Oil addtiction and ISIS - SOAN 265 Sam Brown Gabriel Nunez Jon Ross Final Paper 4-2-2016

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Oil Addiction and ISIS
by Samuel Brown, Jonathan Ross, and
Gabriel Nunez
Resource Wars - SOAN - 265 -01
Professor Blaine D. Pope
4/9/2015

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Executive Summary
There are many different types of energy sources in this world, and though many
newer kinds continue to be developed, like renewables, one of the oldest and most widely
used is oil. A majority of the energy the United States produces comes from fossil fuels,
while very little come from renewable forms. The mention of this is not to innately
critique or evaluate the use or kinds of alternative energy sources, but rather to see where
the US gets its oil from, its main source of energy, and the implications this could have if
complications arise in the Middle East; as is seen through the rise of ISIS. The United
States receives a huge amount of its oil from OPEC, this organization comprised of 12
Member Countries, many of which are located in the Middle East. This is why the effects
of what happens in the Middle East, due to groups like ISIS or otherwise, could have a
large impact on the supply of oil the US imports daily.
The geopolitics pertaining to the relationship between ISIS and oil addiction
primarily involves the United States and other Middle East countries. The United States
has a lot of self-interest invested in the Middle East due to the vast amounts of oil found
there. The U.S. consumes so much oil that it must fight to make sure it keeps the oil
pumping, or else the whole economy would end up collapsing. They have a military
presence in the Middle East to ensure that they have some control of oil supply and oil
markets.
This presence conflicts with ISIS because ISIS views all non-Muslims as lesser
than them. They wish to recreate the Islamic caliphate and this requires and huge state
with only Muslims. Americans are seen as the direct of opposite of what ISIS stands and
fights for. They are angered by our heavy presence in land that they believe they have the
right to. This thought process has also occurred by other terrorist groups such as Al-
Qaeda. The Middle East would not be so tense and full of conflict if it weren’t for the
United States having such a presence in their backyard. The only reason the United States
is militarily present in the Middle East is oil. Our addiction to oil has cost us too many
conflicts and human lives.
Reliance on foreign oil began when the United States could no longer remain self-
sufficient in oil production in the 1970’s. The need for oil in the United States escalated
to the point that measures such as the Carter Doctrine were enacted, ensuring the
protection of oil resources in Saudi Arabia by any means necessary. This agreement to
deploy military power into the Middle East has played out at a rapid pace as new radical
groups such as ISIS have risen to carry out acts of terrorism. Within the details of the
partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia however, it becomes evident that
Saudi Arabia does not represent the political ideology of the United States and may in
fact be responsible for the military capabilities of ISIS.
ISIS represents a radical offshoot of the Wahhabi doctrine of Islamic law that is
the basis of Saudi Arabian society. ISIS is given military arms and funds directly via
Saudi Arabians that seek to support their violent interpretation of Islam. Continued
dependence on foreign oil feeds this flow of money and arms from Saudi Arabia to ISIS.
The negation of conflicts in the Middle East and stopping the spread of radical groups
such as ISIS may lie in a change in what energy resources we are invested in rather than
our military involvement.

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Where Does The US Get Its Oil?
It is important to know the location and amount of oil the U.S. uses, and just
where the majority of this oil is imported from. Once this knowledge is presented, it is
easier to make the connections between insatiable oil addiction and ISIS. To aid in the
understanding of the aforementioned, OPEC must be defined. The Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a permanent, intergovernmental Organization
whose objective is to “co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member
Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers; an efficient,
economic and regular supply petroleum to consuming nations; and a fair return on capital
to those investing in the industry.”1
OPEC has a very wide reach, as is seen through the amount of oil that is imported
to the U.S., from Member Countries in OPEC. There are currently 12 Member Countries
in OPEC: Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. In 2012, the U.S. received 38.8% of
its oil from inside the U.S., 19.6% from Latin America, Venezuela made up 5.9% of this
amount; 15.1% was imported from Canada, 12.9% was imported from the Persian Gulf,
and a staggering 8.1% of this came from Saudi Arabia; 10.3% was imported from Africa,
and of that, 5.2% came from Nigeria; while 3.1% of imported oil came from other
countries.2
In 2013, net imports from OPEC accounted for 56% of total U.S. net imports.
Based on 300,000 barrels imported per month to the United States, between May 2013
and November 2014, 125,000 barrels were imported from OPEC (12 countries) and
175,000 barrels were imported from non-OPEC countries, all 113 of them. This is an
astonishing figure, as this means that 42% of these 300,000 barrels of oil were imported
from just 12 countries, and 58% was imported from 113 countries.3
This is very significant because if something were to happen to one of the
countries that the U.S. receives oil from, in OPEC or otherwise, considering the threat of
ISIS in the Middle East, oil supply could be in danger, at least temporarily. The U.S. does
import a vast majority of oil from Saudi Arabia, however, it backs Saudi Arabia with
military aid, so it may be unlikely that ISIS would be able to drastically or significantly
affect oil imports into the U.S., whether as a direct or indirect consequence of their
actions. In putting in perspective the reliance and dependence the U.S. has on oil, in
2014, 69.03% of energy produced inside of the United States came from non-renewable
fossil fuels, while less than 10%, just 9.63% came from renewable energy. This
renewable energy includes conventional hydroelectric power, biomass, geothermal,
solar/photovoltaic, and wind.4
1 http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/24.htm
2 http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised
3 http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
4 http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/total_energy.pdf

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ISIS & Oil Addiction Geopolitics:
As with any conflict, there are two primary sides with a clash of interest. When it
comes to the relationship between ISIS and oil addiction, the two primary sides are ISIS
and the United States. Each of these opponents have special interests regarding the
Middle East. In the case of ISIS, they wish to create a broader Islamic caliphate. This
means that they want to reinstate a caliph who would lead the Muslim people. They see
this caliph as a successor to Muhammad. They also want foreign countries to stay out of
their region as a sense of a purity. The United States’ goal is to split Iraq into three
separate nations. The northern part of Iraq, which encompasses the vast oil fields of
Kirkuk, would become its own state. The central part of Iraq, where Baghdad is located,
would join with Jordan. Finally, the southern part of Iraq, where more oil fields are
located, would join Kuwait. The United States has 4 main reasons as to why they want to
do this:
 Prevent an anti-American government from coming to power in Baghdad
 Put pro-U.S. lands between current and potential geopolitical foes: Saudi Arabia,
Syria, and Iran
 Ensure control over oil supply and oil markets
 Justify heavy military presence as necessary for the defense of a young new state
asking for U.S. protection5
The United States’ primary focus is on oil. This plan would be carried out for the
sole purpose of a nonrenewable resource that we have become addicted to. The United
States wants to act in its own self-interest, but use a cover as if it is helping other people.
The presence of the U.S. in the Middle East has been causing instability there for years.
ISIS has become a recent threat, but their formation has probably been fueled by foreign
powers, primarily the United States, having a presence in their land. ISIS is very
intolerant of non-Muslims, so having countries like the United States in their territory
makes them very angry. There's a clash of ideological beliefs between western nations
and ISIS. The United States wouldn’t care about the Middle East if it didn't have oil. This
conflict that has been going on for years would never have occurred if the U.S. wasn't so
dependent on oil.
The successes of ISIS do come at a come at cost, as it is not at all cheap to wage
war and manage territorial conquests, with a population that is roughly the size of
Austria’s.6
Although ISIS is cut off from the rest of the world by financial and trade
sanctions, they are able to maintain a well-armed military while continuing to expand.
This terrorist group relies on a fairly complex system to manage the far-reaching
connections it has. Primarily operating through three currencies, cash, crude oil and
contraband, allows it to perform its operations outside of legitimate banking channels. It
5 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/16/blowback-isis-iraq-manufactured-
oil-addiction
6 http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/14/how-does-isis-fund-its-reign-terror-282607.html

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needs to be able to keep cash and the momentum it has to support roughly 8 million
people, the size of the population living in territories under ISIS control. The different
locations ISIS occupies can be seen in the following map of the Middle East, or rather,
“the new map of the Middle East.”7
The pace at which ISIS has amassed its wealth is
unprecedented, “and its revenue sources have a different composition from those of many
other terrorist organizations,” said the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Undersecretary
for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen. ISIS doesn’t “depend principally
on moving money across international borders…[but] obtains the vast majority of its
revenues from local criminal and terrorist activities.”8
This creates a challenging barrier
for the U.S. Treasury, which has traditionally pursued its enemies by pressuring
established banks to expose their criminal clients. In addition to this obstacle, ISIS uses
middlemen to smuggle cash in and out of its territory, employing decades-old smugglers’
route, making the activities of this group even harder to track.9
In order to stop ISIS and other groups of its kind, we must disentangle ourselves
from the Middle East. The only way we can do this is to reduce our dependency on oil.
The oil industry incubates terror in the Middle East; the more oil we consume, the more
we are indirectly funding these extremist groups in the Middle East. If the United States
were to get off oil, many groups would lose a lot of their critical funding. ISIS controls
11 oilfields in Iraq and Syria. They earn about $3 million in profit every day by
smuggling barrels across borders and selling them for between $25 and $60 a barrel. The
United States has been involved in the Middle East for far too long doing the same thing
over and over again. To quote the words of Albert Einstein, “The definition of insanity is
doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The United
States, and the world, needs to reduce their dependency on oil as it only brings negative
effects such as climate change, environmental degradation, and terror.
Driven by Depletion
Michael T. Klare’s work “The Race for What’s Left” outlines the concept of a
society being “Driven by depletion” in its search for resources. Oil is now more widely
understood to be a finite resource, which is depleting at a more rapid rate than
anticipated.10
The scarcity of resources can easily inspire conflicts over that which
remains. These conflicts are from there easily militarized and costly to the lives of the
people enveloped in them. With the levels of easily available liquid crude oil depleting
globally, resource related conflicts are on the rise. The connection between the United
States and the Middle East has consistently pertained to the United States needing a large
supply of oil. The partnership between Saudi Arabia and the United States has proved
profitable for both nations, as the United States receives oil while U.S. money flows into
Saudi Arabia. The benefits of this system however, come at a price. Militarized turmoil is
10 http://peak-oil.org/peak-oil-reference/peak-oil-data/oil-depletion/

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being seen in the Middle East in the present through radical groups such as ISIS. The
insatiable oil economy of the United States set the stage for the rise of these groups and
conflicts. Understanding the history of the partnership between the United States and
Saudi Arabia reveals how the United States became a foreign oil import dependent
nation.
The inception of the United States of America’s reliance on foreign oil can be
traced back as early as the 1930’s. Known as Standard Oil of California at the time,
Chevron was present in Saudi Arabia in 1932 following a deal King Abdul-Aziz made
with them to search for oil in the country. The next big move into Saudi Arabian oil
production would be when World War II arrived under the presidential administration of
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Understanding that the United States reliance on oil was only
going to increase, Roosevelt sought to strengthen the relationship between United States
business and Saudi Arabian oil production companies that had been made earlier. This
relationship was allegedly solidified with an infamous meeting in 1945 between President
Roosevelt and King Abdul-Aziz in Egypt. By then, Chevron had brought its partners
Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil into Saudi Arabia and became Arabian American Oil
Company or Aramco for short. In 1948 Aramco discovered the largest oil deposit yet in
the Ghawar Oil field and not long after in 1950 pipelines were built transferring oil from
Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that the United States could
no longer be self-sufficient in oil production. Access and ownership of oil is easily
translatable into political and economic dominance in the global market. Without local
production maintaining the United States market, more power was put in the hands of
Aramco in Saudi Arabia where major oil resources were located. Transferring that power
led to maximizing its profits by raising oil prices and the organization of oil exporting
countries OPEC leading an embargo on exports of oil to the United States. While this
threw the United States energy economy into disarray, Saudi Arabia’s wealth increased
tremendously. What Saudi Arabia did with all of this newfound wealth was buy as many
United States tanks, guns, and planes as it could. Effectively, the United States is
responsible for most if not all of the arms and military technology that Saudi Arabia
possesses.11
The partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia persisted and only
grew closer after the 70’s oil crisis. Perhaps as a prelude to the onset of warfare in the
Middle East involving the United States, President Jimmy Carter enacted the Carter
Doctrine. The Carter Doctrine outlined Saudi Arabia as an essential economic and
political ally to the United States that the United States would not hesitate to protect with
military might or any means necessary. This committed the United States to the
prioritization of oil production in a drastic sense. It is clearer now because of this that the
United State’s would not hesitate to deploy military into areas surrounding Saudi
Arabia. Since the Carter doctrine as well as the events that transpired on September 11th
2001, military involvement in the Middle East has only escalated and the severity of the
conflicts at hand have grown. The United States has continued to provide arms and
military technology to Saudi Arabia as well as Israel. During the Bush administration in
particular, in 2007 a weapons deal worth approximately $20 billion was made with Saudi
11 http://www.fpri.org/articles/2009/08/us-and-saudi-arabia-1930s

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Arabia and some surrounding allied Middle Eastern nations.12
ISIS today represents a
pressing incentive for military involvement in the Middle East to prevent acts of
terrorism, yet further investigation into its activities and funding sources reveal that ISIS
may operate with a connection to the United States oil industry.
No Real Villain
William R. Catton Jr, author of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary
Change, describes a concept of “No Real Villain”. This concept is derived from the
complexity of conflicts between individuals whether they are people or political powers.
Catton believes that when one takes into account the complexity of the relationship
between two entities, that it can be the case that neither party is in a clearly superior
moral standing. We will apply this concept to the United States and Saudi Arabia, as
unveiling the details of their activity in relation to ISIS makes coming to the conclusion
of just one power being in the just and correct position far less easy.
Research into Saudi Arabia’s government reveals it is a monarchy as well as a
state with no clear bill of rights or insurance of equal and fair treatment for its people.13
Despite these clear contradictions to the democratic philosophy of the United States, its
government has maintained its partnership with Saudi Arabia since it began the 1940’s.
Saudi Arabian society is ruled by the Wahhabi doctrine, a fundamentalist form of Islam.
Under this religious law certain personal freedoms that we consider legitimate in the
United States are unheard of. As mentioned earlier, Saudi Arabian military might today is
owed to their business relationship with the arms industries in the United States of
America. With this abundance of military technology, Saudi Arabia is more than capable
of supporting groups that are in line with the country’s beliefs. If one had to describe
ISIS’s guiding principles, you could parallel many of its values to that of the theocratic
powers in Saudi Arabian Society, although it is a far more radical and violent
interpretation of it. With that taken into account, it has been revealed that wealthy
individuals of Saudi Arabia have helped fund the activity of religiously based extremist
groups in line with their beliefs are given aid. Evidence exists to suggest that radical
groups such as ISIS receive money and arms from Saudi Arabian powers, enabling the
groups to gain control of areas and enact their militant extremist version Islamic law
under their defense.14
The concentration on ISIS as a terrorist threat tends to distract from the more
economic basis upon which the Middle East is becoming increasingly militarized by the
United States. Along with framing radical groups like ISIS as enemies of the United
States, it has been inevitable that profiling and fear of Islamic faith has increased. This
12 http://forusa.org/content/us-militarization-middle-east
13 https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/saudi-arabia
14 http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/2/noam_chomsky_on_how_the_iraq

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could be due to the fact that many of the names for ISIS, including ISIL and IS, all boil
down to referring to it as an “Islamic State”. While this is not an inaccurate description
for a group that is steeped in faith based leadership, the use of the term “Islamic State”
can be a misleading way to correlate the activity of violent radicals with the mainstream
population of Muslims. Individuals of political influence as well as political organizations
in the east and Europe have taken to the name “DAESH’ in reference to ISIS now, as it
deconstructs certain misconceptions about the radical group that are propagated when
referring to them as an “Islamic State”.15
DAESH is the abbreviation of the Arab
acronym for the group. To call ISIS representative of Islam writ large is a
misunderstanding of the expansive population of Muslims across the world. It is
estimated that the number of Muslims in the world is on the order of over 2 billion, while
ISIS can only represent a minute fraction of that.16
Contrasting the scale of ISIS versus
that of the entire population of the Islamic faith, it is clear that they represent a fraction of
the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia does share in many beliefs with the Islamic State, but
not to such a violent extent. To say that the entirety of Muslims in Saudi Arabia agree
with what ISIS is doing would be a dramatic overstatement as well. Taking these factors
into account the international community benefits from referring to the extremist group
by “DAESH” as opposed to “ISIS”.
The consistency in the oil partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia
has meant one of two things. Either the United States government is entirely unaware of
the connection between Saudi Arabians funding ISIS operations, or they are aware and
are complacent with this development. What have they done to check on this? Seeing as
this relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States is tied so closely with oil,
we can assert that the connection between America’s intense reliance on foreign oil and
the development of extremist radical groups such as ISIS as a result of the wealth of
Saudi Arabia is a viable claim.
Where Do We Go From Here?
As we are now aware of these connections between the United States Oil industry
and the violent activity of radical groups such as ISIS, what could the United States do to
reduce its contribution to these groups? Changing the current system of economic
partnership based on oil will prove difficult, as businesses in the oil industry hold
immense power in our congress. In Christopher Palenti’s “Tropic of Chaos”, in which he
predicts intense future conflicts over the world’s remaining resources, he offers a few
actions toward initiating the change of our reliance on oil. Because of the infiltration of
the oil industry into the decision making side of our government, the collective power to
demand this change must come by popular consensus. If enough citizens speak up about
the need to shift away from oil, only then may governments entrenched in big oil’s
15 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/09/17/france-is-ditching-the-islamic-state-
name-and-replacing-it-with-a-label-the-group-hates/
16 http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/muslim-population-growth.aspx

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influence be able to consider pulling away. Carbon emissions mitigation will follow
immediately after cutting down from petroleum use. Increasing the energy efficiency of
our technology and investing in renewable resources could effectively reduce our need
for fossil fuels greatly. Our understanding of history and the present is that the reliance on
petroleum has driven us to place economic power on an international scale in the hands
of very few nations. Aggressive conflict with other nations over the rights to the
resources of those influential nations are negated when country’s build their energy
infrastructure on the basis of sustainability.
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Figure 3.
Renewable Energy 9.63%
Fossil Fuels
69.03%

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