As further details emerge about the deal struck between an obscure American oil company and the Kurdish-led autonomous administration of northeast Syria, it is increasingly clear that the accord is as much about political brinkmanship as oil. Mazlum Kobane, the commander in chief of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is the brains behind it. In sealing the 25-year-long accord with Delta Crescent Energy, Kobane hopes to achieve a set of ambitious and interlinking goals.
The first is to cement the US military presence in northeast Syria by bringing in a US oil company, an idea that has been floating around for some time. It’s no accident that when President Donald Trump said he was keeping US forces in northeast Syria in the wake of Turkey’s October incursion, it was “for the oil.” The idea had been planted in the president’s brain too. Starving the Bashar al-Assad regime of oil revenues serves Washington’s overall strategy of pressuring the Syrian strongman into ending his alliance with Iran. Just as importantly, oil revenues also keep the Syrian Kurds financially solvent, obviating the need for American largesse.
In Kurdish minds, the injection of US business will, over time, lead to deeper political engagement between the US government and Syrian Kurds. The longer the Americans stay, and the more the relationship diversifies away from a narrow, security-focused one, the greater the chances that the Syrian Kurds will acquire a semi-independent status akin to that of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, which evolved under US military protection. But the KRG was unlikely to have survived economically without Turkey. Therein lies the other main pillar of Kobane’s strategy — one that chimes with Washington’s desire to repair relations with its NATO ally.
Oil played a critical role in getting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to formalize ties with the KRG in 2010. That is when Turkey opened a consulate in Erbil and went on to build a pipeline to export Iraqi Kurdish crude via export terminals on its southern Mediterranean coast in defiance of the central government in Baghdad.
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