On April 12, 2008, members of the Sweet Crude filmmaking crew were detained by the Nigerian military Joint Task Force while traveling by boat in the Niger Delta.

“After 50 years and $700 billion in oil sucked out of the ground by Royal Dutch Shell and its co-conspirator, Chevron, the Niger Delta is among the most polluted places on Earth,” says UC Berkeley geography professor Michael Watts.

Sandy Cioffi first went to the Niger Delta to film the process of building a library in a small village, which was shared by a set of ethnic groups who were formerly in conflict.

In this process, she was completely attracted by the children and mothers in the village, who were carrying a huge burden in trying to survive on the land razed to the ground by oil production.

“There was one mother in particular who really had my number when she grabbed my hand and got me to run past an armed oil company security officer with my camera to film a gas flare raging in her village, leaving her children with a one-in-five chance of dying before their 5th birthday.” Said Sandy.

“In 2021, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided to inject 400,000 barrels of crude oil into the market every month from August.

And because of the influence of movies, the media in various countries pay great attention to the conflict in Niger Delta, which also hinders its economic development to a certain extent.

Since July 2019, Dalia in Angola has been at a premium to Bonny Light in Nigeria, because refineries are scrambling to find heavy sweet barrels.