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Islamic State oil exports worth $500 million a year “conducted through Turkey”

Nov 2, 2015 9:13 am By Robert Spencer

“Although Washington could curb the illegal traffic, it has chosen to focus on other issues.”

Iraq's Baiji oil refinery, held by the Iraqi government; the Islamic State holds other refineries.
Iraq’s Baiji oil refinery, held by the Iraqi government; the Islamic State holds other refineries.

“Saddam-style: ISIS oil exports worth $500m a year ‘conducted through Turkey,'” RT, October 30, 2015:

The lion’s share of Islamic State illegal oil exports is conducted through Turkey and Kurdish areas. Although Washington could curb the illegal traffic, it has chosen to focus on other issues, a former CIA officer told the Sputnik news agency.

“It’s a question of priorities. They have never allocated enough resources to do so. Other goals and missions have been rated as having more urgent calls on intelligence and tactical resources,” John Kiriakou, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterterrorism officer and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee senior investigator, told Sputnik.

He said Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) oil revenue lifeline could be cut short, if Washington made an effort to do so.

“I do believe that,” Kiriakou stressed.

IS makes about $40 million a month on oil sales, raking in close to $500 million a year, a US Treasury Department spokesperson told the news agency earlier this week.
According to Kiriakou, someone on the Turkish side of the border has been making enough money out of it. “There are too many vested interests involved for it to stop. They greased the right people.”

He added: “It’s not the official Turkish government. [It’s] probably corrupt elements of the Turkish military and officials in local and regional governments in southwest Turkey who are involved in this.”

The richest oil fields Islamic State can access are south of Irbil in Iraq, and the most likely direction for the extremists to move oil is westwards through Kurdish territory, Kiriakou told Sputnik. Kiriakou says IS’ illegal oil trade actually followed the same pattern Saddam Hussein used to defy international economic sanctions. Most of the oil secretly exported from Iraq was moved west through Kurdish territory back then.

“[Selling and transporting oil] through Turkey was the way Saddam Hussein for years beat the sanctions regime imposed on him.”

According to Kiriakou, the US should team up with Russia to cut Islamic State’s oil revenue flow.

“We should be working with the Russians to achieve a settlement of the conflict in Syria. We have basically the same aims that they do. Both of us agree that Islamic State is a bad idea and we both want to get rid of it. But we’re not working with them on this,” the former CIA officer said.

President Barack Obama is reportedly considering several new strategies to target IS in Iraq and Syria. Under consideration is targeting of IS’ production and sale of oil on the black market. The US-led military coalition has struck oil refineries controlled by the terrorist group, but officials are looking at using different kinds of weapons to hit the facilities.

A commander of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Hussam Alawak, told RT earlier this week that a number of FSA officers have recently joined IS.

“They [IS] took lots of people from our army to achieve their goals of expansion, to control oil regions in Syria. They attacked us with very heavy fire in the Al-Bab region [Aleppo province, northern Syria], so we had to tactically retreat to other places.”

The IS advance has already resulted in Iraq losing up to 400,000 barrels of oil daily, the Iraq Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told Sputnik on Friday. But the Iraqi army had managed to win back almost all the oil deposits captured by the radical Islamic group, according to the spokesman.

“The army and security forces managed to drive IS out of the Saladin Governorate. At the moment, terrorist groups are controlling only a small amount of developed oilfields in the Nineveh Governorate,” he said….

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Filed Under: Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), Turkey, Useful idiots Tagged With: John Kiriakou


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Comments

  1. Angemon says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 9:33 am

    “We should be working with the Russians to achieve a settlement of the conflict in Syria. We have basically the same aims that they do. Both of us agree that Islamic State is a bad idea and we both want to get rid of it. But we’re not working with them on this,” the former CIA officer said.

    Obama wants Assad gone, Putin wants Assad in power. One of them will have to give. And I can’t imagine Barack “I know better than my counselors” Obama or Vladimir “KGB Thug” Putin backing down – the “postmodern man” refuses to acknowledge the “caveman” has a point and the “bully” won’t abide by the “pot-smoking dork” utopian rules. Meanwhile, the EU is running around like a headless chicken, eager to let the foxes in.

    • Charli Main says

      Nov 2, 2015 at 1:11 pm

      The biggest fox currently circling the EU chicken coop is Turkey. On a trip to Turkey a couple of weeks ago, a chat with the tour guide ( very anti Ergodon) revealed an interesting fact. The Turkish Government is developing plans to increase Turkey´s population, from about the present 80 million to 300 million by the end of this century.
      Its seems that Turkey´s land mass can support a population of this size.
      Surely, the stuff of nightmares ???. A 300 million strong fox waiting to pounce on Europe and retake all the land, they claim is theirs anyway.

  2. john spielman says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 9:57 am

    simple solution to me; turn off the oil valve at the Turkish-Syrian border

    • Godwin says

      Nov 3, 2015 at 10:35 am

      Obama will never do it but Putin, very angry now that its plane was bombed above Sinai, will bomb it.

  3. wildjew says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 10:05 am

    Wait till the Iranians get up and running full steam thanks to Obama’s sanctions relief scheme. Think of all the deadly weapons they can multiply and hand out to jihadi terror cells here in the U.S. and the West in the decades to come. Americans will rue the day they elected this dangerous Muslim-born president who has deep sympathies for Islam.

    • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

      Nov 2, 2015 at 12:33 pm

      I think millions already do. It is only that it is not permissible to talk about it on the TV set. Our next president Hillary, for example, is talking about that women are paid only 73% of what a man is. That is not true, of course, but it is something to talk about to fill the void by the subjects left untouched.

      • wildjew says

        Nov 2, 2015 at 12:41 pm

        I think by the time Obama leaves office the genie will already be out of the bottle so to speak, don’t you? Iran will be well on its way to being a nuclear armed power.

  4. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 10:05 am

    The $500 million per year figure is low. It barely takes a day to get to $10 million when pushing crude. Speaking of which, how is it that ISIS is able to control operating refineries? It’d be a simple matter to send in one or two F16s to drop a few bombs on a refinery and render it unusable until repaired, which normally would take a year or two, but could never be done in the New Caliphate. Refineries are wide open to direct attack, as are pipelines. Nobody, including presidential candidates, asks why we don’t move ISIS oil revenues from the supposed half trillion per year down to $0 a day; it’s take a one hour operation to do this.

    This is similar to the fact that Afghanistan’s opium growing industry in the Helmand has been left untouched. It’s almost as if we regard our enemy’s industrial infrastructure inviolate.

  5. mortimer says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 10:12 am

    Turkey could stop the illegal trade but profits from it through massive bribery and corruption.

    Bribery…normative Islam, rather than an aberration.

  6. mortimer says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 10:20 am

    “A commander of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Hussam Alawak, told RT earlier this week that a number of FSA officers have recently joined IS.”

    If officers are joining ISIS, it’s bribery. They will make big money, give it to their families, then die crushed under rubble.

  7. Don McKellar says

    Nov 2, 2015 at 11:36 am

    Yes, yes, yes. But none of you are seeing the big picture that Obama sees. Leaving the Islamic State’s revenue resources intact ensures that some day they will come to their senses and become “moderate” Islamic supremacists like Team Obama’s FSA over there. After all, everybody knows that poverty causes Islamic terrorism and it has nothing to do with Islam. And just think of the consequences for us all if Obama did actually take action! He might make them broke! Why, then all the Islamic State jihadis would have to become refugees themselves and join their comrades in colonizing Europe where all those fat welfare checks and infidel women to rape are! Obama knows this, so he’s gots to be dip-lo-mat-tic about it.

    See? You sit back and forget about it — Obama’s got this one.

  8. Don McKellar says

    Nov 3, 2015 at 12:05 am

    *********************************************
    ********************************************

    I HEREBY FLAG THIS NAZI’S POST.

    *******************************************
    *******************************************

    Please remove this bullshit. This garbage has no place on a fact-based website like Jihad Watch.

    • Don McKellar says

      Nov 3, 2015 at 12:08 am

      I am referring to AJ Liberphile’s conspiracy theory post above mine.

      • Charli Main says

        Nov 3, 2015 at 2:06 am

        Don,
        Its common practice for neo Nazis to try to turn the war against Islam into a race war. They use the activities and behaviour of the Muslims infesting Europe to further their own sinister agendas and to demonise ALL immigrants——–regardless of religion or skin colour.

  9. Jerry says

    Nov 3, 2015 at 5:28 pm

    The sequel to “The Manchurian Candidate” is
    “The Somali Incumbent”

  10. gravenimage says

    Nov 9, 2015 at 12:22 am

    Turkey has long been enabling the Islamic State.

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