US Destroys Syria’s Oil Infrastructure While "Fighting" ISIS

[Reinhard]

US Destroying Syria’s Oil Infrastructure Under Guise of Fighting ISIS


The US is considering bombing pipelines in Syria, which it claims is in an attempt to cut off the huge profits being made by ISIS from captured oilfields.



The Independent quotes Julieta Valls Noyes, the deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs during a visit to London, that ISIS was making $2 million a day off oil sales and that the US would consider airstrikes as well as “kinetic strikes against some pipelines” and “actual physical action to stop the flow”.

The trouble with this justification for destroying Syria’s oil pipelines, is that ISIS does not have the capability to use the pipelines to transfer oil. ISIS transports the stolen oil on the back of trucks, and sells it on the black market in Turkey.

This is admitted in the same Independent article that quoted Ms. Noyes.

The Independent claims:

• Isis has sold some of the fuel from seized facilities back to the Damascus regime through local deals, while shipments had been sent into Turkey for the black market, with the Erdogan government accused of turning a blind eye to the illicit transactions.

If the US truly intended to stop ISIS oil profits, they would bomb these oil convoys, which are easily spotted via conventional surveillance flights already allegedly taking place as part of ongoing Western operations. The US agenda behind destroying Syria’s pipelines has very little to do with ISIS oil profits, and far more to do with destroying Syria’s oil infrastructure. In fact, the statistic that ISIS is making 2 million dollars a day from the sale of crude oil is an estimate from a single consulting company (IHS) based in Colorado in the United States. The US administration is choosing to quote this as if it were without a shred of doubt. It’s far more likely that the scale of the profits has been overblown to deflect from the fact that ISIS is receiving funding from state actors such as Turkey, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states, while at the same time providing an excuse to target Syrian infrastructure.

Earlier last month the US-led airstrikes on Syria and Iraq supposedly destroyed small oil refineries in Raqqa. No effort was made to prove whether or not ISIS was in fact capable of using Syria’s oil refineries. In fact the same consulting company which the US administration is quoting about ISIS oil profits (IHS), states that ISIS is selling unrefined crude oil. The IHS adds the caveat that this estimate was made before "US airstrikes" alluding to the notion that US airstrikes have had an effect on ISIS oil profits. However, the Britain based pro-insurgency Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which was the West establishment-run media’s most reliable source years into the Syrian crisis, said that the oil refineries were not real targets and were not being used by ISIS.

Reuters would report:

'These so-called refineries are not a real target and they do not weaken the Islamic State as they do not have any financial value for them,' Rami Abdel Rahman of the Observatory told Reuters. 'They are composed of trucks with equipment to separate diesel and petrol used by civilians.'
Syria’s two main oil refineries are known to be in Homs and Banyas, not anywhere near Raqqa. The US Declaration that they are destroying ISIS makeshift refineries, is all smoke and mirrors, and will probably be used as a justification to destroy more of Syria’s infrastructure in future.

The destruction of Syria’s oil infrastructure would also open the door for US and UK oil companies to win contracts to rebuild it, paid for in debt, by the Syrian state. Foreign companies running Syria’s oil and gas production would prevent Syria from nationalising their own resources and becoming an independent prosperous country. This would result in the basic enslavement of the country while mitigating the threat it poses to US client states including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Pipe Dreams

There is more to the US objectives than profiting off of Syria’s oil. The US also seeks to control the flow of oil and its sale to other nations, which is a far more important in achieving global hegemony. Their objective may also have more to do with Iran and Russia’s gas reserves than it does Syria’s oil.

The Guardian claims:

• In 2009 … Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.
  
  Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo – and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines. The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a “direct slap in the face” to Qatar’s plans.

The planned Iran-Iraq-Syria Pipeline running through Syria’s coast and into the Mediterranean along which Russia has a presence, would allow Russian control over the tap and flow of Iran’s gas, mitigating rivalry between the countries.

Qatar’s interest in funding the insurrection, was to overthrow Syria and install a pliable opposition that would sign Qatar’s pipeline agreement. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan also had a vested interest in this plan. This suited the US objective of undercutting and weakening Russian influence over Europe.

However they also have an alternative plan for doing so. The planned Nabbaco Pipeline, running from Iran to Turkey to Europe, would directly set Iranian gas against Russian gas. Furthermore, in the absence of the successful overthrow of the Syrian government, the US has settled for destroying what it cannot control. Perpetual war and the destruction of pipelines would prevent or at least delay any possible pipeline agreement in future.

With mainstream media headlines like “US bombing ISIS pipelines” it’s easy to forget that the pipelines and refineries the US is planning to bomb do not belong to ISIS, but to the Syrian people.

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[David York]

The Independent quotes Julieta Valls Noyes, the deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs during a visit to London, that ISIS was making $2 million a day off oil sales and that the US would consider airstrikes as well as “kinetic strikes against some pipelines” and “actual physical action to stop the flow”.

An interesting post and articles. Just another example of the United States lying to its people about what they are doing abroad and why. Everything they say is a lie, just like when the said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When are people going to have enough of this lying and stop tolerating this fraudulent government? Thank God for the Internet because without it it would be difficult to access information the government doesn't want you to know.

On a side note, I never heard of Kinetic strikes before. Does that have something to do with the HAARP antennas in Alaska or is that something else? Is Ionic warfare available at this point in time?

[L.G. Morgan]

A kinetic bombardment is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile, where the destructive force comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high velocities. The concept is often encountered in science fiction and originated during the Cold War.

The typical depiction of the tactic is of a satellite containing a magazine of tungsten rods and a directional thrust system. When a strike is ordered, the satellite would brake one of the rods out of its orbit and into a geostationary position while directly over the target. The rod would then begin to fall towards the earth, picking up immense speed until it reached terminal velocity shortly before impact. The rods would often be shaped so as to increase the terminal velocity.

From an old Popular Science article

A pair of satellites orbiting several hundred miles above the Earth would serve as a weapons system. One functions as the targeting and communications platform while the other carries numerous tungsten rods—up to 20 feet in length and a foot in diameter—that it can drop on targets with less than 15 minutes’ notice. When instructed from the ground, the targeting satellite commands its partner to drop one of its darts. The guided rods enter the atmosphere, protected by a thermal coating, traveling at 36,000 feet per second—comparable to the speed of a meteor. The result: complete devastation of the target, even if it’s buried deep underground. (The two-platform configuration permits the weapon to be “reloaded” by just launching a new set of rods, rather than replacing the entire system.)

The concept of kinetic-energy weapons has been around ever since the RAND Corporation proposed placing rods on the tips of ICBMs in the 1950s; the satellite twist was popularized by sci-fi writer Jerry Pournelle. Though the Pentagon won’t say how far along the research is, or even confirm that any efforts are underway, the concept persists. The “U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan,” published by the Air Force in November 2003, references “hypervelocity rod bundles” in its outline of future space-based weapons, and in 2002, another report from RAND, “Space Weapons, Earth Wars,” dedicated entire sections to the technology’s usefulness.

If so-called “Rods from God”—an informal nickname of untraceable origin—ever do materialize, it won’t be for at least 15 years. Launching heavy tungsten rods into space will require substantially cheaper rocket technology than we have today. But there are numerous other obstacles to making such a system work. Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org, argues that the rods’ speed would be so high that they would vaporize on impact, before the rods could penetrate the surface. Furthermore, the “absentee ratio”—the fact that orbiting satellites circle the Earth every 100 minutes and so at any given time might be far from the desired target—would be prohibitive. A better solution, Pike argues, is to pursue the original concept: Place the rods atop intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would slow down enough during the downward part of their trajectory to avoid vaporizing on impact. ICBMs would also be less expensive and, since they’re stationed on Earth, would take less time to reach their targets. “The space-basing people seem to understand the downside of space weapons,” Pike says—among them, high costs and the difficulty of maintaining weapon platforms in orbit. “But I’ll still bet you there’s a lot of classified work on this going on right now.”