ISIL is now focusing its attacks on Libyan oil facilities after Syria and Iraq, experts say Sunday, claiming that the terrorist group wants to control oil resources.
Recently, ISIL started to attack oil ports and fields in Libya, manipulating the turmoil in the country. It carried out attacks on the al Mabrouk oil field co-owned by France and Libya in Tobruk, the oil port city on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near the border with Egypt.
A pipeline carrying 185,000 barrels a day from Sarir to the Hariga terminal in eastern Libya was blown up about a week ago by unknown militants, but Libyan officials believed it was carried out by ISIL.
'ISIL's focus on attacking oil resources and infrastructure in Libya, is an expected move,' Richard Heinberg, California-based Post Carbon Institute expert told The Anadolu Agency.
'These are strategically important for economic, political and symbolic reasons,' Heinberg said, adding that refined oil is also directly needed as a source of fuel for military operations.
He explained that the tough talk from Congress and the White House about defeating ISIL will contribute further to Western intervention which is unlikely to bring regional peace and stability.
'It is hard not to interpret all this as the crumbling of the 20th century empire of oil,' he concluded.
Mattia Toaldo, a Libya analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London said that it is part of the DNA of ISIL to try to control oil resources.
'In Libya this is evident from three facts,' said Toaldo, and explained that one of their first attacks was in Tobruk, an important oil port; another attack in Western Libya was against an oil field co-managed by Total; and their recent offensive is in Sirte which is in the middle of Libya's so-called 'oil crescent' an oil-rich region of the country.
There is no report of ISIL controlling any oil facility but the organization's offensive against oil regions has been growing very rapidly in the past weeks.
In Syria and Iraq, too, the terrorist group has been carrying attacks on oil fields, refineries and critical energy infrastructures.
By Selen Tonkus
Anadolu Agency
stonkus@aa.com.tr