ConocoPhillips Set to Sign Gas Development Deal with Syria's State Oil Company This Week

The Deal

The Syrian Petroleum Company is scheduled to sign a contract with ConocoPhillips and its partner Novaterra Energy on June 17, according to MEES, a specialized energy intelligence publication. The agreement will cover development of existing onshore gas fields and exploration for new reserves.

The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported June 15 that the deal builds on a memorandum of understanding ConocoPhillips signed with Syria in November 2025. ConocoPhillips did not respond to comment requests from the FT.

ConocoPhillips has previous involvement in post-Assad Syria. In May, ConocoPhillips, TotalEnergies, and QatarEnergy jointly signed an MoU with the Syrian Petroleum Company to conduct a technical study of offshore Block 3, near the port city of Latakia. That MoU was a framework for commercial exploration discussions, not a binding development contract.

Who Got There First

ConocoPhillips will not be the first U.S. company to finalize upstream terms in Syria. That distinction belongs to privately held HKN Energy, which beat ConocoPhillips to a signed upstream contract earlier this week, according to MEES's June 12 reporting by analyst Yesar Al-Maleki. HKN is a Dallas-based independent with existing Kurdish Iraq operations, and it has been positioned for Syrian re-entry for some time.

OilPrice.com's headline called ConocoPhillips the "first U.S. major" to sign a post-war Syria gas deal, a narrower claim that is technically defensible. HKN is not a publicly traded major. But the framing obscures that U.S. independents were already moving before the majors arrived.

Why Syria, Why Now

Bashar al-Assad was ousted in late 2024, ending more than two decades of his family's rule. With Assad gone, U.S. sanctions posture toward Syria began shifting, and energy companies started reassessing a country whose oil and gas sector had been gutted by years of civil war, international sanctions, and infrastructure decay.

Washington's active support for the new Damascus administration has accelerated that process. The U.S.-Syria Business Council convened a high-level energy roundtable in Washington on June 10, and Syrian executives appeared at the Atlantic Council Energy Forum the same week, according to MEES. That coordination reflects deliberate commercial diplomacy.

Chevron signed up for Syrian offshore work in February 2026, per MEES's earlier reporting. Syria has pitched itself as an "energy land bridge" connecting regional producers to Mediterranean export routes. Foreign investment is central to that pitch.

What's Actually on the Table

Syria's energy sector is a long-term rebuild project, not a quick profit opportunity. Years of conflict left fields damaged, pipelines destroyed, and data on reserves unreliable. Any company moving in is accepting significant geological, political, and operational risk.

The strongest counterargument to enthusiasm about this deal is straightforward. Syria's new government is less than two years old, its institutional stability is unproven, and contract sanctity in post-conflict states with shifting power dynamics is historically weak. Companies that bet on early-mover advantage in fragile states sometimes win big and sometimes write off nine-figure investments.

That concern is real and documented. It doesn't make the deal wrong, but it explains why mid-sized independents like HKN, which are built for frontier-market risk, often move into these environments before the majors. ConocoPhillips's entry, while significant, came after months of groundwork and an MoU buffer period.

The Sanctions Question

U.S. sanctions on Syria have not been fully lifted. The extent to which existing waivers or license exemptions cover ConocoPhillips's planned contract is not detailed in any of the three sources. That is a material gap. No regulatory filing or U.S. Treasury statement on applicable licenses was cited by the FT, MEES, or OilPrice.com. Until the sanctions architecture is publicly clarified, the legal pathway for this contract remains an open question, not an established fact.

What Comes Next

If the June 17 signing proceeds as reported by MEES, ConocoPhillips will be the largest Western independent to hold a binding upstream gas development contract in Syria. The practical next step is field assessment: determining which of Syria's existing onshore gas fields can be restored to production and on what timeline. Syria's government has framed early gas production increases as a domestic energy priority, not just an export play, according to MEES's April 2026 reporting on Iraqi fuel oil transits through Syria.

The June 17 date is one day away as of today. Whether ConocoPhillips publicly confirms the signing and whether it addresses the sanctions compliance question directly will be the first real test of how transparently the company intends to handle its Syria exposure.