'State Sponsor of Terrorism?' - Turkey is the trading largest partner for ISIS oil, sometimes even Turkish refineries buy directly. (Marketplace).
By some estimates, the extremist group ISIS controls 60 percent of oil production in Syria, as well as six oil wells in Iraq.
Much of this oil ends up in the black market, and given that, the "purchase" and sale of this oil is far from typical.
In addition to its holdings, the group is also assumed to pilfer from pipelines and storage facilities, said Valerie Marcel, oil and Middle East analyst at the Chatham House think tank in London.
Marcel says ISIS, also known as ISIL or the Islamic State, takes some of its crude and refines it. “They have an open pit, they burn the oil very crudely,” Marcel says. “And then they have some gasoline which they can provide to local residents, and to their own Humvees.”
The rest of the oil goes to market, largely in Turkey, through a murky set of intermediaries.
“Some of them are Iraqi middlemen, and they take the crude to the border,” Marcel says. “Others are Turkish middlemen. And they’re able to actually sometimes get the oil sold directly to a refinery in Turkey. So that involves a quite well-informed organization.”Hmmm...Can we NOW define Turkey as a 'State Sponsor of Terrorism.?
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