Editorial: $150 dollar oil and Syria

Flash.point /‘flaSHpoint/- The lowest temperature at which a volatile material can vaporise to form an ignitable mixture in air.

The alleged gas attack that claimed hundreds of lives last week has brought the sternest warning yet from the United States over military intervention in the Syrian conflict.

Fighting words from US Secretary of State Kerry have been met with an equally vehement admonition from his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that military intercession in the Levantine state would be a "terrible mistake that will lead to more blood being spilt".

A 2013 estimate placed Syria at number 32 and 43 on the list of crude producing and gas producing nations respectively. Outputting a little more than 400,000 barrels per day and 315 billion cubic feet per year pre-civil war, Syria has never been a global energy player, nor is it a transit hub through which capillary pipelines branch out to deliver hydrocarbons to other nations.

Any increased military activity, even the rumoured "surgical strikes" or ground invasion by one or more state authors would be unlikely as singular triggers for an oil price spike. But with diplomatic ties between the world’s two greatest military powers taut to snapping over whistleblower Edward Snowden, the world should be wary that intervention in Syrian could be the flashpoint for something far more dire than $150 dollar a barrel oil….

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