Several tankers are sailing to Syria this week to either deliver fuel or pick up crude.

The same companies, including Swiss-based trader Vitol, made the opposite bet when it came to trade in Libya.

They agreed to supply opponents of Muammar Qaddafi with fuel in the hope their support would be rewarded at the end of the war.

“What oil firms are currently doing does really look like they believe Assad will win, and they will have to deal with him again,” said a Western diplomatic source.

“The big difference that they all see with Libya is that in Syria you don’t even have a location where the opposition can get together like Benghazi,” he added.

Other analysts, however, have doubted Assad can survive and noted oil companies have a vested interest in the current regime, which has provided favorable operating conditions for oil firms.

“The regime is extremely unlikely to survive. The question is how much damage will be done to the country,” said specialist intelligence company Exclusive Analysis.

Satellite tracking on Wednesday showed Royal Dutch/Shell had booked the Neverland Star tanker to berth at Banias to load Syrian crude oil over the weekend, although Shell would not comment on whether the loading was still planned.

The company operates a joint venture with Syria’s state oil company and a Chinese-Indian firm to produce Syrian Light. Traders said the tanker was likely to load oil from Shell’s ownership share.

Industry sources say that even if oil exports from Syria were banned by the EU this week, Shell and other oil companies would continue operating within the country’s borders.

It would keep that up until the EU imposed sanctions on cooperation with Syrian firms, which so far appears less likely.

Swiss-based trader Vitol, which played a central role in the war effort in Libya, was due to deliver 70,000 tons of gasoil to Banias on Thursday, indicating it has a different game plan in Syria.

And a third tanker, the Altesse, reached the Syrian port from Naples, where it was last spotted on Thursday satellite tracking information showed.

It was not clear whether the 70,000 ton Altesse was to deliver or to load at Banias, but at least two cargoes of gasoline are expected to be delivered to Syria in early September by trading houses Trafigura and Vitol.

Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk said recently it had canceled a deal to load naphtha in Syria due to US sanctions.

Looming sanctions on Syria have had a very limited impact on oil markets so far as the country’s exports of 150,000 barrels per day and imports of oil products are only a fraction of Libya’s pre-war shipments, the loss of which six month ago rocked the oil markets.

Five months of protests have failed to unseat Assad.

Analysts say that even a wider EU embargo on trade will not necessarily fully squeeze the economy.

“The sanctions are definitely important but won’t bankrupt the regime,” said Eurasia Group analyst Ayham Kamel, adding that an EU embargo was likely to be part of a first round, which could be expanded if violence in Syria escalated.

“The sanctions are just on oil imports (into the EU) and do not target companies operating in Syria ... The EU is wary of one package and likely to take an incremental approach to match the rise in violence in Syria.”

But even if the prospect of wider-reaching sanctions on Syria’s oil business looms, the EU is not expected to rush in with very severe measures.

“With the regime so entrenched, tougher sanctions will soon start hitting the population too broadly, starting to look like Iraq in the ‘90s, and memories of that mistake are still too strong,” said analyst Samuel Ciszuk of IHS Global Insight, adding it was likely Assad’s government would hang on to power for some time yet.