US Operator Targets 150,000 Barrels a Day
HKN Energy, a United States oil company, plans to raise crude output from the Rmeilan fields in Hasakah province to about 150,000 barrels per day within two years, a senior company official said in late October 2026. Current production stands at 65,000 to 70,000 barrels per day, down from roughly 80,000 barrels at the time of handover.
The decline followed the temporary shutdown of wells that had caused heavy pollution, part of a broader effort to stabilize and rehabilitate the fields before scaling up.
A 25-Year Production Deal
The company signed an agreement with the Syrian Petroleum Company in April 2026 and assumed operations in June. The arrangement is a 25-year production-sharing contract covering eight interconnected fields, with the US firm serving as sole operator alongside Qatar's UCC Holding.
Under the terms, the operator bears rehabilitation and investment costs and recovers them against output produced above an agreed baseline.
Cleanup and Infrastructure
Earlier operations discharged more than 120,000 barrels per day of oily water into the Khabour River, which feeds the Euphrates. About 260 high-output wells were shut down, and more than 90 are being rehabilitated to reinject produced water into suitable geological layers.
Field crews had logged three to four pipeline leaks a day, and sections of the transport network are being replaced. Plans also include rehabilitating the Hasakah–Tartus pipeline, which the operator hopes to bring back into service within two years.
Workforce and Exports
The operation employs about 1,100 local workers and 52 foreign staff, alongside roughly 1,500 employees of the state oil company; 42 of the workers are women. Crude is currently trucked to the coastal city of Baniyas, where it is loaded onto tankers for export rather than routed through Iraq or Turkey.
Competing Output Targets
The 150,000-barrel goal is more modest than figures cited earlier in 2026, when officials pointed to targets of between 200,000 and 250,000 barrels per day by the end of 2027. The latest, lower estimate is tied to a two-year horizon and to the pace of well rehabilitation and pipeline repairs.