Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the recapture of the Qayyara oil producing regions south of Mosul from forces loyal to the Islamic State on Thursday, according to a new report by Reuters.
The fields in Qayyara produce heavy sour crude, and a refinery near the area processes a portion of the oil that is extracted from the area.
In July, the Iraqi army dislodged ISIS from the Qayyara airbase, turning it into a support center for future offences against ISIS-held Mosul - the largest city under the terrorist group's control in both Iraq and Syria.
Abadi has been working closely with the U.S. military to meet his goal of defeating ISIS by end of 2016.
On July 31st, Abadi received the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, in Baghdad for the fifth time since October 2015 to discuss the future of military cooperation between Iraq and the U.S. in the war against ISIS.
Both countries are optimistic that the terrorist group will be defeated in the coming months due to a string of recent military successes.
"In the first few visits -- July, October, even into December -- I think there was a lot of angst about whether or not the support they were getting was sufficient, whether they were making the right progress on the right timeline and so on," Dunford told reporters after the meetings in Baghdad. "The corner kind of turned after the first of the year, but you can really see it know where it's not a question in their minds of whether they will beat [ISIL] -- it's a question of when."
By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com
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Zainab Calcuttawala is an American journalist based in Morocco. She completed her undergraduate coursework at the University of Texas at Austin (Hook’em) and reports on… More