Pipeline explosion in northern Lebanon brings smuggling issue to the fore again

Days after the pipeline fire at al-Abdah in Akkar (North Lebanon), Walid Jumblatt, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party, raised the question asking for the reason that led to this accident, linking it to the issue of smuggling to Syria, then that the initial information indicated that it is “manufactured”, and will later be announced that it is the result of a “technical problem” on the Syrian side.
In his tweet, Jumblatt asked if the cause of the explosion was smuggling, saying: “Is it true that the pipeline explosion in Al-Abdah was due to the fact that some people were pumping oil from the northern refinery into Syria? Have we passed this volume of smuggling? ”He also asked if the oil traders were bringing in illegal vessels to smuggle subsidized oil.
With conflicting information on the cause of the explosion in the pipelines between Kirkuk and Tripoli, the Director General of Petroleum Installations, Auror Feghali, tells Asharq Al-Awsat that it is “not technically possible” to pump oil materials into Syria through pipelines that They have been suspended for 40 years. He explained that when the accident occurred, the general director of Public Security Abbas Ibrahim contacted the Syrian side “and informed us of a technical error on their part, whereby during the process of pumping oil through an oil pipeline From Syria to a certain destination, the pressure caused his flight to the Lebanese side, and what happened happened. It was controlled in a short time. “
The General Directorate of Petroleum said in its recent statement on the pipeline explosion the day before yesterday that “the results that were obtained after the success in repairing all the failures in the oil pipeline in the Al-Abdah area showed that a large pumping It resulted from a technical error on the Syrian side that caused suffocation. The line was followed by a direct leak, not an attack with the aim of sabotage or robbery ”.
On the other hand, the official in charge of the economic file in the “progressive” party, member of the board of directors, Muhammad Basbous, ruled out that this error is due to the pumping of oil from Syria to the north, “especially because Damascus is suffering a crisis. in obtaining these materials “.
He agrees with the leader of the Movement of the Future, former MP Mustafa Alloush, that “smuggling from northern Lebanon into Syria does not stop through legitimate and illegal crossings and often on tankers in public.”
Alloush emphasizes the need for Jumblatt to disclose the information he has in this regard. He told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Nothing is strange, neither for the merchants nor for the Syrian regime, as smuggling is not stopped by various means. We do not know if it was added to the pipeline smuggling in Al-Abdah. “
And with his assertion that “there are many trucks that openly transport oil to Syria, and videos and photographs of them have been transmitted,” he considers that “the fact that the security forces do not take any step in this direction signifies or their complicity or their helplessness. “
For his part, Basbous told Asharq Al-Awsat that the large amounts of fuel, diesel and others prove the volume of smuggling from Lebanon, and he gives an example of this that the amount of fuel that was imported into Lebanon to power the Power plants in 2018 and 2019 is almost times greater than that imported in recent years, while nutrition has remained the same or even decreased in many cases.
According to Basbous, the matter is no different with respect to diesel fuel subsidized in turn by the state, and there is a high rate of consumption of it in the market, explaining that “in 2011 one million and 117 thousand tons of diesel, and the average rate in the years between 2012 and 2014 was around one million and 500 thousand tons, while between 2015 and 2019 it averaged between two million and 500 thousand tons.
And with his claim that around 50 percent of the amount is smuggled into Syria, especially when talking about the possibility of lifting subsidies in Lebanon, Basbous recalls Energy Minister Raymond Ghajar’s admission that there is amounts of smuggled or stored diesel, in addition to previous statements made by officials. Current and former people “without implementing any measure to stop this outrage, through legal and illegal crossings and through tanks in public.”