The U.S. did not start bombing the Islamic State's oil infrastructure and oil distribution system until the Russian president Putin shamed U.S. President Obama at the G20. Putin showed around satellite pictures of huge oil truck assemblies waiting in the desert to be filled. These were through 13 month of bombing left completely unmolested by U.S. air strikes. The U.S. then bombed a bit and claimed to have destroyed 116 waiting oil trucks while the Russians claimed to have destroyed over 1,000.
So far I have found four reason given to explain why the U.S. did not bomb, and does not seriously bomb, the oil truck convoys.
The Obama administration has also balked at attacking the Islamic State’s fleet of tanker trucks — its main distribution network — fearing civilian casualties.
A former CIA director says concerns about environmental impact have prevented the White House from bombing oil wells that finance the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“We didn’t go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn’t want to do environmental damage, and we didn’t want to destroy that infrastructure,” Michael Morell said Tuesday on PBS’s “Charlie Rose.”
Long-term economic damage to Iraq and Syria
In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris this month, the United States has more aggressively targeted the militants’ oil production and smuggling operations, which it had held off from doing for fear of inflicting long-term damage to the Iraqi and Syrian economies.
Regime change in Syria has precedence
Just think of it: IS has killed American nationals and yet the Pentagon has been ordered to handle the IS with kid gloves! President Barack Obama waxes eloquently about his determination to “degrade and destroy” the IS, but the Pentagon is under instructions not to disrupt the IS’ oil trade! This is cold-blooded statecraft. Obama probably knows all about the Turkish elite’s flourishing business, but then, he has uses for Erdogan, too. Simply put, the regime change agenda in Syria got precedence over cutting off the IS’s funding sources.
Three of the above four reasons were given by the Obama administration or its proxies, one by an astute observer, Guess which of those reasons is the real one.