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“Of course we knew about these trucks with stolen oil”…
One of the most embarrassing things to come out of the Russian military venture in Syria is the huge convoy supply lines of oil moving between Turkey and ISIS positions.
Watch America’s finest mumble their way through explanations of why they have let this go on for two years.
Priceless.
https://youtu.be/9MAmeAtzKms
By Pepe Escobar,
The World Economic Forum in Davos is submerged by a tsunami of denials, and even non-denial denials, stating there won’t be a follow-up to the Crash of 2008.
Yet there will be. And the stage is already set for it.
Selected Persian Gulf traders, and that includes Westerners working in the Gulf confirm that Saudi Arabia is unloading at least $1 trillion in securities and crashing global markets under orders from the Masters of the Universe – those above the lame presidency of Barack Obama.
Those were the days when the House of Saud would as much as flirt with such an idea to have all their assets frozen. Yet now they are acting under orders. And more is to come; according to crack Persian Gulf traders Saudi Western security investments may amount to as much as $8 trillion, and Abu Dhabi’s as $4 trillion.
In Abu Dhabi everything was broken into compartments, so no one could figure it out, except brokers and traders who would know each supervisor of a compartment of investments. And for the House of Saud, predictably, denial is an iron rule.
This massive securities dump has been occasionally corporate media, but the figures are grossly underestimated. The full information simply won’t filter because the Masters of the Universe have vetoed it.
There has been a huge increase in the Saudi and Abu Dhabi dump since the start of 2016. A Persian Gulf source says the Saudi strategy “will demolish the markets.” Another referred to a case of “maggots eating the carcass in the dark”; one just had to look at the rout in Wall Street, across Europe and in Hong Kong and Tokyo on Wednesday.
So it’s already happening. And a crucial subplot may be, in the short to medium term, no less than the collapse of the eurozone.
The Crash of 2016?
So a case could be made of a panicked House of Saud being instrumentalized to crash a great deal of the global economy. Cui bono?
Moscow and Tehran are very much on it. The logic behind crashing markets, creating a recession and a depression – from the point of view of the Masters of the Universe above the lame duck President of the United States — is to engineer a major slow down, cripple buying patterns, decrease oil and natural gas consumption, and point Russia on a road to ruin. Besides, the ultra low oil price also translates into a sort of ersatz sanction on Iran.
Still, Iranian oil about to reach the market will be around an extra 500,000 barrels a day by mid-year, plus a surplus stored in tankers in the Persian Gulf. This oil can and will be absorbed, as demand is rising (in the US, for instance, by 1.9 million barrels a day in 2015) while supply is falling.
Surging demand and falling production will reverse the oil crash by July. Moreover, China’s oil imports recently surged 9.3% at 7.85 million barrels a day, discrediting the hegemonic narrative of a collapse of China’s economy – or of China being responsible for the current market blues.
So, as I outlined here, oil should turn around soon. Goldman Sachs concurs. That gives the Masters of the Universe a short window of opportunity enabling the Saudis to dump massive amounts of securities in the markets.
The House of Saud may need the money badly, considering their budget on red alert. But dumping their securities is also clearly self-destructive. They simply cannot sell $8 trillion. The House of Saud is actually destroying the balance of their wealth. As much as Western hagiography tries to paint Riyadh as a responsible player, the fact is scores of Saudi princes are horrified at the destruction of the wealth of the kingdom through this slow motion harakiri.
Would there be a Plan B? Yes. Warrior prince Mohammed bin Sultan – who’s actually running the show in Riyadh – should be on the first flight to Moscow to engineer a common strategy. Yet that won’t happen.
And as far as China – Saudi Arabia’s top oil importer — is concerned, Xi Jinping has just been to Riyadh; Aramco and Sinopec signed a strategic partnership; but the strategic partnership that really matters, considering the future of One Belt, One Road, is actually Beijing-Tehran.
The massive Saudi dumping of securities ties in with the Saudi oil price war. In the current, extremely volatile situation oil is down, stocks are down and oil stocks are down. Still the House of Saud has not understood that the Masters of the Universe are getting them to destroy themselves many times over, including flooding the oil market with their shut-in capacity. And all that to fatally wound Russia, Iran and… Saudi Arabia itself.
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Meanwhile, Riyadh is rife with rumors there will be a coup against King Salman – virtually demented and confined to a room in his palace in Riyadh. There are two possible scenarios in play:
1) King Salman, 80, abdicates in favor of his son, notorious arrogant/ignorant troublemaker Warrior Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 30, currently deputy crown prince and defense minister and the second in the line of succession but de facto running the show in Riyadh. This could happen anytime soon. As an extra bonus, current Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, not a royal, would be replaced by Abdulaziz bin Salman, another son of the king.
2) A palace coup. Salman – and his troublemaker son – are out of the picture, replaced by Ahmed bin Abdulaziz (who was a previous Minister of the Interior), or Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (the current Minister of the Interior and Crown Prince.)
Whatever scenario prevails, the British MI6 is intimately aware of the whole pantomime. And the German BND might be. Everyone remembers the BND memo at the end of 2015 that depicted Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a “political gambler” who is destabilizing the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria.
Saudi sources — for obvious reasons insisting on anonymity — stress that as much as 80% of the House of Saud favors a coup.
Yet the question is whether a House reshuffle would change their slow motion hara-kiri. The categorical imperative remains; the Masters of the Universe are ready to bring the whole world down in a major recession basically to strangle Russia. The House of Saud is just a pawn in this vicious game.
Source: sputniknews.com/
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Armenia to Russia Oleg Yesayan signed a protocol providing for indefinite exemption from export duties on petroleum products and natural gas, supplied from Russia to Armenia, RIA Novosti reports.
On December 2, 2013 Russia and Armenia signed an intergovernmental agreement on the abolition of export duties on deliveries of natural gas, petroleum products and rough diamonds to Armenia. The agreement was signed following talks between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Serzh Sargsyan.
Earlier, the Armenian government approved a set of amendments to the agreement. Energy and Natural Resources Minister Yervand Zakharyan reminded that the agreement concerns supply of Russian natural gas, petroleum products and raw diamonds to Armenia.
Zakharyan said the changes will specify the procedures for calculation and payment of customs duties for delivery of oil products and gas. He added also that the amended agreement would create favorable conditions for the development of economic ties between the two countries.
Iraqi Kurds have dismissed Russia‘s allegation that oil belonging to the radical terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) travels through Iraqi Kurdistan before ending up in Turkey.
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) official Kifah Mahmoud said Russian claims about oil sales in the Kurdistan region do not reflect reality. “Our oil tankers go to oil refineries in Turkey through the Habur border gate.”
In an address to reporters on Friday, Gen. Sergei Rudskoy, director of the Main Operations Center of the Russian General Staff, said due to the increasing number of air strikes in Syria, oil smugglers traveling to Turkey have changed their route.
He claimed that the destination of the oil trafficking is Turkey and that ISIL terrorists, stripped of their usual route due to intensified air strikes in Syria, had changed their route to one traveling through the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Zakho.
Russian intelligence has spotted up to 12,000 tankers and trucks on the Turkish-Iraqi border, the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces has reported.“The [aerial] imagery was made in the vicinity of Zakho (a city in Iraqi Kurdistan), there were 11,775 tankers and trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border,” Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy told journalists on Friday.
Heavy-duty trucks loaded with oil continue to cross the Turkish-Syrian border as well, Rudskoy said. At the same time, the number of tankers on the northern and western routes used for transporting oil from Syria is declining, the general added.
“According to satellite data, the number of oil tankers moving through the ‘northern route’ towards the refinery in the [Turkish] city of Batman has considerably diminished,” Rudskoy said, adding that the number of tankers using the ‘western route,’ between the Turkish cities of Reyhanli [on the Syrian border] and the city of Iskenderun, has decreased to 265 vehicles.
The Russian Air Force in Syria has destroyed about 2,000 tankers used by the Islamists for oil transportation. In the last week, Russian warplanes eliminated 17 convoys of oil tankers and a number of installations used by terrorists for oil extraction and processing.
The Russian Air Force’s effective strikes in Syria have forced the terrorists to look for new routes for crude oil transportation. Today, tankers loaded with oil in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province, under Islamic State control, are moving towards the Iraqi border in the direction of Zakho and Mosul.
“However, despite a considerable diversion, the finishing point of the trafficking route remains Turkey,” Rudskoy said.
Iraq’s Acting Trade Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani discussed the possibility of buying cooking oil from Armenia instead of Turkey at a meeting with the Armenian ambassador, Karen Krikorian, in Baghdad last week.
An official at the Armenian embassy in Baghdad confirmed the meeting took place without giving further details, Reuters reports, citing the ministry spokesman said.
It comes after a trade ministry spokesman said the administration will gradually cut imports of Turkish cooking oil that it supplies for free to the population under a food rationing programme. The plan came on agenda due to political tensions between the two countries
“The plan is to replace Turkish oil with locally produced oil and oil from other countries,” he said, without indicating the reason for replacing Turkey with other suppliers.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. AFP Photo
BAGHDAD – Reuters,
Iraq plans to reduce government imports of cooking oil from Turkey due to political tensions between the two countries, according to a trade ministry official and the newspaper al-Bayina al-Jadida.
A trade ministry spokesman said the administration will gradually cut imports of Turkish cooking oil that it supplies for free to the population under a food rationing program.
“The plan is to replace Turkish oil with locally produced oil and oil from other countries,” he said, without indicating the reason for replacing Turkey with other suppliers.
Baghdad-based newspaper al-Bayina al-Jadida said the measure was meant as a protest against the deployment of Turkish troops in northern Iraq.
Turkey says the forces are protecting its military personnel training Iraqi militia to fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants. Turkey last week said it withdrew some forces, following Iraq’s complaints, without committing to a complete pull-out.
Turkey has been supplying all the cooking oil for the Iraqi trade ministry’s food rationing program for several years, the ministry spokesman said.
Turkish cooking oil imports by the Iraqi private sector are not impacted by the decision, he said, without specifying the volumes imported by the government each year.
The rationing program provides all Iraqis with food items every month, including sugar, flour, cooking oil and rice, in portions that vary according to family size.
Iraq’s own production of cooking oil should increase next year as old factories belonging to the industry ministry will be refurbished, Industry Minister Mohammed al-Daraji told a press conference in Baghdad on Dec. 24.
Acting Trade Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani discussed the possibility of buying cooking oil from Armenia instead of Turkey at a meeting with the Armenian ambassador, Karen Krikorian, in Baghdad last week, the ministry spokesman said.
An official at the Armenian embassy in Baghdad confirmed the meeting took place without giving further details.
Turkey needs to be much more proactive in countering terrorism in Syria and Iraq, stop turning a blind eye and aiding the Islamic State terrorists through illegal oil trade, Iraqi MP and a former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie told RT.Ankara is “smuggling Iraqi oil and Syrian oil through the borders and selling it on the black marker in Turkey,” Rubaie told RT.
“Turkish authorities need to do a lot more than what they are doing now to come clean from the accusations that they are siding, or at least that they are turning a blind eye to the movement of these terrorists from Turkey to Syria and Iraq and vise versa,” the MP said.
The politician says there is “mounting evidence” from all over the world, including Iraq, that “Turkey is playing not a very clean game,” when it comes to Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL).
Rubaie also finds it strange that Turkey is aiding jihadi fighters to get medical treatment on its territory before sending them back to fight in Syria and Iraq.
“Also there is evidence that some of these high value individuals of Daesh when they get wounded in Iraq and Syria, they cross the border and get treated and operated upon in Turkish hospitals,” the MP said.
Ankara must secure the border between Turkey and terrorist-controlled territories of Syria, because Syrian government forces have so far been unable to secure the northern part of Syria. To “seal” the border, Rubaie argues, some 50,000 Turkish troops are needed.
That will help “stop the smuggling of the goods as well as the smuggling of terrorists” into Daesh controlled lands, the MP said.
Overall Ankara should “come clean” and address the mounting evidence of IS links that have surfaced recently. In addition, the MP called on NATO to investigate allegations against Turkey “properly,” as the Norwegians in their latest study have done.
A newly-leaked report on illegal oil sales by Islamic State, which was ordered to be compiled by Norway, revealed that most of the IS-smuggled oil has been destined for Turkey, where it is sold off at low prices.
“Recently the Norwegian authority has investigated this independently, and they have come out with exactly the same conclusion,” Rubaie told RT.
He called on the Norwegians to “share this information with other NATO member nations, and also with the EU,” in addition to regional powers. Rubaie also urged the wider international community to “take a position” based on this evidence and pressure Turkey to do more to cut off IS’ “main source of funding,” ie smuggling oil.
Rubaie’s plea to the international community comes a few days after the UN Security Council passed a resolution strengthening legal measures against those doing business with terrorist groups.
Source: RT
© SPUTNIK/ HIKMET DURGUN
Fighter from the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
Mahmut Ghazi Tatar, a captured member of the Daesh terrorist organization, spoke to Sputnik Turkey, revealing details about being in the ranks of Daesh and Turkey’s ties with the terror group.
A Sputnik Türkiye correspondent managed to record an interview with a member of Daesh (Islamic State) who was captured by Kurdish troops in Syria. The 24-year-old Mahmut Ghazi Tatar who joined Daesh from the Turkish city of Adıyaman.
Mahmut Ghazi joined Daesh after being influenced by a friend who had joined the group earlier. He, together with 27 other Turks, was helped to cross the border into Syria where he joined the ranks of the militants.
“After crossing border we were moved to a training camp 5 km from the border. We received military training and attended religious classes. Before the start of training, each of us was asked whether we want to be martyrs. I refused. This question is asked of all new recruits. Those who agree, within 6 months receive special religious training. Since I refused, my education and training lasted 70 days. We learned by the Turkish books. During the training, a few people from Turkey came to check on us. They did not have beards and they were not members of Daesh,” Mahmut Tatar told Sputnik Turkiye during an interview.
After receiving their training the 27 members who were all Turkish were sent to the city of Tel Abaid where they lived in houses and where their training continued. Their names were kept secret and they were not allowed to contact their families for a period of six months.
Talking about how he was caught by Kurdish soldiers, Ghazi said that upon receiving warning of the presence of Kurdish soldiers from other Daesh members he and 12 other group members ran away from Tal Abaid. They were hiding in a nearby village. But the next morning when Ghazi tried to make a run for it he was caught.
“Kurds treat prisoners well, they feed them, give water and even cigarettes. I was kept in this room along with several other people. I did not think that they will treat me so well, I was afraid of torture. I thought we would be killed, but it turned out that the Kurdish troops do not kill captives. I heard that Daesh when being captured by Kurds are either killed at once or are kept alive to make prisoner exchange with the Kurds.”
Talking about what he heard from his commander the captured member revealed that during his training camp in May 2015, one Daesh commander Abu Talha told them that the group sells oil to Turkey. According to Abu Talha, the money that was raised from sale of oil in Turkey helped Daesh resolve all financial difficulties.
“The oil tankers that were sent every day to Turkey had crude oil, fuel oil and gasoline. The main source of income for Daesh is oil trade and oil inventories will last them a long time.”
“Abu Talha also said that the group earns a lot of money in trade with Turkey. He also said that the oil is sold through the mediation of a number of businessmen and merchants, but did not give names. Daesh also receives many products from Turkey and other Arab countries,” Mahmut Ghazi revealed.
He mentioned that his commanders did not attach particular importance to the US bombings. They believed that it was done as a pretense.
One of the militants asked the commander why Daesh was not fighting against Israel. Abu Talha said: “First we need to break down a small wall and then destroy the large one.”
According to the captured member most new recruits joined the group from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen, Qatar, Lebanon and Egypt. They crossed the Turkish border, which is very simple to do. The fighters from Europe and America follow the same route.
“The commanders told us that they were going to commit a terrorist act that would exceed the scale of the September 11 attacks on the US,” Mahmut Ghazi concluded.
Source:sputniknews.com
The Islamic State has stolen some 50 million barrels of Syrian oil during the four-year civil war in the country, the press service of the Syrian Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said Friday.
DAMASCUS (Sputnik) — The press service said that terrorist groups controlled the number of oil fields in country’s provinces of Raqqah, Homs, Al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor, adding that the majority of these fields were on the territory, occupied by the ISIL militants.
“Overall amount of the oil stolen from the fields from the beginning of the crisis to November, 2015,… reached 48 million barrels,” the press service told RIA Novosti.
According to the ministry, Syria has lost some $46 billion of oil revenues during the crisis.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, ISIL, which is outlawed in in the country, earns around $2 billion annually selling oil from the occupied territories, spending these funds on hiring militants from around the world and equipping them with weapons.