Contrary to the worldwide public belief that ISIS is just another group of bloodthirsty militants, the terrorist organisation represents the next evolutionary step of Islamic militant fundamentalism. Whereas Osama bin Laden’s brainchild, Al-Qaeda, still depends on international donors, ISIS managed to reactivate a long sleeping black market economy, mainly but not exclusively, over the territories it controls. At the very epicentre of this initiative lies the shadow network of crude oil smugglers that was initially set up three decades ago by Saddam Hussein, with the aim of working around the U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Iraq (Interview with Correspondent Y 2014 a). The outcome has been astonishing, given that the Caliphate’s portfolio of assets now includes sixty percent of Syria's oil assets and seven oil producing assets in Iraq (Brookings 2014).
At some point, immediately after the launch of its crude oil venture in summer 2014, ISIS achieved production of roughly 30,000 barrels of oil per day (CNN 2015 b). This rate has gone up, and in February 2015 reached the mark 45,000 b/d. This is a stonking statistic and it becomes almost baffling if one considers the fact that the commodity is being smuggled within a war zone. Although the price of crude nosedived in the last two quarters of 2014 (see Graph I), it is estimated that the caliphate’s cash inflows reached levels between one and three million dollars per day (Vocativ 2014). Its key to success was the sale of crude oil at rock-bottom prices between $60 and $25, when the price of the commodity was correspondingly hovering around $100 and $80 per barrel. However, it has to be mentioned that since then, the series of air raids that have been launched by the U.S., with the support of a handful of other NATO and Gulf nations, effectively curtailed the ISIS oil cashflows, chiefly through the destruction of oil manufacturing facilities. An interesting point to be made is that extraction wells in the area of bombardments have yet to be targeted by the U.S. or the air-assets of its allies, a fact that can be readily attributed to the at times ‘toxic’ politics in the Middle East (New York Times 2014).
Source http://www.marsecreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/PAPER-on-CRUDE-OIL-and-ISIS.pdf
