The Homs Gas Deal Feeds Plants Syria Cannot Fill

Syria’s state oil company handed five Homs gas fields to Saudi driller ADES on July 3, aiming for 4 million cubic meters a day. Those molecules are booked for power plants that already want 24 million. The contractor is a listed well-services firm, paid to rehab wells Syria still owns.

Work started after the Syrian Petroleum Company turned the sites over under an April 5 implementation deal. Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir told parliament in September that national output has only crawled from about 6 million cubic meters a day to 8 million, while the country buys the rest.

The Service Contract Behind the Homs Handover

ADES Holding is a Khobar-based drilling contractor, not an upstream concessionaire taking a share of the gas. The Saudi Press Agency, publishing under the Energy Ministry, said the December 10, 2025 paper set terms for a technical services contract covering five fields and their plants, plus any extra block the two sides later add.

That structure matters more than the ribbon on the handover. Damascus keeps the molecules. ADES bills for rigs, workovers, and the people who run them. Walid al-Youssef, the petroleum company’s deputy chief for exploration and production, said the job includes technology transfer and training for Syrian staff, with the extra gas aimed at electricity.

ADES said the same thing in its own words on July 22, once the sites had actually changed hands. The company called the Homs package a partnership to develop and operate gas fields in the central province and to lift output efficiency.

We are proud to mark the commencement of the execution of the contract in the Syrian Arab Republic following the official handover of the project sites by the Syrian Petroleum Company.
This milestone reflects the beginning of a strategic partnership focused on developing and… pic.twitter.com/PWBiFonrm1

— ADES – Advanced Energy Systems (@ADESDrilling) July 22, 2026

Mohamed Farouk, the ADES chief executive, had told the state news agency in December that spending would start in June and that the firm would use its drilling and production bench in Syria. The sites moved in July, a few weeks behind that calendar, and the first public production print from those five fields has not followed.

Abu Rabah and Four Other Fields Went to ADES

The Saudi statement listed the blocks by name. They sit in the Homs gas belt that used to feed the central grid: Abu Rabah, Qamqam, North Al-Faydh, Al-Tiyas, and Zumlat al-Mahar. Abu Rabah is the name that also showed up, months earlier, on a Dana Gas memorandum to study redevelopment of several central fields. Dana Gas is still at the study stage. ADES holds the service contract that is supposed to work the wells.

THE FIVE HOMS FIELDS ON THE ADES PAPER

Three other Saudi firms signed beside ADES on the same December day, which is why this reads as a services convoy rather than a single field sale. TAQA took a master services deal for well construction and upkeep. ARGAS took seismic work. Arabian Drilling took onshore rigs, workovers, and training. The August 28, 2025 government memos in Damascus had already pointed those companies at gas fields, drilling, and surveys.

4 Million Cubic Meters a Day by Mid-2027

The petroleum company set two marks when the sites changed hands. Output from the fields is supposed to rise 25 percent in the first six months and 50 percent by mid-2027, raising output to around 4 million cubic meters a day for power generation. Count the 25 percent clock from the July 3 handover and the first checkpoint lands in early January 2027, still ahead.

An earlier December briefing had compressed the 50 percent mark into the end of 2026. The July handover text is the one tied to the 4 million figure and to work on the ground, so that is the calendar that governs the job now. Three months after the handover, neither side has posted a field-level production number that would show whether the first 25 percent is in reach.

HOW THE HOMS JOB WAS LOCKED IN

1. August 28, 2025: Saudi firms sign energy memos with Syria’s Energy Ministry at the Damascus fair, including ADES on field development.
2. December 10, 2025: Four Saudi service companies sign with the Syrian Petroleum Company; ADES takes the five named gas fields on a technical-services track. Youssef Qablawi, the petroleum company’s chief executive, puts the ADES work at about 2,000 jobs for Syrian engineers and technicians.
3. April 5, 2026: The two sides sign the implementation deal for maintenance, development of existing wells, and new exploration drilling in the agreed area.
4. July 3, 2026: Operational sites in Homs are handed over and work is declared under way.
5. Mid-2027: The 50 percent lift, to about 4 million cubic meters a day from those fields, is due.

Qablawi’s jobs figure is a hiring aim, not a headcount already on site. Farouk’s June start slipped into July. The rest of the sequence is on paper and, as of the company’s July 22 note, in execution.

Why the Grid Still Needs 24 Million Cubic Meters a Day

Put the Homs target next to the fuel the grid already burns and the second job of this contract shows up. Bashir told the People’s Assembly on September 20 that Syria’s gas output had risen to 8 million cubic meters a day from about 6 million, against a need of 24 million for electricity. He said the state now buys 6.3 million cubic meters a day, about $140 million a month, from Azerbaijan and from a floating storage unit at Aqaba in Jordan.

About 5.3 million of that import stream comes from Azerbaijan through Turkey. About 1 million comes through Aqaba. Add domestic output to imports and the country is still about 9.7 million cubic meters a day short of the 24 million the plants want. The 16 million gap versus home production is wider still.

SYRIA’S DAILY POWER-GAS LEDGER

The 4 million figure is the lifted output from those five fields, not a national add on top of the 8 million. Even if every cubic meter in that 4 million were brand-new gas, it would be one-sixth of daily power-gas need. Part of it is gas the country already counts inside the 8 million. Bashir also said the petroleum company sells gas to the electricity sector at $9 per million BTU while cargoes cost about $22, and that the public electricity company’s debt to the gas supplier has reached $1.65 billion.

We will achieve self-sufficiency in oil by 2028, and we will need about seven years for gas production to reach satisfactory levels.

Mohammad al-Bashir, Energy Minister, People’s Assembly

The Qatar grant that had been covering part of the import stack ended in August 2026. From that month the bill is a cash bill. High prices have already forced a cut of about 2 million cubic meters in monthly imports, which is a small volume against a 24 million daily need and still enough, Bashir said, to hit generation.

Qatar’s New Turbines Come With an Empty Fuel Tank

The Homs gas is meant to make electricity. So are the plants a Qatari-led group has contracted to build. A consortium led by UCC Holding signed a package of about $7 billion for four combined-cycle gas plants totalling 4,000 megawatts and 1,000 megawatts of solar. The gas units are due within about three years of close, the solar faster. Ramez Al Khayyat, the UCC chief executive, put the build at 50,000 direct jobs and 250,000 indirect jobs during execution.

THE FOUR GAS PLANTS IN THE UCC PACKAGE

• North Aleppo: 1,200 megawatts of combined-cycle plant.
• Deir Ezzor: 1,000 megawatts.
• Zayzoun: 1,000 megawatts.
• Mehardeh: 800 megawatts.

Those four units add up to 4,000 megawatts of new gas burn. They do not bring their own Syrian molecules. Bashir told parliament the strategic plan already includes four new gas-fired plants and an expansion of the Tishreen thermal station, which is the same rebuild logic in different words. Generation has climbed from 915 megawatts, with one to two hours of power a day when Damascus changed hands in December 2024, to 3,500 megawatts, with 18 to 20 hours in most governorates. The new turbines will want fuel on top of the 24 million cubic meters the existing stack already fails to cover.

President Ahmed al-Sharaa has spent the period since that leadership change courting Gulf capital for reconstruction after Western sanctions were eased. The power package is the largest single cheque in that file. The Homs service contract is the smaller, slower attempt to put domestic gas under it.

ConocoPhillips Chases New Molecules While ADES Fixes Old Wells

The American track is a different kind of paper. On June 16, 2026 the Syrian Petroleum Company signed with ConocoPhillips and Novaterra Energy to develop existing gas fields and hunt for new ones. Qablawi had said that partnership was meant to add 4 to 5 million cubic meters a day within a year. Ryan Lance, the ConocoPhillips chairman and chief executive, said in Damascus that the firm had been in the country decades ago and was coming back with Novaterra.

If that increment arrives on time it is in the same order of size as the entire Homs target, and it is framed as new volume rather than a 50 percent lift on named old wells. HKN Energy is already on oil at Rmeilan in the northeast under a long upstream contract. Chevron, TotalEnergies, and QatarEnergy have a separate technical review of offshore Block 3 near Latakia, which Bashir has said is a seven-year kind of gas, not a next-winter kind of gas.

Stack those memos and the Homs job still looks like the one that can move first, because the wells exist and the contractor is a rig company that gets paid to work them. It also looks like the one that cannot, on its own numbers, fill the import invoice or feed 4,000 megawatts of new burners.

The Arab Gas Pipeline Blast Cut Three Plants Offline

On October 1 an explosion on a line serving the Tishreen plant near Damascus forced Tishreen, Deir Ali, and Nasiriyah off the grid. The Energy Ministry said crews began repressurizing the Arab Gas Pipeline between Adra and Deir Ali so Deir Ali could come back in stages. Deir Ali feeds Damascus and the south. The Homs wells cannot patch a pipe that far down the system. They can, if the 50 percent lift lands, put more domestic gas into a network that still breaks when one weld goes.

Bashir’s own arithmetic is the close of the file. Eight million cubic meters a day at home, 6.3 million bought, 9.7 million still missing, and a Homs target of 4 million from five named fields on a service ticket. The Saudi crew is on the sites. The power plants will keep buying what the wells do not send.