How Much Oil is the Islamic State Group Producing?: Evidence from Remote Sensing

Accurately measuring oil production in low-governance contexts is an important task. Many terrorist organizations and insurgencies-including the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL/ISIS or Daesh-tap oil as a revenue source. Understanding spatial and temporal variation in production in their terr...

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
1. Verfasser: Do, Quy-Toan (VerfasserIn)
Format: Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: Washington, D.C The World Bank 2017
Schriftenreihe:World Bank E-Library Archive
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Zusammenfassung:Accurately measuring oil production in low-governance contexts is an important task. Many terrorist organizations and insurgencies-including the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL/ISIS or Daesh-tap oil as a revenue source. Understanding spatial and temporal variation in production in their territory can help address such threats by providing near real-time monitoring of their revenue streams, helping to assess long-term economic potential, and informing reconstruction strategies. More broadly, remotely measuring extractive industry activity in conflict-affected areas and other regions without reliable administrative data can support a broad range of public policy decisions and academic research. This paper uses satellite multi-spectral imaging and ground-truth pre-war output data to effectively construct a real-time day-to-day census of oil production in areas controlled by the terrorist group. The estimates of production levels were approximately 56,000 barrels per day (bpd) from July-December 2014, drop to an average of 35,000 bpd throughout 2015, before dropping further to approximately 16,000 bpd in 2016
Beschreibung:1 Online-Ressource (54 p)
DOI:10.1596/1813-9450-8231