Photojournalist Samuel James's photographs from the Niger Delta region bring to light the hidden and perilous world of illegal oil trading. Oil-rich Nigeria produces the most oil of any African country, yet struggles with widespread poverty and corruption. "Faced with limited options in a ravaged landscape," James says, "many people living within the creeks of the Niger Delta are risking everything, including the future of the river upon which their lives depend, to survive."

In this image, shot in a dying swamp forest in the Niger Delta, a worker pours crude on a fire to begin the refining process. Entire camps often explode when the fumes produced during the refining process catch fire. The workers cook under the cover of night to evade authorities tracking the smoke from their operations.

Throughout the Niger Delta, rogue syndicates engaged in industrial-scale crude-oil theft, known locally as bunkering, sell stolen oil in remote creeks and swamps. Makeshift refineries distill it to diesel, then ship it downriver to be sold on the black market. Bunkering often results in considerable damage to pipes, causing oil to leak into the water.

Here a group of young men in the Niger Delta travel to the refinery that they built and operate, hidden deep within the brackish mangrove channels near the coast of the Atlantic.

A man bathes in the river while cooking crude oil into diesel fuel at an illicit refinery deep in the creeks of the Niger Delta.

The Delta’s refinery workers labor in environmentally toxic conditions, and are under constant threat from government authorities and local militias trying to assert control over the bunkering trade. Nevertheless, diesel cooking remains significantly more lucrative than subsistence farming and fishing, and most assume these risks to lift their families out of abject poverty.

At an illicit refinery deep in the creeks of the Niger Delta, a worker discards boiling sludge, a byproduct of refining, in a pit in the jungle.

According to Agence France-Presse, the Nigerian government loses an estimated $7 billion to oil theft yearly—but the impact on communities and the environment of this illegal trade is harder to quantify. Photographer James said this to Harper's Magazine about the process of refining siphoned oil:

“The refining process itself is extremely risky. It requires boiling crude oil at high temperatures, then channeling the vapors into a cooling chamber filled with water. The technology is very rudimentary. For generations, men in the Niger Delta used this same process to distill palm sap into a potent gin known locally as Ogogoro. Sometimes wood fires...are used to boil crude. But more often, workers fill open pits with crude oil and light them on fire. The fumes and waste produced are toxic and flammable. Whole camps can, and often do, explode. You can tell where diesel cooking is going on because people are burned all over their bodies.” 

 

An elderly woman journeys at dawn into a creek in the Niger Delta. She has made this trip nearly every day of her life, setting traps and catching fish to feed her family. Though certain tracts remain unspoiled, the oil and gas industry, both legal and illicit, has severely polluted much of the Delta’s fragile ecosystem—disrupting traditional livelihoods such as farming and fishing.

After hours of unloading 300-plus-pound drums of illicitly refined diesel fuel in the Niger Delta, a child rests in the water just off the jetty.

To see more images from the Nigerian Delta, shot on assignment for Harper's Magazine in 2012, visit Samuel James's website. All captions by Samuel James.