More than 100 people were killed overnight in an explosion at an illegal oil refining depot in Nigeria’s Rivers state, a local government official and an environmental group said. Unemployment and poverty in the oil-producing Niger Delta have made illegal crude refining an attractive business but with deadly consequences.

Crude oil is tapped from a web of pipelines owned by major oil companies and refined into products in makeshift tanks.

The hazardous process has led to many fatal accidents and has polluted a region already blighted by oil spills in farmland, creeks and lagoons.

Source: VOV5