Turkish government does not buy Daesh oil: experts

ANKARA

There is no evidence that the Turkish government buys oil from Daesh, experts from around the world told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov made the accusation on Tuesday. However, the Russian government has not yet produced evidence of their claim.

Lina Khatib, senior research associate at the Arab Reform Initiative, said the Russian accusation is "just a war of words".

"The only state that has been proved to be buying oil from Daesh is in fact the Syrian one," Khatib said. "It is Russia's ally Assad whose regime has been a key client of Daesh's. There is no denying that Daesh-produced oil has been making its way to the black market outside Syria. But that does not mean that the Turkish state is buying this oil."

Khatib said there are also indications that some Russian middlemen are involved in Syrian oil black market.

"I therefore expect that this war of words will eventually die down before it results in embarrassment for everyone involved," she added.

Gareth Jenkins, a senior fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, said that in Turkey the official border crossing points are currently mostly closed, which makes it very difficult to use vehicles such as trucks for smuggling.

"According to the Turkish law enforcement authorities, some of the oil is being smuggled in barrels, which are either floated across the river or carried on mules and some in temporary rubber pipes laid across the border," Jenkins said. "These are relatively cheap and can sometimes be quite difficult to detect."

Jenkins noted that, when the Turkish gendarmerie find one, then the smuggler abandons it and lays another one across the border somewhere else.

"How much oil arrives from Daesh is extremely difficult to tell. The oil is usually passes through so many middlemen before it gets to the border that even the people who are smuggling it across often don’t know whether it has originated in a Daesh-controlled area or from somewhere else in Syria," Jenkins explained.

Luay al-Khatteeb, a nonresident fellow from the Brookings Doha Center, said that surplus volumes for exports (if any) would be very limited and could only be used to swap for refined products.

"To my knowledge, Daesh oil smuggling from Iraq is currently down to less than five thousand barrels a day, and around 35 thousand a day from Syrian producing fields – a production level way below the local demand needed as feedstock for Daesh controlled territory," al-Khatteeb said.

"Moscow did not provide any evidence to prove its accusations, thus its allegations will be considered as politically motivated. They [the illegal oil smugglers] are working individually and have nothing to do with the Turkish government." said Naser Al-Tamimi, a Middle East energy expert.

On Sept. 2, 2011, the Council of the European Union had also put sanctions on a number of individuals and entities, froze their assets and imposed travel bans on them, and said the arms embargo imposed on Syria on May 9, 2011 continues to remain in place. The EU sanctions also targeted oil and petroleum products' exports, imports, purchases and transportation.

During that time, Syria's average oil production was around 385,000 barrels per day, and exports averaged 150,000 barrels a day. While 92 percent of Syria's oil exports reached Europe, the country is estimated to have earned €3.1 billion from export of crude and petroleum products to the EU in 2010, according to a report by London-based international law firm Holman Fenwick Willan.

Also the U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Nov. 25 that it has imposed sanctions on four individuals and six organizations for providing support to the government of Syria and facilitating Daesh oil sales to the Syrian government.