With the reduction of oil allocations to the Syrian provinces | Fuel is available on black market, while hundreds of cars queuing in front of gas stations

The Syrian provinces in the Syrian regime-held areas are experiencing a growing fuel crisis, with the regime’s inability to meet the fuel needs of civilians, and the spread of corruption in the regime’s institutions responsible for distributing fuel.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has monitored a long lines of vehicles at gas stations in Damascus, Tartus, Aleppo and Latakia, where hundreds of cars are forced to queue for long hours to fill up with fuel.

The regime’s Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources issued yesterday a decision to reduce the amount of fuel allocated to citizens. The regime justified the decision by the scarcity of oil resources in the country in the light of the international sanctions.

The Ministry decided to temporarily reduce the oil allocations distributed to the provinces, by 17% for gasoline and 24% for diesel.

In this context, the phenomenon of selling fuel on the black market has emerged, where fuel is available at triple the price, as one liter of gasoline is sold for about 2,000 pounds while a liter of diesel is sold for about 1,500 Syrian pounds.