Curse of the Black Gold

Photographs by Ed Kashi

Residents of Okrika, Nigeria, where oil pipelines slice through town, live in constant fear: oil fires and pipeline leaks are hardly uncommon, clashes between militia groups and the government are both bloody and frequent, rebel camps dot the outlying jungle. The town of Okrika lies some 20 miles up the Bonny River from the Atlantic coast; the river threads through the oil-rich Niger Delta, and at its mouth lies one of the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Company's primary oil export terminals. There the world's most geopolitically contentious commodity departs from the same place that African slaves once did, destined for ports around the world. Ed Kashi, whose photographs have appeared in publications such as National Geographic and OnEarth, traveled to the Niger Delta to document the devastation wrought on its people as well as on the environment. In Curse of the Black Gold, Kashi reveals a population enslaved by our hunger for cheap oil.