A member of the task force on illegal crude oil bunkering stands around a crude storage facility in Okrika, Nigeria. (Photo: Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

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.