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Features

The wars that really are about the oil

You can’t understand any of the world’s crises without understanding petropolitics

30 August 2014

9:00 AM

30 August 2014

9:00 AM

Is international conflict really just a fight over oil? It sometimes seems that way. In Syria and Iraq, the militants of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ sell captured oil while battling to establish a puritanical Sunni theo-cracy. From Central Asia to Ukraine, Russia is contesting attempts (backed by the US) to minimise Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and natural gas.

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