There are a number of these conspicuously cleared spots with lonely puffs of abnormal clouds hovering above. Seems like it would be some kind of manufacturing for sure. The remote nature, odd roads, lack of heavy arterials, and the nature of the Niger River Delta leads me to suspect that these are oil fields, part of the hotly contested Nigerian oil industry, the instability of which has not helped global oil prices lately.
Nigerian oil field?
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By romulusnr @ 2006-05-11 12:29:23
jbottero
@ 2006-05-12 10:24:15
I don't think the clouds are related, I think they are natural. But it is oil wells.
romulusnr
@ 2006-05-24 12:38:11
It's damned peculiar to me that the only clouds in a large part of this area occur right by these things (and in the cloudy area to the SE, and maybe this is my imagination, but there seems to tend to be a puft of thicker cloud near them). Is it conceivable that steam/smoke from the wells or their equipment can cause small clouds?
romulusnr
@ 2006-05-24 12:39:03
Also the "odd roads" I was referring to are probably irrigation, though that only makes them more strange to me.