Syria is yet another country that doesn’t want the U.S. in it. From Steven Sahiounie at strategic-culture.su:
The main oil field of Al Omar and Conoco in Syria are producing oil which is shipped in tankers by the U.S. Army and refined at Kar Oil Refinery in Erbil.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRG) claimed responsibility for missile attacks on an Israeli “spy headquarters.” Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee and four of his family members were killed in the attack on their home on January 16 near the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR).
Dizayee was the owner of the Falcon Group, which is a business involved in oil and gas, agriculture and security. The IRG claimed its missiles targeted a “Mossad headquarters”.
“No U.S. facilities were impacted. We’re not tracking damage to infrastructure or injuries at this time,” a U.S. official said in response to the recent attack.
Prime Minister of the IKR, Masrour Barzani, condemned the IRG attacks on Erbil.
The Oil business in Erbil
The oil business is thriving in IKR, and the Falcon Group was part of it. Kurdish oil has been exported to Israel, Italy, France and Greece through a secretive trade depending on pre-pay deals.
Israel buys much of its oil from Erbil, and Israel depends on the heavily discounted crude, making it a key customer. The oil is discounted to Israel because it is free, as the source is the stolen Syrian oil. 40% of Israel’s oil supplies were from IKR in the first three months of 2023, which doubled the amount in 2022.
Israel received its first substantial seaborne crude oil shipment from the IKR in 2014, which is the same time the U.S. occupation forces arrived in Syria. Israel was reportedly importing as much as three-quarters of its crude oil needs from the IKR by mid-2015.
Israeli refineries and oil companies imported almost $1 billion worth of Kurdish oil between May and August of 2023, according to shipping data, trading sources and satellite tanker tracking, which represents about 77 % of average Israeli demand, which runs at roughly 240,000 barrels per day. More than a third of all of the northern Iraqi exports, which are shipped from Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, went to Israel over the period.
Would Yemen be a good place for an oil pipeline or is it too mountainous?