Islamic State Militants Are Raking In $800 Million A Year From Black Market Oil Sales

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/islamic-state-is-raking-in-800-million-from-black-market-oil-sales-2014-10



***SNIP

It’s also selling the oil for less than $60 per barrel to smugglers, in comparison to an international price of more like $85 per barrel. If the group, previously called ISIS or ISIL, was producing at its full capacity and selling at market prices, it could rake in closer to $30 million every day.

IHS adds that how IS' oil production is going to progress depends mostly on the military campaign against them:

Future oil revenues growth for ISIL remains to be determined and will be heavily influenced by territories gained/lost in coming months... In light of ongoing US-led airstrikes against ISIL, it is also unclear if the terrorist group has enough refining capacity—which currently consists mostly of simple mobile refineries that can be loaded and transported by truck—to meet its own needs.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/islamic-state-is-raking-in-800-million-from-black-market-oil-sales-2014-10#ixzz3GmR2bHbn

[erpowers]

1. Oil Prices Low

Is that why oil prices are so low? I have been wondering for a few days now if ISIS selling oil on the black market was bringing down oil prices. When I first heard about the dropping oil prices I it was proof that the oil speculators were wrong. If ever there was a time to jack up oil prices due to unrest in the world it was now due to all that is now going on in the Middle East with ISIS. Then I thought, "oh wait, ISIS is selling the oil they control on the black market at below market prices. Wonder if that is bringing down oil prices".

[strawberries]

3. the silver lining nt

[bemildred]

2. US watchdog: Afghanistan poppy production at record levels despite counternarcotics efforts

I expect they will get into selling drugs too.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s opium economy is booming despite $7.6 billion in U.S. counternarcotics efforts since 2002, federal auditors said in a report released Tuesday.

The most recent findings by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction come just a few months ahead of the withdrawal of coalition combat troops, when the vast majority of U.S. and NATO forces will leave the country.

SIGAR cited a United Nations tally of net land area used for poppy cultivation in 2013: more than 500,000 acres, a 36 percent jump from the previous year and a historic record. The lion’s share of that cultivation, the U.N. says, comes from Helmand and Kandahar provinces, two regions that were the focus of the 33,000-strong American troop surge four years ago.

“That is equivalent to more than 800 square miles — more than twice the size of all the boroughs of New York City, or 12 times the size of the District of Columbia — planted solid with opium poppies,” SIGAR wrote in a previous report in January.

http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-watchdog-afghanistan-poppy-production-at-record-levels-despite-counternarcotics-efforts-1.309215