Terrorist PKK/YPG usurps $2.5B worth of Syrian oil every year

By Esref Musa and Omer Koparan

TAL ABYAD, Syria (AA) - The terrorist organization YPG/PKK, which occupies more than 70% of Syria's oil fields, usurps Syrian oil worth $2.5 billion a year through domestic and international sales, according to sources in the field.

Currently, the Al-Omar, Izbe, Tanak and Conoco fields in Deir ez-Zor, northeastern Syria, and Suweidiyah and Rumeylan in the northeastern Hasakah province are among the largest oil and gas fields occupied by the terrorist YPG/PKK.

In 2011, the year Syria’s civil war began, 386,000 barrels of oil were produced daily, with oil reserves concentrated in the country’s northeast, according to data from its Petroleum and Natural Resources Ministry.

According to information obtained by Anadolu from sources responsible for drilling and shipments in the fields operated by the terrorist groups, the terrorist YPG/PKK extracts at least 150,000 barrels of oil daily in the regions it occupies.

Anadolu reporters captured footage of horse-drawn pumps operated by YPG/PKK terrorists in the Hasakah province and trucks carrying oil to northern Iraq through the Semalka border crossing.

The footage shows dozens of oil-laden trucks entering northern Iraq through the Semalka crossing and Al-Mahmudiyah crossing point.

YPG/PKK terrorists ship thousands of barrels of crude oil daily to northern Iraq due to technical infrastructure and logistical problems in oil production.

While some of the oil refined abroad is brought back to the regions occupied by the terrorist group, the rest is transported by tankers to northern Iraq and sold illegally here.

The terrorist organization sells the oil it delivers to northern Iraq at $30 a barrel.

- Most oil goes to Assad regime

Although the US imposed so-called Caesar sanctions on Syria’s Assad regime, the terrorist YPG/PKK sells most of its crude and processed oil to the regime.

The group sends some of the oil in tankers through the Euphrates River with smugglers it cooperates with, and the rest through the transit point in the Tabqa district of Raqqa, Syria.

The terrorist group carries out oil deliveries with trucks belonging to Husam Katirici, who was placed on a US sanctions list in September 2018.

According to information from sources at the crossing point in Tabqa, vehicles belonging to Katirici's company transport an average of 200 oil tankers daily to Assad regime-held areas.

The terrorist YPG/PKK sells some 35,000 barrels of oil to the regime daily through Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The terror group sells them to the regime at $70 per barrel.

Anadolu also obtained information on the amount of oil that the terrorist group traffics illegally and the prices seen this year.

The terrorist group earns $900,000 per day from 30,000 barrels of oil it sells to northern Iraq at $30 per barrel, or about $328.5 milllion annually.

It earns $2.45 million daily and more than $894 million annually from the 35,000 barrels of oil it smuggles to the regime region.

-$1.2B a year for terrorist activities

Thus, the terrorist YPG/PKK's annual income from the oil it sells to the Assad regime and northern Iraq exceeds $1.2 billion.

The remaining 85,000 barrels of unrefined oil per day are sold to dealers and smugglers in the region occupied by the terrorist group at an average of $42 per barrel. At $3.57 million per day, this translates into an annual income of $1.3 billion.

Thus, the terror group usurps $2.5 billion worth of Syrians' oil every year.

Considering that the terrorist YPG/PKK captured the region from the ISIS/Daesh terror group in late 2017 with support from the US – which for years has resisted recognizing ample evidence provided by Türkiye that it is a terrorist group – it becomes clear that the terror group has put a much larger amount into its coffers in the six-and-a-half years since.

After going into the terrorist YPG/PKK’s coffers, the funds must be used by the terror group on its separatist campaign in Syria, its efforts to form a terrorist belt along Türkiye’s borders, and its endeavors to terrorize locals in northeastern Syria.

In its nearly 40-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US, and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian offshoot.

*Writing by Serdar Dincel from Istanbul