Syria plans to start gas exploration in its offshore areas in early 2019, and has signed contracts for five offshore blocks with “friendly countries”, local media quoted Syrian Oil and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Ghanem as saying this week. It was not clear which countries and companies were involved in the contracts. Syrian waters are part of the Levant Basin and Cyprus, Lebanon, and Israel also share territorial waters in the Levant Basin. Back in 2010, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas in the Levant Basin Province using a geology-based assessment methodology. Oil Minister Ghanem told the Syrian Parliament that Syria targeted to produce 19 million cubic meters of gas per day by the end of next year, and 24.5 million cubic meters of gas a day by the end […]