Completed, European Commission, Delegation of the European Commission to the Syrian Arab Republic.
The overall objective of the Euro-Arab Mashreq Gas Market project is to contribute to the integration of the gas markets of Egypt, Lebanon ad Syria in view of creating a regional internal gas market to be integrated with the EU internal Gas Market:
The general objectives include:
• Contributing to the completion of key connecting infrastructures in the region (Arab Gas Pipeline, other interconnecting infrastructures, etc.);
• Promoting the use of gas in industries, commercial buildings, and possibly other sectors;
• Increasing technical knowledge of market operators, regulators and officials in view of the creation of an internal gas market and its compatibility with the EU gas market;
• Acquainting stakeholders of the gas sectors in the beneficiary countries with EU technology, culture and EU industrial and international best practices;
• Improving technical and managerial skills of the incumbents in the gas sectors of the beneficiary countries;
• Improving market structures of the beneficiary with Technical Assistance to support restructuring reforms of the gas market and its incumbents;
• Promoting the alignment of regulatory frameworks among the Mashreq participant countries and with the EU, putting special emphasis in the alignment of safety and security standards with those of the EU as well as internal market functioning principles;
• Supporting the transfer of know-how to the Euro-Arab Mashreq Gas Cooperation Centre to be created in Damascus (Syria) as well as the organization of knowledge dissemination activities in it. This initiative will seek to develop the beneficiary countries’ self-sustained capabilities for providing further Technical Assistance to the Euro-Arab Mashreq gas market once the support from this project comes to an end;
• Encouraging initiatives supporting the use of gas as an input for generating electricity in order to increase the power generation capacity of the countries in the region in this cleaner and highly efficient source of power;
• Identifying barriers to trade and new projects conductive to facilitate internal trade;
• Expanding business opportunities among those countries and with the EU.