Insight: In eastern Syria oil smugglers benefit from chaos...

By Mariam Karouny

BEIRUT (Reuters) - In Syria's eastern province of Deir al-Zor, a network of tribes and smugglers has exploited the chaos of war to create an illicit oil trade that makes European hopes of buying crude from President Bashar al-Assad's opponents a distant prospect.

Powerful Sunni Muslim tribes have deployed armed fighters around oil production facilities and pipelines that have fallen under their control and set up smuggling and trade deals, according to sources in the province including rebels, an oil company employee and people with ties to the tribes.

Deir al-Zor is critical to Syrian oil output that has more than halved in the past two years of fighting. The hijacking of the oil industry by tribes complicates Western efforts to help the Syrian opposition fund itself and will make any future reconstruction even more difficult.

"Each tribe now is in control of at least a part of an oil field, it depends how big it is and how many fighters it can deploy," said the state oil firm employee who gave his name as Abu Ramzi.

As well as production facilities, tribal fighters had seized control of pipelines, often drilling into them to extract oil.

Thousands of barrels of crude are smuggled to Turkey daily by small tankers using farm roads, said Abu Ramzi. The oil is taken to the Bab al-Hawa or Tal Abiad border posts, a source close to the smugglers in Deir al-Zor said. The price of a barrel depends on the quality of the crude oil and the cost of transport - the shorter the trip the cheaper - but it could be 8,000 Syrian pounds, slightly over $50, he said.

In recent weeks, some wealthy smugglers have begun using "mobile refineries" stationed on trucks to process crude into fuel and other products. Costing up to $230,000, a medium sized mobile plant can refine up to 200 barrels a day. Fuel smuggled into Turkey sells for roughly 50 percent more than in Syria...