Environmental devastation. Local militancy. Smuggling. Violence. All of these describe the Niger Delta, the crude-oil extraction center of Nigeria. Philip Aghoghovwia offers a unique interpretation of the region's petroviolence, examining the cultural aspects of the extraction industry in the societies within which it operates.

As he considers the charged and often clashing contexts of the industry vs. the ecologies of directly affected peoples/places, Aghoghovwia essentially reframes the environmental challenges that carbon-based civilization poses to local landscapes.