Konflikten i Syrien

ISIS controls Iraqi oil fields near Mosul. They have been making millions of dollars each day by selling oil from these fields. How does ISIS get the oil from the fields in Mosul to the market?

What ISIS has done is to use the old networks that have smuggled oil from the Kurdish Regional Government without any consideration given to Baghdad’s sovereignty over that oil. This had been a point of contention for decades, since the Kurdish region began to exercise autonomous control of the north. Kurdish oil was sold to smugglers who would cart them in tankers across the border into Turkey. In Turkey the trucks would run the length of the country to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. From Ceyhan, which is a port run by the Turkish government, the oil is purchased by transporters whose ships go to Malta, where the oil is transshipped to destinations such as Ashdod (Israel). This has long been a bone of contention between the Iraqi government, the Kurdish Regional Government and the Turkish government. It was documented by Tolga Tanış in his book Potus ve Beyefendi (2015). Tanis accuses Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of involvement in this illegal scheme. ISIS has merely replaced the Kurdish Regional Government in the new arrangement.
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Who is involved inside Turkey with the oil? The Russians have accused the BMZ Group of being a major agent for the transport of the oil. It turns out that one of the owners of BMZ is Bilal Erdoğan, son of the president. BMZ Group has – according to the Financial Times – purchased two new tankers this last month. Its volume of oil has increased. Is this ISIS oil? What the Russians allege would need to be investigated further. In the UK parliament, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said, “We need to know which banks and countries are in on ISIS oil smuggling.” This is the most important question. It is being ignored.

Much of this is well-known in Turkey, where journalists have been bravely writing about the Turkish government’s role along the porous Turkish-Syrian border. That is why the government of Erdoğan has so ruthlessly gone after the media.

The oil is extracted from Dir A-Zur in Syria and two fields in Iraq and transported to the Kurdish city of Zakhu in a triangle of land near the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Israeli and Turkish mediators come to the city and when prices are agreed, the oil is smuggled to the Turkish city of Silop marked as originating from Kurdish regions of Iraq and sold for $15-18 per barrel (WTI and Brent Crude currently sell for $41 and $45 per barrel) to the Israeli mediator, a man in his 50s with dual Greek-Israeli citizenship known as Dr. Farid. He transports the oil via several Turkish ports and then onto other ports, with Israel among the main destinations.

In August, the "Financial Times" reported that Israel obtained 75% of its oil supplies from Iraqi Kurdistan. More than a third of such exports go through the port of Ceyhan, which the FT describe as a “potential gateway for ISIS-smuggled crude."

“Israel has in one way or another become the main marketer of ISIS oil. Without them, most ISIS-produced oil would have remained going between Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Even the three companies would not receive the oil if they did not have a buyer in Israel,” an industry official told the newspaper "al-Araby al-Jadeed."

"The real problem is Assad not IS, however horrific they are. IS is a symptom of a larger problem and in Syria that is the Assad regime and the scorched earth policy it uses against anyone who opposes it, creating a space that jihadists from all over the world can come and exploit.
"Now you have Iran, Russia, France and the UK all getting involved. To the people on the ground the distinction between them is not very clear. They see the whole world bombing them and not bombing Assad, who is responsible for most of the killing. So it's very easy for jihadists to say it's the Shia Muslims, the Russian Orthodox Christians and the Western Christians all ganging up and bombing us because we are Sunni Muslims.

"I support British involvement in Syria because that will open up the opportunity to do more, to use air strikes as a beginning of something bigger. The UK needs to do more than the US is doing and engage local forces. Bombing alone is not enough.
"It involves taking a different position towards Assad and helping rebels fight on two fronts. For the rebels, the priority is Assad. Their fear is that if they attack IS then Assad's forces will attack them from behind. There are practical reasons that cause them to concentrate on just one front.