Interesting how ISIS appears to be the one entity unaffected by the global collapse in oil prices.
Exactly..like Rush has said..follow the $$$ trail to see where the big snakes live.
They were probably underselling the market, further killing my Bakken stocks
There have been a lot of articles about how the oil price has hurt them over the past year. Especially impacted since they have to sell it for a fraction of the market rate.
They have moved on to other means of funding in addition to the oil.
Hitting the Islamic State’s Oil Isn’t Enough
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3362365/posts
... the Islamic State had a massive one-time cash infusion from the dozens of banks it seized in Mosul, Iraq, in 2014. The group’s biggest ongoing source of money, however, comes from something quite different: extortion. Forcing the 8 million people under its thumb to pay extortion fees nets the Islamic State hundreds of millions of dollars a year...
Simple really..., steal producing wells, spend nothing on development/maintenance, sell produced oil for whatever = pure profit!
$150B to spend from an anonymous donor...
The monitoring of that traffic from the instant it leaves port, and seized, would freeze the financing of the killers, without having to destroy any of the facilities and infrastructure that rightfully belong to the non-terrorist population.
Why hasn't that happened?
Since they stole most everything including the oil field and refinery, their cost per barrel must be pretty low. Corruption is endemic in the surrounding countries so no one is interested in stopping or catching the buyers. Now, why haven’t we taken the oil field out? Smart bombs could do a surgical shutdown without the environmental damage I’d think.