Poison Fire

In 1956, Shell drilled the first oil well in the village of Olobiri, in the African Niger Delta. Since then, massive quantities of black gold have been pumped out of the ground there, and nobody seems to worry about a little spillage: lots of excess oil gets dumped or spilled, and gas flaring, or the burning of natural gas, takes place as well. Poison Fire gives the floor to the inhabitants of the Niger Delta. No one sees anything positive in Shell's activities. Cancer, asthma, and miscarriages are all consequences of the pollution caused by the oil giant, and fish, slugs and snakes are dying out. A group of environmental activists travel to Shell Headquarters in the Netherlands, where CEO Jeroen van der Veer politely addresses them at the entrance. He promises to launch a plan that will stop gas flaring, a practice that has been declared illegal by the Benin City Court. But how can the behaviour of a wealthy multinational realistically be corrected when Nigeria's own authorities are out-and-out corrupt?