Bombing the oil sources of ISIS is not giving its results

Abdalaziz Alhamza – Exclusive – Raqqa is being slaughtered silently

The aviation of the international collation and the Russian aviation through the last two weeks focused on targeting the oil fields and the primitive centers of the refining of hydrocarbons in the city of Raqqa, in addition to targeting convoys and trucks transporting crude oil from the fields to the refining centers known as “burners”.

Oil wells

Oil fields controlled by the ISIS in each of Homs and Deir ez-Zor and Hasaka and countryside of Raqqa in Syria, and the extraction of oil from those fields are primitive ways, and sometimes the organization entrusted the process of the sale of oil to private contractors associated with him directly, nor does the organization set the characters enjoy advanced status in its his ranks with respect to the management of the oil sector, where the organization monitors the output and adjust the funds generated by this sector.

The amount of money that ISIS accrue after its control over large areas of Iraq has increased, as a result of the increasing number of oil wells under the influence and control, and ISIS was baptized to benefit from the expertise of technical and functional staff, who had previously worked in the oil sector, which took the initiative to bring back the staff to manage the new fields.

On the other hand, ISIS has maintained contacts and some relations with the Ministry of the Syrian regime of oil, by keeping some of the staff who are still linked directly to the ministry mentioned, for example, he has kept the on the gas production of Deir ez-Zor and Homs fields and ensure the delivery of it to regime areas against the committed of these staff and some intermediaries to keep give money remittances continuously to safes of ISIS,

For his part, the regime pledge to send a reform of the electricity and maintenance of dams Hardware & Department of electricity produced by thermal station in Aleppo, , which in turn depends on the gas produced by the organization and give it to the regime to complete the Economic series managed by the two parties.

Primitive oil refining centers (burners)

These centers are owned directly by civilians not often connected to ISIS, and some of the centers owned by the members of ISIS personally who have these burners to face. ISIS imposed taxes to these centers that generate significant amounts of money on its vaults.

These burners have evolved significantly due to several factors, including business competition, which is reflected in the quality and quantity of production.

In another context, ISIS imposed some restrictions and conditions on the owners of these burners in order to ensure that reduce the amount of smoke emissions which caused a significant pollution in the environment, especially in the countryside each of Deir ez-Zor region and Mansoura in Raqqa.

Vehicles of transporting fuel

It is divided into two parts:

  1. trucks carrying crude oil from Iraq through large tanks to refining centers in Raqqa and Deir al-Zour, and then the moving the hydrocarbons produced after refining process to Iraq again, and some of these vehicles are owned by ISIS directly and others are owned by the people.

B- Trucks carrying oil from existing wells in Syria to refining centers, all of which are owned by the people mainly, and the owners of these trucks are getting paid profit due to the sale of oil transported from wells to refining centers, or the sale of refined fuels to points of sale are available in various areas Syria.

And in turn the organization imposes various taxes on those vehicles, which include the various stages of oil extraction process, transportation, refining and sale of the citizens finally, starting from taxes imposed at the well to the tax on the use of roads and special taxes of Zakat.

In all, the repeated shelling in recent days has been limited impact on the reluctance of traders to buy oil from the organization as a result of targeting trucks transporting oil on the roads. As for the oil fields, the oil extraction operations were not affected significantly because the extraction methods are primitive, and the bombing of these wells will not detriment to the financial cycle associated to the oil sector.

On the other hand, this aerial bombardment will not affect the sources fuel that ISIS relies upon in the operation of military vehicles and mechanisms, because the organization relies in this respect on the fuel coming from the regime control areas in Syria, which is characterized as maintain those mechanisms due to its high quality, while the manually refined fuel distributed to civilians only, away from the organization, which is only used for personal service and by his members, not absolutely reliable in conducting the machine and military arsenal that he owns.

media activist from the city of Raqqa, student at the Faculty of Law at the University of the Euphrates. Director of the Media Office of Raqqa, founding member of "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently", founding member of the documentary project of "Sound and Picture". I work in documenting violations committed by Assad's regime and ISIS group and extremist organizations inside the city of Raqqa, as I work in programming, design and visual media. I hold a certificate of coach in digital security, and a certificate of journalist coach, and a certificate in documenting violations against human rights, and a certificate in electronic advocacy. I underwent a training under the supervision of "Cyber-Arabs" in collaboration with the Institute for War and Peace "IWPR", about the management of electronic websites and leadership of advocacy campaigns, and a training of press photography under the supervision of the photojournalist "Peter Hove Olesen".

3 Comments

  1. Gordon Grieves
    December 4, 2015 - 4:36 pm

    So the international coalition are targeting civilian wells and refineries, whislt ISIS buy their fuel from Assad?

  2. December 12, 2015 - 6:55 pm

    you are saying ISIS buys oil directly from Syrian government?

Comments are closed.