you're watching r t coming to you live from moscow these are the top stories day of mourning and russia for more than one hundred seventy people who died after flash floods hit the southern region across the dark it's the worst natural disaster of the area has seen. syria's leader accusing the u.s. of fueling deadly violence in the country by partnering with rebels that he's army holds military exercises on how to repel an attack from the outside. and b.b. and liberals lead in the country's first nationwide election in half a century according to unofficial results from saturday's poll that was marred by

gunfire and violence. those are the top stories now eldorado for some and how for others next we travel to nigeria to explore how oil drilling affects local communities. it's like an island cut off from everywhere accessible only by helicopter. bank and more than two hundred kilometers off the coast of nigeria a floating factory that is unique in the world as big as eight football pitches it's a foretaste of what the search for oil will become. this enormous trough is itself at the heart of a wide a system that consists of searching for oil ever deeper under the sea and also

further and further from the explosive situation that prevails on lands. submarines platforms and drilling vessels on a map a tiny rectangle named back. here as the owner of a few kilometer square that represents a new eldorado. in the center floating like a queen bee a belly full of a treasure that the whole world covets is the flagship of the oil company. and i have your ideas. if there's a war. on akpo we are far from everywhere but everything is checked. this and you check all the facts this is how it all back to the sort of community i

go up to even the people you know you've been working with or for years you have to search their backs and even those including the head of the station. and what are you searching for mainly. to tissue anything that's about them like drugs guns knives. this kind of thing else this back home. situation on the gulf of guinea and the most populous country in africa nigeria is roughly the size of france and belgium combined. it's the size of the country the niger delta region that's the object of envy. a geological insult that is overflowing with excellent quality oil. thousands of drillings licensed to the oil companies of the whole world pierce the country's ground on land and at sea link together by pipelines that run through the mangroves in the sea in every direction . today nigeria is the largest oil producing country in africa the scene of

a banquet between companies. all. after arriving by helicopter and after the regulation search patrick one of the two managers takes over from his colleague john francois his back to back in offshore speak. with an engineer turned manager of a nigerian father and a maltese mother. is one of the rare employees of the company to hold such a post. you've got plenty on their schedule to produce one hundred sixty three thousand barrels a day for next month will where we're dealing with large volumes of this it which is very very flammable is more flammable than normal oil and also will have large volumes of gas at high pressure. it's a look at the system so we kind of leaks if we have meat and there's

a sparkle source of ignition the next thing would be you would have a fire and then you'd put us at risk yes everybody has to be worried about fire because a fire on board would be disastrous it could be disastrous. don't you so much for we have to be careful here permanently on the alert to what you ask you because the opposition can't escape. the three hundred meters long and all but this one is where over story starts. the name is the floating. off loading units woods says everything because. it's a unit that floats and it has capacity for production and storage we also process we don't stop but we sit and export gas first task a tour of the property patrick shows us around his pipe or cathedral so we're

currently. back i said well the whole deck level so be no. loss now we have tons so one of the problems that we have vessels of this size along three. choices corrosion of the decks and corrosion corrosion at this level. it would be difficult to repair because just underneath we have tons of oil so it will be rather impossible to cut a pot out so well whatever the cause of the risk of exposure. is another lifeboat here and then of course we have. rafts just this way so anybody. he said has more than enough means to. just stay. for the first time we've been allowed access to this incredibly technological and highly risky structure. on board two hundred forty men. completely lost in intel

a thing of pipes that you almost never meet anyone the f.p.s. as a citizen of troops fowles elbows through which flows the precious liquid below are dozens of pipes reaching down to the bottom of the sea which suck up the oil. you could say that workers here are like the distant extras in a giant mcconnel construction protected by the navy another permanent surveillance from countless cameras. a technological exploit certainly but in a context of political paranoia. good morning. to nigerian navy patrol boat stunt gone twenty four hours a day under the olders of antonio djoko. he moved into security work after twenty two years in the army twenty two years of happiness as he describes it he's a man who searches the bags organizes patrols and supervises all movements around

the base. but. you. always look so here we have the eye mucking about and so there are operations center where we monitor the whole of the echo field. with this radar to come into it which allows us to track all the boats arriving. can but who are you to know what boat of the riving and especially to pick up any suspect record that wasn't expected to enter the field i think in all these cameras they monitor all the accesses here. and inside the earth yes so with this. research it will come to me to secure but that's a lot of security measures for extracting oil. so on this on this is where the measures required in nigeria of the day considering the threats that exist as a nigerian high risk the bordering the militias intent. and espionage

and boats intruding in the maritime exclusion zone. doesn't this one item that they obviously are you armed here on board since it doesn't i'm not on. if i don't there are no weapons on board even you don't have money no making your ruler should have some guys climb up the chain and they have weapons machine guns for example what do you do but i don't see the other measures that would be taking place measures that have been designed for that situation. there are no guns on board and the situation is under control i repeat the situation is under control. i mean ari is a small fishing village situated on the island of bonnie right at the mouth of the niger delta. and it's here that the gas sent from the f.p.s. so platform arrives by an undersea pipeline.

if it weren't for the plant ameri ari would be a typical little village. with hearts and shacks with palm leaf roofs streets of san news it coming from portable radios open air stores kids running everywhere and a soccer match underway and the fisherman returning with the tide. all would be well if next door right next door protected by barbed wire they went sending millions of cubic meters of gas and oil to the most highly developed countries in the world. did by loading gust to order. new york dollars but not the one that upset the community nearby you know about it i mean anything from the company. and this.

is. when you come up with these guys know that all looks that. twenty four was a very deep study lou did not is top one this is no big. in the small harbor when the ships come in the giants with gas the tiny ones with fish to worlds rub shoulders i did looks as if the big world is giving the tiny one the finger when i did the one i wanted to do was get a little we took our own. metal shop. sometimes sometimes. nigerian people work for the companies yes there was a little boy with us he brought us all. about that at the white men he says but it's very odd you. come on just like their luck to bring blood from us out of all

of us but that is a job for you to. you. and as a supreme insult naturally there's no gas in the village to smoke the fish and from cooking think of the wood from the forest. above the terminal on the chimneys that burn off the gas nonstop to prevent overpressure they tell us. that's a lot of use to the villagers overpressure. is religion. economy to it i do some of that fish imports would you. think it does or what that because of the devices it. is in has because i did end up for it and i said i didn't know what. that does is it not discuss the

deniability i think intuitively about why what i want to add not up to. repeat what i did think of what the. goal of. off shore from the village the s.p.s. the engineers and technicians continue extracting oil far from land because that's the job of the heart of the story machine the end of a pipe and in a small jar the famous brown liquid. the world's holy grail you might say. so but this is the oil. being treated it's a condensate it's a very light crude that is.

i mean we're more than two thousand meters down. and we can get something out that's relatively easy to do so it comes out of the top it's what they call the blob of nigeria. so this quality you have to go deeper and deeper to find it today or future major projects a situation of very great depth. so it's going to require immense technology. more and more to. the logical evolution to go would get the oil even deeper. with the input from them of course other aspects are very important for the commercialization of the soil of the guy as you can see if you must see i mean i mix your water and oil because water doesn't cost much and oil costs a lot the company much else every time we load our oil product here onto a tank we have to be sure it contains

a minimum of water. was up and i say the blood of nigeria because it's their role materials it's their problem what is it we are here to help them exploited and for me it is the fruit of their history to destroy we spoke of their history because it is to do it it's because of their millions of years of history. because of all the other we have. in the world. and i hope it will allow them to fuel their economy just. in an efficient way my this but despite that there are a few problems. from your point of view can you understand that there are people who might want to attack you. but maybe maybe you should cut that just a bit. i'm just asking the question you don't have to answer that i know my answer yet personally that doesn't surprise me. but doesn't surprise me.

so he's back on land we elude military surveillance to film something that's totally forbidden to film on pain or arrest and major problems yeah. yeah. you know if these were celestin runs a protest movement to denounce the environmental damage caused by the all companies wants to show. i think the effort that's where we move. on if well and we will move into i knew we could come close though this is not been done it's in that there fifty it's to the elite. end of a pipeline lost in the wild an enormous blaze the stench of gas is insupportable three to five hundred meters it's already unbearable i was thinking it was the

forbidden things like that yes that there was a court ruling. and that's in two thousand and five but. i'm not on of that drug and i'm different our government. does not have any political with that but i thought it was you know the thread was against the laws of our country but this is like a monster so how it smells stinks and the sound. like this is the most i was down there months this is worse than the most i. see this from a distance. right now you can see. i mean that this is. all. there. really everywhere i did write about the place. it's about the. bad thing that the city is about the less i miss the pun it is. becoming like your

mama. yeah. yeah. experts say that the gas burned off in nigeria which by itself be sufficient to satisfy the energy needs of the whole continent of africa billions of cubic meters that we saw in the bowels of the us go up in smoke they. say most of the pressure in the pipe. in reality companies make so much money from the oil that they don't even care about the gas they pump. the same time. these massive panels also create acid rain so that the water from the sky is no longer drinkable. garrison in charge of site surveillance got wind of our visit we spent several hours negotiating bargaining explaining ourselves to the higher ups over the telephone. cellist reputation and his work with amnesty international in particular allow us to get out of trouble. to.

a former farm worker sent esteem as the leader of most of the movement for the survival of the ogoni people its founder the writer can. denounced both the dictatorship and power in the eighty's and the ravages caused by shell the largest of the oil companies present in nigeria. in a sham trial in which he was accused of murder and despite the process stations and anger of the whole world he was condemned to death and hanged along with eight other members of the movement. which companies are selling yes i did visit. several music. one of our company there but the law is this is something and. walk in nigeria companies are the ones as possible.

because. they don't come together because they know that when government. demands. programs that this is a. protected permanently escorted celestin has no car no address and no children anyone who hinders or production in nigeria is under threat of death and. the village of a creek. he's even crossed by the highway of pipes that don't even buried.

you can. take choice before sufficient suckage watch. put up on here still in the theater. when he's being. down to do or rush on to decide if i could do all of these areas there was a day we would call forms that we saw fire. on everybody we don't know show came to . all of the advice your histories all did he sat on the trees our dead. on here we used to fish we were fishing no fish don't want to golly he's gone down

for ever one day spiel i shall discover doubts he's been he's very. large do we see it is so with us because they are always afraid to people damages and composition. was all you could. we mustn't lump everyone together not all the companies behave or have behaved as badly as shell and nigeria. it's just the worst one amongst them. offshore total allows us to go from installation to installation. the jack ryan is a motion a special position by satellite with its derrick and its pipes it conforms to the stereotypical image we have of oil drilling. beneath the boat three thousand meters

of water and therefore pockets are a further two thousand meters below the sea bed. and apocalyptic day in harsh conditions a few months back a crane dragged three men into the sea one die. for the nigerians on board the wages are unique you earn a good living in oil whether you're black or white. it's a big country they're just a big bunch of fried you know that want to. tell you it's

a big country i brought us up to be. happy possibly. i don't know but. on the floor below we can clearly see a pipe plunging into a poor part of the ship. this is the i'm going to cook or fix to the seabed. inside the slide the rods that were drilled down to the deposit. and the oil is reached they install a sort of giant valve several stories high over the drilling been done it and the engineers have a very pretty nickname for it. but. the point here we are in front of the christmas tree is that when you cool it the christmas tree which you know the christmas tree into the well head and ridges and charges that was based on you since you have all this must stay here i think. i.

got my. face. yeah. yeah. so if it was a. christmas tree they'd be there days if i didn't want to for that why this is it's what i was going on with the price i feel like seventh son to us about fires going on we will be to go to. my profit but if i could see who could do this but. first this is going. to twenty feet first my street. so we started in two thousand and seven. we've run it by. seven day so. you have the money back when you vest. your. three years on these so it's. not just. with those those give you

i think make. sure celestin is continue his crusade and he takes us to an incredible spot swallowed up by the undergrowth for. the feds for where. i would be divided it up. or where. i went up i want. to read that there are fifty six. if. that's why i went out with them this weekend that that that that. i'm not so bad about yourself the less but as i speak don't like my place i'm not going to not do it i've been there calls the last you can see. used to think like you can see ya bonbon is going to look like one or the finish you still go on the up that is all i money i'm bugles off you

finish she's abandoned it going it's this is not the right. mission free. education free instruction just free. range month free. three stooges free. download free broadcast live video for your media projects free media oh god r t dot com.

please. oh. please. please. please please. please please please.