ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Islamic State (IS/ISIS) is in no danger of running out of cash: experts knowledgeable about their operations say the militants control more than 90 oil wells in northern Iraq and are selling truckloads of crude at cut rate prices to Iran and Turkey.
“The ISIS controls the majority of the oil fields in Tikrit and Mosul provinces,” said Basim al-Jbouri, an Iraqi oil broker and trusted client of the Iraqi government and private energy firms.
“The militants also have many contractors who smuggle oil for them to Iran and Turkey through businessmen in the Iraqi government,” he told Rudaw in an interview.
Jbouri said that control of the Ajil field near Tikrit gives the militants 90 oil wells to draw from.
“They extract oil from those wells in a primitive and easy way and load it into trucks. The capacity of each truck is 36,000 gallons and they sell each load for $10,000,” said Jbouri, who explained that smugglers drive through Kirkuk and Sulaimani province on their way to Iran and Turkey.
He said these are large-scale operations and the major source of cash for IS.
At the Gayara oil field near Mosul, which is reportedly protected by some 20 IS gunmen, the same modus operandi is in place.
“That ISIS group is led by their financial officer. They sell each truckload of oil for $10,000 to $13,000,” said Muhammad al-Lahibi, an oil contractor specialized in transporting crude from northern Iraq to Turkey and Jordan.
Lahibi said that the militants had even sought his expertise.
“One of the ISIS leaders at the Gayara oil field gave me a phone call and asked for my help in oil smuggling. I rejected the offer after I asked him whether oil smuggling was permissible under Islam. He told me it was not.”
Some US estimates of revenues from smuggled oil have placed earnings at $1 million a day.
Muhammad Khalil, a former Kurdish MP and ex-member of Iraq’s parliamentary economic committee, warned that the Iraqi economy is on the brink of collapse since the IS takeover of oil installations.
“Two million dollars goes to ISIS on a daily basis because Iraqi tradesmen buy oil from ISIS and smuggle it to Iran and Turkey,” he claimed.
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