Planned Parenthood in an effort to shut down the clinic.



AILSA CHANG, HOST:

In St. Louis, a weeklong hearing that could determine the fate of Missouri’s only abortion clinic ended today. Lawyers for the state argued that the clinic was the site of significant safety issues. Planned Parenthood lawyers argue that Missouri is treating the clinic differently in a politicized effort to close it. St. Louis Public Radio’s Chad Davis reports.

CHAD DAVIS, BYLINE: Lawyers representing Missouri and Planned Parenthood have been arguing over the state’s only abortion health care clinic for months now. Earlier this year, Missouri refused to extend the license for the Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis, citing four instances where patients experienced complications following abortion procedures. M’Evie Mead, the director of policy and organizing for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Missouri, says the clinic is being targeted.

M’EVIE MEAD: What we have is an agency and a director that appear to be obsessed with attacking access to abortion.

DAVIS: The state’s administrative hearing commission extended Planned Parenthood’s license, allowing the clinic to remain open until a decision on the case is made. Planned Parenthood officials say from time to time, complications do occur. They argue that focusing on these four cases is unfair since the clinic sees thousands of patients a year. They also criticized how the records have been requested and stored for some Planned Parenthood patients. The Missouri Department of Health revealed at the hearing this week that it collected data on some patients’ menstrual cycles to see if there have been failed abortions.

That news has sparked controversy across the state, with several politicians calling on the governor to investigate health director Randall Williams. Some legal professionals have been puzzled by this revelation, including Mary Ziegler, who teaches law at Florida State University. She spoke to Kansas City’s KCUR.

MARY ZIEGLER: There is a history of record-keeping laws being introduced into abortion restrictions – so requiring clinics to submit certain records to the state. So it’s not an entirely new strategy, but I’ve never heard of anyone keeping records of menstrual periods.

DAVIS: But state officials say Williams did not authorize the recording and that he hadn’t seen any of the data until he was deposed earlier this month. Lisa Cox is the communication director for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

LISA COX: Do we have a spreadsheet with every Planned Parenthood patient’s menstrual cycles on it? Absolutely not.

DAVIS: State officials also maintain that patient privacy was not compromised during the data collection. Anti-abortion activist Kristi Hamrick is among those pushing hard for the state’s final clinic that performs abortions to close.

KRISTI HAMRICK: It doesn’t matter how many people are harmed. What matters is what has happened to the people at that vendor.

DAVIS: But Planned Parenthood officials say the number does matter and that the closure would negatively affect women all across Missouri. Dr. Colleen McNicholas is a medical officer for Planned Parenthood and says the four cases are in line with Missouri’s acceptable and legal health standards. She says using them to deny access to all patients is just wrong.

COLLEEN MCNICHOLAS: Abortion is health care. There will be times when there are complications – doesn’t demonstrate any systematic or systemic-wide problem. Abortion is health care, and we’ll continue to provide that quality health care and fight for people to have access to that.

DAVIS: A decision on whether the Planned Parenthood clinic will remain open will be decided later this winter.

For NPR News, I’m Chad Davis.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Sports October 31, 2019

Washington Nationals Win 2019 World Series

The Washington Nationals, against all odds, won the World Series Wednesday night over the Houston Astros. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Washington Post reporter Chelsea Janes about the victory.



MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Last night was improbable. It might even have seemed impossible.

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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: 3-2 – there it is. The Washington Nationals are world champions for the first time in franchise history.

KELLY: I’m smiling just listening to that there on Fox. What happened was, in a postseason littered with juggernauts, last night, it was the team that had looked dead in the water back in May that won it all. Well, The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes worked the Nationals beat for years.

Chelsea, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

CHELSEA JANES: Thank you for having me.

KELLY: Give me some perspective here. Just how unlikely did winning the World Series seem back in May when the Nats were – what? – 12 games below .500?

JANES: Yeah. At that point, you know, it was, who’s going to make it through this season as a National and who’s not? You know, there were going to have to be changes, and they didn’t make them, for the most part. They kind of hung in with key people, and their patience paid off. But to go from where they were to where they ended up last night is improbable not only just statistically, but because this team have never been able to come through when they need it in October and just could not stop doing that this year.

KELLY: You referenced the many, many playoff heartbreaks that Nats fans have endured. This year was the first in five postseason trips that the team has ever won in a playoff series. Did you have this kind of, here we go again, feeling when it looked like the Nats were on the brink?

JANES: I think a lot of people did. I think what’s funny is they had that feeling over and over in these playoffs. And then somehow, it just kept not happening. It kept being OK. And you know, even some of the players the other night in Game 6 when there was a call that they felt went against them – I know Trea Turner said, all we could think is, here we go again. It’s happening again. For that not to materialize, I think, kind of speaks to whatever it was that helped these guys make this happen.

KELLY: And what do you think it was? What do you think happened that allowed them to pull it together and win it all?

JANES: You know, I think they had a very different clubhouse culture this year, and I don’t think there’s any good reason or explanation. I think occasionally, things just click, and they did this year. They brought in a lot of veteran players. They joked about themselves as los viejos – the old ones. You know, they were one of the oldest teams in baseball. And it worked so that this time when things started going wrong, there was a little less panic, a little bit more experience and little bit more edge to this team than I think we’ve seen in others.

KELLY: I – alert listeners might recall that I interviewed you last December because you were switching beats from covering baseball to covering the 2020 campaign, which struck me as such an unusual leap that we got you on to talk about it. When did you go back to baseball?

JANES: I actually was flying back from the Democratic debate last month, and the Nationals had just clinched their, you know, trip to the World Series. And the editors reached out and asked if, after spending so much time with them for the last few years – if I wanted to go and cover that. You know, it’s sort of an all-hands-on-deck situation when teams are in the World Series.

KELLY: Oh, yeah. I’m sure you had to think really hard about the answer to that one.

JANES: Yeah, it was definitely a try-to-stay-calm-and-be-cool-about-it thing, but I will be headed back to Iowa tomorrow.

KELLY: Oh, wow. Back to Iowa – straight back to the campaign trail.

JANES: Back to the campaign trail – but it’s been nice to be able to be a part of that and see them do what they did in person just ’cause you put in a lot of time with these people, and you go through those ups and downs sort of secondhand when you’re trying to interview them after games. And I think it’s nice to see everyone, you know, that you’ve spent that much time with see some of the hard work pay off.

KELLY: I think I have a question for you that you might be uniquely qualified to answer, having flipped…

JANES: Yeah.

KELLY: …Back and forth between covering politics and covering baseball and covering baseball in a very political, you know, partisan town that is, at the moment, caught up in this impeachment inquiry – could not be more divided. And yet, it felt like everywhere I went this week, Republicans and Democrats – it didn’t matter. Everybody was a Nats fan. Did you feel that, as well, coming back?

JANES: Yeah. It’s really interesting how many people in the political scene enjoy baseball. You know, George Will…

KELLY: George Will, the Republican columnist, yeah. Go on.

JANES: Right – big baseball fans, written a lot of baseball books. And he was in the stands at the first home game and said, you know, the good thing about baseball – it’s a conversation starter. It’s a subject changer. And I think that’s – you know, it’s not necessarily going to heal anything, but there is a space in which everyone can at least coexist, if not do so in harmony.

KELLY: Well, Chelsea Janes, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to us, and good luck back on the politics beat – and off to Iowa tomorrow.

JANES: Thank you. I appreciate it.

KELLY: Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post.

(SOUNDBITE OF VINCE GUARALDI’S “BASEBALL THEME”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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