Control of Deir ez-Zor’s oil fields has become one of the clearest indicators of how great power competition in Syria has shifted from overt battlefield campaigns to resource-backed proxy maneuvers. The province’s fields, above all the al-Omar and Koniko complexes, are not simply economic assets. They are instruments of leverage that shape local loyalties, sustain fighting formations, and constrain the political options available to Damascus and its external patrons.
Since the territorial defeat of the so called Islamic State, the eastern bank of the Euphrates has been governed in practice by the Syrian Democratic Forces and their international backers. U.S. personnel and coalition advisors have operated from bases co-located with oil infrastructure in order to deny those revenues to adversaries, to underwrite counterinsurgency operations, and to bolster local security forces. That posture has repeatedly put Washington at odds with players that see the fields as payoffs for battlefield success.
On the opposite side of this competition stands Russia, historically comfortable using a mix of formal military instruments and semi private intermediaries to secure energy access. The Evro Polis arrangement and Wagner linked activities provided a template for Moscow to convert battlefield gains into income streams in Syria. Even after the leadership rupture within Wagner and subsequent changes in Russian force posture, Moscow retains institutional avenues to protect commercial and strategic stakes in Syrian petroleum production, either through proxies or through official military and economic channels. That continuity explains why the oilfields remain a focal point of Russian interest.
Between these poles the contest has taken many forms. On occasion it is kinetic and immediate: targeted strikes, drone attacks, and raids that hit bases and convoys associated with either side’s clients. U.S. strikes and coalition operations have been framed publicly as countering Iran linked militias and ISIS remnant cells, but they also have the effect of protecting access to fields managed by U.S partner forces. Russian and Russian aligned units have reciprocated with patrols, air strikes and political pressure intended to limit U.S options and to expand Damascus’s claims. The result is a layered proxy competition with frequent low level escalation, where direct US–Russian combat is avoided but the risk of miscalculation persists.
Operationally the United States has alternated between reinforcing and reconfiguring its footprint in Deir ez-Zor. Periodic redeployments, withdrawals of some equipment, and consolidation of positions in nearby Hasakah reflect a calculus that balances force protection, domestic political pressure over long term deployments, and the limits of sustaining bases inside a fractured Syrian state. Those moves change the transactional calculus for local Arab tribes and for the SDF, who must weigh the costs of cooperation with diminished international guarantees versus accommodation with Damascus and its backers.
Damascus’s legal claim to sovereign revenues from oil and gas is straightforward. Its ability to collect them is not. The regime’s practical leverage over eastern fields has been eroded by years of fragmentation and by arrangements that privileged local actors and external patrons. This gap between legal entitlement and on the ground control creates recurring incentives for bargaining, illicit rent seeking, and the use of armed intermediaries to secure fields or to extort transit routes. Those incentives in turn magnify the strategic value of the oilfields for outside actors who prefer to project power indirectly.
The oilfields are also subject to the blunt instrument of sanctions and legal contestation. Western measures against entities linked to Russian contractors and other intermediaries complicate attempts to normalize production or to bring multinational firms back into Syria. Even where private firms might find technical opportunities, the political and legal risk remains elevated, constraining investment and keeping production levels modest relative to Syria’s prewar output. That structural constraint makes the fields more useful as weapons of influence than as sources of broad based reconstruction finance.
Looking ahead, three durable dynamics will shape the US–Russian proxy competition over Deir ez-Zor’s oil.
1) Elasticity of local alliances. Tribal leaders, SDF commanders and local security entrepreneurs will continue to hedge. If international patrons demonstrate staying power through sustained security guarantees or reconstruction assistance, local alignments will harden accordingly. Conversely, visible signs of retrenchment create openings for Damascus and its partners to reassert control.
2) The politics of revenue capture. Whoever can convert control into transparent revenue flows gains leverage over political settlements. Absent clear mechanisms for revenue sharing that are acceptable to local constituencies and external stakeholders, the fields will remain spoils that incentivize armed retention and shadow economies rather than engines of recovery.
3) External strategic constraints. Broader U.S–Russia calculations, including the risks of escalation elsewhere and the costs of direct confrontation, will limit the intensity and form of competition in Syria. That ceiling means that proxy tools will predominate. Yet proxy competition is not cost free. Persistent friction around resource sites will continue to produce incidents that complicate crisis management and create humanitarian and political spillovers.
Policy implications are clear for Western capitals that wish to avoid long term instability. First, short term military posture must be paired with credible, legally informed plans for energy governance. Security guarantees without an economic plan invite rent seeking and corruption. Second, international actors should invest more in monitoring and accountability mechanisms that reduce the profitability of illicit extraction and export. Third, any exit or reduction of forces should be carefully sequenced with diplomatic and economic measures that address the incentives for local actors to shift their loyalties to Damascus or to third parties. Failure to do so will leave the oilfields as perpetual flashpoints where external rivalries are played out at local cost.
Deir ez-Zor’s oil will not alone determine the future of Syria. Yet the way those resources are contested and managed is a powerful lens on the evolving character of great power competition. Where the Cold War once relied on ideology and bloc alignments, the new competition deploys economic instruments, private intermediaries and local proxies to secure advantage without open war between capitals. Understanding and shaping that contest over the oilfields is therefore central to any realistic strategy for stability in Syria and for broader risk reduction between Washington and Moscow.