Cutting Off ISIS' Oil Revenues

Alan: Am I missing something? Or is "the press" overlooking the obvious? Relatively small military installations could choke off ISIS pipelines in any number of places. It would perhaps be easiest to shut down pipelines at that point where the pipeline leaves ISIS controlled territory. If other nations' oil is being piped through the same conduit, then have those nations pay half the corresponding oil revenue in exchange for leave the supply line open, revenues that would be used to fight "The Caliphate."

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"Treasury and other U.S. agencies will need to implement a hybrid strategy that both diminishes the coffers of a state while ferreting out the secretive financial channels of a terrorist organization, according to current and former U.S. officials....Stopping Islamic State's oil sales will require much stricter policing of Turkey's borders with Syria as well as those controlled by the semiautonomous Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, current and former U.S. officials said. Tracking the terrorist group's oil infrastructure shouldn't be difficult if regional governments cooperate....The U.S. and the European Union are also redoubling their efforts to cut off the funding of Islamic State from overseas donors." Jay Solomon in The Wall Street Journal

Islamic State's financial independence poses quandary for its foes. "The Islamic State has almost weaned itself off private funds from sympathetic individual donors in the Gulf. Such money flows have come under increased scrutiny from the U.S. Treasury. Instead the group has formalized a system of internal financing that includes an Islamic form of taxation, looting and most significantly, oil sales, to run their 'state' effectively. This suggests it will be harder to cut the group's access to the local funding....Nevertheless, financing from Gulf donors may prove more critical in months to come, if U.S. President Barack Obama's mission to 'degrade and destroy' the group succeeds and the group loses territory and finds itself looking abroad for funds." Raheem Salman and Yara Bayoumy in Reuters.

Explainer: Oil, extortion and crime — how the Islamic State gets its money. NBC News.