This is popular front a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and

underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan.

Today we're speaking to writer researcher James Barnett.

He's going to be talking to us about the ongoing battles in the Niger Delta in the south of Nigeria. It's a very oil-rich

region. There has been piracy, militant groups fighting big companies like Shell Oil,

colts, underground oil refinery, all sorts of stuff happening in that region.

Now the various militant groups are not fighting the oil companies but are actually often fighting each other vying for power of the

oil day in the region. If you like what we're doing here at Popular Front

support us at patreon.com slash Popular Front. Patreon. I think before we go into the full details of the various militant groups

the various companies that are trying to move into the space let's actually

get into what the Niger Delta is because I think a lot of people

are not fully informed on it it's quite a niche topic in some ways in other ways it's not

but yeah let's go into what is the

Nigeria is traditionally right it's it's one of like the either the top 10

or top 15 oil producing nations in the world.

And also within Africa, it's the biggest,

the most populous country, typically the largest economy

on the continent.

So Nigeria kind of often has this reputation of being in some ways like the giant of Africa,

right? This big country with a lot of potential and stuff.

And really since the 1970s, for those who might be aware of kind of the Arab

Israeli war and you had this big oil embargo imposed by OPEC which had the result of kind of shooting up the price of Brent crude globally.

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