Three Ways that Oil Matters for the Crisis in Iraq

Aug 13, 2014 | PeakOil
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For months now, Sunni militants from the Islamic State (better known as ISIS) have been seizing control of large swathes of Iraq.

But it wasn’t until they encroached into semi-autonomous Kurdish territory and near the Kurdish capital of Erbil — an oil boomtown full of Western companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil — that the Obama administration decided to authorize airstrikes against ISIS.