FIGURE 1.4 Oil development and the environment. A man walks through swampy land in 2010. An international development company began extracting products from this area 50 years ago. A recent UN report stated that now these areas need one of the world’s largest cleanups, which could take up to 30 years and cost over a billion dollars. The area has experienced around 300 incidences of pollution a year since the 1970s, causing an unknown number of deaths. More information about this situation can be found in Chapter 7.
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