Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on July 4, 2014
ISIS takes major Syrian oil field
The extremist Sunni militant group that recently declared a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq wrested control of a major Syrian oil field in a sweeping land grab Thursday, a UK-based monitoring group said.
A string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River fell like dominoes to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, bridging the Syrian province of Deir Ezzour with the group’s recently gained territories in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported.
A video statement from the leaders in the town of al-Shahil announcing their withdrawal from all anti-ISIS organizations triggered the quick fall of a majority of Deir Ezzour province.
“We also decided to swear allegiance to the Caliph Abo Baker Al Baghdadi, noting that we are not responsible for those who breach this agreement and to call him to account if possible,” a town representative in the video says in reference to ISIS’s shadowy leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Fighters for the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, the largest and most powerful affront to ISIS, had been headquartered in al-Shahil. Fighters began melting away late Wednesday.
After taking control of al-Shahil, ISIS demanded that fighters surrender their weapons and repent for fighting ISIS. It then called on residents to leave the town for a week to 10 days until “peace returns to the streets,” a social media video obtained by activists shows.
MAPS: Understanding the Iraq crisis
With Nusra Front’s bastion in the east defeated, ISIS militants simply rolled through, unopposed, staking their black and white flag through most of the oil-rich province, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Deir Ezzour said in a statement.
“Most of the activists that were opposed to ISIS have disappeared. Some are trying to flee to Turkey and others are pledging allegiance to the Islamic State along with other factions.” Abu Abdallah, an opposition activist in Deir Ezzour, told CNN.
The capture of al-Omar oil field, the country’s largest and most important oil facility, with a capacity to produce 75,000 barrels of oil daily, is the jewel in a string of gains that includes a military airport and a local army base.
“We took control without any clashes. They just fled,” a bearded radical fighter from ISIS said in amateur video posted online Thursday from the oil field, “as proof, here is their ammunition and weapons.”
Resource-poor rebel factions in Aleppo responded to the series of surrenders by calling for a full mobilization of all able-bodied men to fight ISIS’s relentless march on opposition held territory in Syria.
“We demand that everyone, including civilians, report to the front lines so it will be a decisive war between us and them. Let’s us show them what Aleppo is made of,” a statement from Abu Tawfiq, a Tawheed Brigade military commander, reads. “We should never allow them to keep destroying our country and killing our people. Anyone who does not heed this call has no excuse.”
ISIS, so radical that al Qaeda’s central command disowned it earlier this year, now controls an estimated 20,000 non-contiguous square miles stretching from Syria’s Aleppo Province to just 60 kilometers west of the Iraqi capital, according to the SOHR.
The group rules by a barbaric interpretation of Islamic law that includes the torture and imprisonment of opponents, the oppression of women and Christians, and even public beheadings and crucifixions
Last weekend, the group announced the creation of a so-called Islamic State or Caliphate that erases all state borders and make its leader the self-declared authority over the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.
While many members of the faith dismiss the claims as outlandish, analysts say the rapid rise of the fanatical force is sure to have a lasting impact on the region, particularly in weak Middle Eastern states such as Jordan.
22 Comments on "ISIS takes major Syrian oil field"
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 6:13 am
Bingo, 75,000 barrel per day, that’s a lot of guns and bullits. And where Jordanian, Lebanese and Saudi western satrap rulers nervously check if their heads are still attached to their rumps, hundreds of millions of ordinary COMINTERN-ish muslims worldwide, with similar attitudes towards westerners like our own noobtube, are quietly applauding their heroes. The 99%, as always, waits to see who wins and next cheers the winner. And Jihadis are here to stay, one way or the other. And the largest muslim army on the planet, that of the Turks, is patiently waiting for the right moment to intervene, possibly even with consent of desperate westerners, under the motto ”better someone who is used to eat with knife and fork’.
Davy on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 7:14 am
Art, they may need that oil for that refinery they have laid siege to if there is anything left after the fight. Art I am not sure where they are going to sell the oil gained because the way things are shaping up they have basically declared war on all their neighbors. That is some foreign policy. They have also declared all Muslims must follow them and no other. That is a bold form of religious leadership. I am thinking these folks are shooting themselves in the foot. They have basically filled a vacuum in an area where they have a majority ethnically big deal. Kick the butt of a weak conscripted Shia Iraqi army who didn’t want to be in a hostile Sunni area. I have not seen any significant territorial conquest in hard to get hostile areas of Kurdistan or Shia-stan. I am not seeing reports of Baghdad or Kirkuk falling. Good Luck ISIS getting heavy weapons once your captured ones are used up or blown up from the sky. Oh, I guess North Korea will sell heavy weapons to them and they can bring them on barges down the Tigris/Euphrates that is if they can get by the Turks and the Kurds. ISIS is riding a wave that will die along with their Hubris and hal•lu•ci•na•tion of greatness. Who would want the areas they have taken over? Most of it is desert with few resources populated by Sunni fanatics that specialize in suicide belts. They are lucky they have the Tigis/Euphrates. They will be hard pressed gaining the Kurdish and Shia oil areas. I see them as a BAU spoiler and nothing else. They will slow the all-important Iraqi oil production increases so vital for global growth and corresponding stability. Paradoxically this stab in the back of BAU could lead to collapse and allow them the freedom to gallop around the ME terrorizing and plundering. The problem is the ME, when and if collapse comes will have allot of oil but little fresh water and food. That can be a problem for an army on the march.
Slippery slope on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 7:20 am
What does Assad have to say about this ?
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 7:41 am
Davy, ISIS is not interested in Kurdish or Shia territory. They are interested in Sunni/secular regime change only. They have no claims on Iran or perhaps not even on Bagdad. Their target is cash cow Saudi-Arabia.
And their oil? They can always sell that secretly to the Turks, who will be more than happy to support them and let these barbarians do the dirty work for them, just like the Right Sector does the dirty work for the US in the Ukraine. The historical mission of ISIS is to eradicate the borders from the Europaen colonial era. When that is achieved, they can be sidelined by the Turks, so they themselves can take over the entire Middle East. Turks are slightly more sophisticated than Arab camel drivers.
JuanP on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 9:12 am
Art, I agree that the major role of ISIS is formalizing and accelerating the split of Iraq into smaller, more manageable pieces, eliminating a potential threat to the control US and Israel have now in the ME. Breaking up Iraq was the original goal of the US far right and they want to do the same thing in Russia and they are using Ukraine as a step in the process to achieve that. That is why the US will not fight ISIS in certain areas. Saudis should be worried, because their time is depleting.
bobinget on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 9:18 am
You can bet purges within Saudi Arabia, financiers of ISIS, must be taking long European vacations in “undisclosed locations”.
Davy on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 9:24 am
Art, probably somewhere in the middle of our range of geopolitical pondering. My main point is they have few if any friends. This is not a good strategy to reshape the ME with so many big boys attempting the same. And now with drones, fighter aircraft, and satellites trained on their leaders movements. Granted every “swinging dick” Jihadi across the globe will dream of being part of IS Army but how much can they do without large benefactors. Could the Taliban been such a thorn in the Collations side without indirect Pakistani support and in some cases Iran. The Turks will not be overt with support with their highly central role in Nato and the global economy. Yet, in today’s new normal world that is increasingly paradoxical, right is wrong and wrong is right. They could drive into Riyadh stranger things have occurred.
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 9:41 am
Juan/Davy,
I highly doubt that ISIS doesn’t have support. Until very recently they got support, even from the US, Qatar and SA and others, until they started to p** over the Syrian pot. US first priority for Iraq was a nice democratic unitarian state and US satellite. As a second choice, a fractured Iraq was acceptable as well. Syria likewise. However, a unified fundamentalist Caliphate with an anti-western attitude, ranging from Beirut to Damascus to Mosul to Riyadh to Amman to Cairo is completely unacceptable for the West, not to mention western holy cow Israel. ISIS maybe funded originally by the US, but is currently completely out of control. All alarm bells are going off at the moment in Washington. The very fact that Washington is warming up towards Iran, should be a clear indication of the level of despair.
JuanP on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 10:07 am
Art, I didn’t mean to imply that ISIS doesn’t have foreign support, of course they do. As long as they don’t overreach, they will continue to have that support. I disagree with your interpretation of US foreign policy. There is a faction, within the neocons, whose main goal always was to break Iraq in pieces and they went along with many other things because they also served their ultimate purpose, total hegemony. They are a minority, but they are real and have influence in DC’s foreign policy
bobinget on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 10:58 am
“taking” a oilfield means?
Insurgents, freedom fighters, renegades, terrorists,
rebels, armies, can be great , brave killers, destroyers of property but extracting oil requires an entirely different skill set.
“Oh darn, you mean those ‘foreigners’ I just had
beheaded were oil workers?” “All this time I believed them to be medical workers, teachers and press”.
“Amed, put an ad on Craigslist for Sunni oil workers”
J-Gav on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 11:04 am
Sorry guys, my lousy, el-cheapo crystal ball is malfunctioning again. And it’s getting downright rude! I’m really going to have to get a new one.
For instance, when I ask it: “Is Joe Biden’s sentiment, expressed in 2006, that Iraq would best be broken up into 3 regions, 1 Sunni, 1 Shiite and 1 Kurdish, on the way to becoming reality?” it answers: “Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?”
And when I question: “Is the region likely to remain unstable and volatile for some time to come?” it responds: “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
I don’t mind the far-out responses, it’s the vulgarity I’m upset with. So I guess I’ll have to stop commenting on these issues until I can get it fixed or replaced.
GregT on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 11:30 am
Everything is still going according to plans:
http://empirestrikesblack.com/2011/12/pakistan-gateway-to-the-zionist-endgame-2/
Plantagenet on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 11:36 am
@Arthur—your claim that ISIS “isn’t interested” in Shia or Kurdish territory just isn’t true. the goal of ISIS is to establish an Islamic Caliphate that includes all the original lands of the medieval Islamic Caliphate—and that extended from Kazakhstan to Spain.
GregT on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 12:05 pm
For anyone who may have missed this little tidbit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7i0wCFf8g
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 12:32 pm
Plant, indeed, in the end they want a worldwide Caliphate, a NWO of a somewhat different flavour as Washington wants.lol
But what I meant to say was that ISIS has limited resources and they are not going to waste these resources against mighty opponents like Iran, that can’t be incorporated in their Caliphate anyway. They are after relatively ‘quick wins’ first, like Jordan, parts of Syria and Saudi-Arabia.
El-Andaluz (Spain) and Kazakhstan can wait.
GregT on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 12:48 pm
Arthur,
I am surprised, with your level of knowledge, that you are focusing on the symptoms, rather than the disease.
The plan all along was division. This has been very well documented. ISIS is not a threat. They are a tool.
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 3:17 pm
Yes, they are a tool, a tool that went completely out of control. The US, or The Lobby rather, wanted to splinter the existing order in the ME (Clean Break) and that is what they are getting. What they underestimated though is that they unleashed the forces of fundamentalist Islam by doing so.
In the world of today there are two truely revolutionary movements, both with planetary ambition: Judaism and Islam, or NYC/London/Washington versus the Middle-East.
Since 1913 J. is focused on the destruction of European civilization using communism (until Stalin of blessed memory.lol hijacked the revolution from the Trotzky gang) and now cultural marxism (Frankfurter Schule) and mass-immigration aimed at the destruction of the people of European descent.
However, these muslims sicked upon Europe by the 1968 babyboomer hippy US satraps turned out to stubbornly attached to their muslim identity and a mega conflict is brewing in Europe and the question is who are going to shoot first: the Dutch or the French. Meanwhile:
-China is rising
– Islam is rising
– Russia is consolidating
-Europe is unified and drifting to the (identitarian) right
– Euro-America is demoralised and does not really believe in the NWO and increasingly wants to be left alone, flirts with libertarianism and secession, starts to doubt exceptionalism and the American Dream and hates what America has become since mass immigration began in 1965 as well as the rising police state.
It won’t be long until the revolt in Europe will begin, with Russian backing at the same time that the US will descend into chaos (Orlov), initiated by a major financial crisis after the world dumps the dollar, followed by ethnic conflict in the US.
For the future of the world I see only two possibilities
– the rise of China is certain
– the rise of the Caliphate is certain
– greater Europe (Paris-Berlin-Moscow) is certain
Only the fate of America is uncertain. If Washington prevails, then we have a world map as predicted by Orwell with four major competing blocks:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/assets_c/2009/10/1984-thumb-465×215-17701.jpg
– the star of David over America
– the halfmoon over the Islamic world
– the cross over Euro-Siberia (possibly with four extra edges)
– the symbol of Confucianism over China/SE-Asia
The only event that can change this picture is that united greater Europe will intervene in the coming chaos of North-America, just like continental Europe (France, Holland) did in 1776 and liberated the Americans from the British. We could do that again, this time not just from the British, in our own interest.
Beery on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 3:19 pm
Wait, wasn’t some bozo reassuring everyone just last week that ISIS could never get close to any major oil field. I’m betting he’s feeling like a bit of a dick right now.
GregT on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 5:58 pm
Funny that, how ISIS somehow managed to sneak into Iraq and take over parts of the country before the CIA, MI6, and Mossad even noticed.
Must have been quite the surprise to the intelligence community, being outsmarted by the very people that they have been funding, and arming.
Also Arthur, as I mentioned in another post. Do you really think that those at the top really give a rat’s ass which ‘country’ is in power? Or which alliance? They already control most of the world’s currencies. To them, this is nothing more than a game called the NWO. They will move their assets to wherever they see fit, to whomever will do their bidding.
This was never about geopolitics, it was always about complete control over geopolitics.
J-Gav on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 6:11 pm
Beery,
ISIS has indeed (and may stay for a while), closed in on two important oil fields, one in Syria and one in Iraq. IMHO they won’t be threatening the south (Basra) anytime soon though.
In northern Iraq, they’ll be dealing with the Kurds (Peshmerga), so they’re not likely to get everything they want there either, at least not without a nasty fight – might some agreement be cut? Who knows?
Their ‘blitz’ could still create some surprises, what with foreign combattants streaming in ‘n all, adrenaline pumped up by all the ‘New Caliphate’ crap, whose propaganda has shown itself to be effective amongst the down-trodden Muslim populations of Western Europe.
In any case, the rapid emergence of this somewhat brain-damaged movement is a direct result of Western meddling in the region, along with Saudi, Kuwaiti, Qatari etc hypocrisy.
GregT on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 2:17 am
This was as much of a mistake, as the Ukraine was a mistake.
Two of the oldest tricks in the book, distraction, and divide and conquer. I still maintain that everything is going as planned.
Wait and see.
Makati1 on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 11:45 pm
After WW2, the West maintained “peace” in the ME by installing strong dictators in strategic countries. When those puppets tried to cut their strings to the West, the West decided to replace them. Problem is, there was/is no one with the capability to prevent the bottled up pressures of Islam from exploding. Now, there is no way to put this genie (pun intended) back in the bottle.