On Dec. 19, more than 20 fighters, bombers and attack aircraft from the U.S. and two coalition partners carried out "the largest deliberate or pre-planned strike that the coalition has conducted" against oil targets of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. The airstrikes with more than 150 munitions hit five gas and oil separation points in Syria's eastern desert, and two crude oil collection points near the self-proclaimed ISIS capital of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, Warren said this week in a telephone briefing to the Pentagon from Baghdad. The strikes "dealt a significant blow" to ISIS oil revenue and demonstrated the coalition's ability to "apply pressure to ISIL across the breadth and the depth of their so-called ‘caliphate,'" Warren said, using another acronym for ISIS.
Fighters from the Islamic State group parade in their northern Syrian stronghold, Raqqa
The targeting of ISIS oil facilities and delivery trucks has been dubbed Operation Tidal Wave II by the Pentagon. The original Operation Tidal Wave was the B-24 Liberator bomber raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Romania during World War II. As airstrikes have intensified, international efforts to block ISIS' access to financial systems have been lacking in coordination. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who led a meeting of world finance ministers at the United Nations Security Council last Thursday, hailed a resolution on tightening existing sanctions against ISIS but said too many member nations were failing to participate. "This resolution is a critical step, but the real test will be determined by actions we each take after adoption," Lew said after the resolution passed. "We need meaningful implementation, coordination and enforcement from each country represented here, and many others."
The resolution sponsored by the U.S. and Russia expressed "concern about the lack of implementation" of previous resolutions on the financing of both the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and al-Qaida. The resolution also noted an "insufficient level of reporting" by member states on what they have done to implement the sanctions. In a background briefing at the Pentagon last week, a senior Obama administration official said that ISIS controls about 80 percent of the oil assets in Syria but the U.S. only has rough estimates on how much money ISIS is making off oil. The current estimate is between $40 million and $48 million per month, or about $1.5 million daily, "but I don't believe that number is accurate anymore" after the recent airstrikes, the official said. "How much lower, you're going to have to ask me again in a couple of weeks."
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