Oil has loomed large in the Middle East’s integration into the global economy over the last century. The discovery of oil hastened the external power’s entry into the region early in the twentieth century. The advent of state ownership over oil and establishment of national oil companies (NOCs) in the mid-twentieth century shifted the dynamics of economic and geopolitical competition, allowing states to gain greater share of oil revenues. In the last decade, as states across the region suffered breakdown and civil war, smuggling has become a major feature of the region’s war economies. While the media provide lurid details about unregistered ships, shadowy brokers, and armed assaults, a parallel clash occurs to control NOCs, central banks and other financial institutions tied to petroleum sales. Indeed, numerous rebel groups have launched their own parallel legal institutions to claim the authority to dispose of oil revenues. Such entities are distinctly outward, and indeed, international-facing, unlike conventional smuggling and freebooting. This paper examines three cases of rebel oil in MENA using a combination of news reports, interviews, and rebel propaganda material, including social media postings. First, the effort by the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq to sell oil from the northern fields outside the purview of the Baghdad-based Iraqi National Oil Company and Iraqi Central Bank. Second, the effort by the House of Representatives government, based in Tobruk and aligned with rebel General Khalifa Haftar, to gain control over the Libya’s national oil company and central bank. Third is the Houthi’s self-proclaimed Supreme Political Council in northern Yemen and its attempts to block the government’s control over fuel imports and issuance of credit and currency. Despite differences in the ways they claimed legal authority and linked oil production and oil financing, these cases highlight the distinctly extroverted nature of rebellion and the importance of flows of foreign finances to sustaining rebellions. Rebellion is a function not just of physical possession of oil, but of the legal and juridical ability to distribute it and derive value from it through access to international capital. Rebel oil is an important component in rebel’s governance and diplomatic strategies and serve as an interface between rebel zones and foreign powers that can enhance the durability and legitimacy of rebel rule.