The US has tightened the screws on Syria by approving sanctions that ban US companies from buying Syrian crude and shipping refined products to Syria, and which also blacklist state General Petroleum Corp. (GPC) and its marketing arm Sytrol. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also called on non-US oil companies investing in Syria, including national oil companies (NOCs) from China and India, to "get on the right side of history" and suspend operations. At the same time, Congress is looking to intensify the pressure on Damascus by introducing new measures mat would punish European companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, OMV and Total that market Syrian crude under term contracts with Sytrol. But the European Union, whose member countries buy the vast majority of Syria's exported crude, is reluctant to implement sanctions that directly target Syria's oil sector, fearing they will cause more pain for ordinary Syrians and make the regime even less amenable to negotiating a solution to the ongoing crisis.
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