EU has sanctions on Syria - so why are we buying its oil?

"Sanctions on the energy sector would be an obvious next step," Clara O'Donnell, of the Centre for European Reform, said. "But if there were a real interest to do that, it would probably have gone further already - the level of violence the Syrian authorities have been inflicting has been quite prolonged now and it's striking to see how slow the exploration of widening sanctions has been. Clearly, the desire of European policy makers not to damage the economic interests of some firm may be a playing a role."