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50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta
Power Press
July 2008
On Sale: June 30, 2008
223 pages
ISBN: 1576874265
EAN: 9781576874264
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta
takes a graphic look at the profound cost of oil
exploitation in West Africa. Featuring images by world-
renowned photojournalist Ed Kashi and text by Nobel
Laureate Wole Soyinka, prominent Nigerian journalists,
human rights activists, and University of California at
Berkeley professor Michael Watts, this book traces the 50-
year history of Nigeria’s oil interests and the resulting
environmental degradation and community conflicts that have
plagued the region.
Now one of the major suppliers of U.S. oil, Nigeria is the
sixth largest producer of oil in the world. Set against a
backdrop of what has been called the scramble for African
oil, Curse of the Black Gold is the first book to document
the consequences of a half-century of oil exploration and
production in one of the world’s foremost centers of
biodiversity. This book exposes the reality of oil’s impact
and the absence of sustainable development in its wake,
providing a compelling pictorial history of one of the
world’s great deltaic areas. Accompanied by powerful
writing by some of the most prominent public intellectuals
and critics in contemporary Nigeria, Kashi’s photographs
capture local leaders, armed militants, oil workers, and
nameless villagers, all of whose fates are inextricably
linked. His exclusive coverage bears witness to the ongoing
struggles of local communities, illustrating the paradox of
poverty in the midst of plenty.
The publication of Curse of the Black Gold occurs at a
moment of worldwide concern over dependency on petroleum,
dubbed by New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman as "the
resource curse." Much has been written about the drama of
the search for oil—Daniel Yergin’s The Prize and Ryszard
Kapus´cin´ski’s Shah of Shahs are two of the most widely
lauded—but there has been no serious examination of the
relations between oil, environment, and community in a
particular oil-producing region. Curse of the Black Gold is
a landmark work of historic significance.
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