MESOP : ISIS & ASSAD – TWO FACES OF MEGA-CRIME – New deal between ISIS, Regime on Syria’s oil: sources

 (Zaman Al Wasl- Eqtsad)- 11-9-2014 – Much has been written about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and why it’s considered one of the world’s richest terrorist groups, as in the previously published article by Eqtsad when the Syrian researcher and expert Hamza Mustafa, tackled the issue of IS’s funding sources, explaining in details how donations received from donors and sympathisers, particularly in the wealthy Gulf States, or war spoils seized in military bases of vehicles and weapons from the fleeing Iraqi government forces especially in (Mousel) ,and most importantly how the Global Jihad Organization is financing Islamic movements .

Yet, more important sources are of major importance to be discussed, as ISIS heads further into Syria, the group is controlling most of Syria’s eastern rich oil region, where a significant portion of its financial resources come from the crude oil it sells on the black market; accordingly, oil fields have become prime targets in its fights. In this context, new information received by (Eqtsad) from an informed source in the oil and gas sector in Syria, revealed that IS and Assad’s regime have already held detailed agreements for the management and distribution of Syria’s oil and gas wealth, which are mostly controlled by the Islamic state, and the details as follows:

– Oil Production Agreements:

Oil fields are run by “IS” and operated by workers paid by regime’s Ministry of Oil, then the oil is exported to regime’s refineries in Homs and Banias in exchange for a specified fee per barrel. Later the oil is sold in regime-controlled areas in cheap prices in order to gain these areas’ loyalty by providing them with the least means of decent life, according to the source.

– Gas Production Agreements:

According to the source, Syria has many gas fields and more than five of them are (refineries), not to mention that most of these field are liquid, meaning that there is a high production of Natural-gas condensate, a high quality oil and its price in the global market is 50 % more than the oil barrel.

Most of these fields produce more than 10 thousand barrels of condensate gas, which means that the five refineries produce over 50 thousand barrels per day, and according to the agreement, gas production will continue, and workers and technicians in the gas fields will receive their salaries from the Syrian Oil Ministry, while the production shall be shared as follows: natural gas is pumped into the network to go to the generating power stations and industrial cities (which no longer needed it since most industries have stooped).And since “IS” is the dominant force on the ground, its responsibility to protect the fields and facilities, and its share includes domestic and condensates gases in addition to marketing.

The source concludes by saying: “how these deals were concluded, or how long they’re going to last, no one knows expect for Bashar al-Assad and al-Baghdadi!”.Eqtsad has also obtained confirmed information from the Syrian petroleum engineer, Mustafa Ahmed Faiz, early last month, of an agreement between the Islamic State and the regime to swap gas in exchange for electricity, in which IS will allow the flow of gas from its fields so that the regime will not cut off electricity on its areas. Before the revolution, Syria used to produce about 380 thousand barrels per day of oil, but it dropped dramatically, and now the Islamic state and other armed groups control most of the oil wells and fields in eastern Syria. https://www.zamanalwsl.net/en/news/6529.html