Introduction

The tongues of yellow flames from flaring gas burn like candlesticks lined up in a cathedral, lighting the night sky of the port city of Malabo and sending black fumes billowing upwards. In the waters offshore, oil rigs and production platforms sit majestically, sucking hundred of thousands of barrels a day from the deep sea oil fields of Equatorial Guinea. Until a few years ago, this nation of 486,000 - consisting of five islands and a square snip of coastal West Africa between Cameroon and Gabon - was a small and insignificant sideshow in the political drama of the African continent. ...