IraqISIS insurgents take over Iraq’s largest refinery, continue advance toward Baghdad

Earlier this morning (Wednesday) ISIS Islamic militants took over Iraq’s biggest oil refinery, located near the town of Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad.

The fall of the refinery is a major blow to the already-reeling government of Nouri al-Maliki. The refinery provides about 40 percent of Iraq’s refined oil needs, and if the supplies dry up, the Iraqi economy would be paralyzed within a few days, and Iraqi citizens would be without power or gas for their cars.

As was the case since the ISIS campaign began late last week, the Iraqi military and security forces put up only a token resistance, with most of their units melting away and leaving their arms and equipment behind without even engaging the militants.

The capture of the Baiji refinery, and the ability to sell the oil refined there, would add an important source of income to ISIS, similar to its sources of income in Syria. In Syria, the Assad regime, since last summer, has stopped attacking ISIS formations – and release from jails all the ISIS fighters it was holding – in an effort to strengthen the Islamists. The regime allowed the Islamist organization to solidify its hold on vast areas in east Syria, including oil-producing areas, from which the organization has been selling oil for the last eight months. The Assad regime continued to attack the moderate anti-regime rebels, and encouraged the ISIS and al-Nusra Islamists to do the same. Assad reckoned that if the opposition to his regime would be perceived as consisting mostly of Islamist fanatics, it would be more difficult for Western powers to support the opposition, and would also make it more difficult for moderate Syrian Sunnis to support the rebels.

An Iraqi military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta, appearing on Iraqi TV, denied that the Baiji refinery had fallen, but little of what the Maliki government and its spokesmen have said in the last five days corresponded to reality on the ground.

ISIS fighters have set up checkpoints to control access to the sprawling refinery area.

The refinery had been under siege for about a week, after the surrounding Salahuddin Province had fallen to the rebels.

The German company Siemens said it had evacuated its fifty employees from the facility over the weekend. ISIS militants have allowed both foreign and Iraqi employees to leave the refinery without harassing them.

The refinery security contractor, Olive Group, said earlier it has evacuated all the foreign workers from the site.

The Baiji complex, in addition to including Iraq’s largest refinery, is also the site of a 600-megawatt power plant, which supplies electricity to much of northern Iraq.

The New York Times reports that the refinery has the capacity to process 310,000 barrels of oil produced in northern Iraq, and provides refined products to eleven Iraqi provinces, including Baghdad, chiefly for domestic consumption. Iraqi officials said that the insurgents shut down the refinery, but that it was not damaged.

Iraq is the second largest oil producer in OPEC, representing the largest source of oil-production growth among the twelve member countries.