February camp report

Throughout the region we work 'oil-frying' has become the fastest growing 'cottage industry', where stolen crude is distilled in makeshift refineries into serviceable diesel, sold locally. In an area where subsistence fishing and farming means backbreaking labour for minimal return, refining crude , though inherently dangerous, can bring a years income in two or three days.
Oil pipelines are sabotaged and crude oil pumped to floating barges that sell the oil to middle men for export or in this example to local distillers. At the top end millions can be made, but at this level a quick buck is all too attractive.
The flip side however is environmental damage on a massive scale, and the process  hazardous to personal and community health.
You can't help admire the simplicity of the technique that draws on distilling principles familiar to any GCSE student, and for this month we thought a tour of one such local distillery may fire the imagination in these times of recession and economic gloom...

Easy steps to oil distilling at home:
1.

Firstly locate a local supplier of crude oil, easily recognised by a makeshift open barge lying hidden in a small creek.

2.

Transfer your newly acquired barrels of crude to a makeshift tank dug into the sand beside the creek, lined with a plastic tarp. (no naked lights please)

3.

Build your refinery next to the oil store. Note the two barrels end on that are positioned above an open fire, the supporting structure made of clay and wood.

4.

This is the tricky bit. Please note the angle of the oil drums. This prevents spillage forward. The fire below the oil drums heats the oil to boiling. The oil vapourises and the vapour passes through the pipes at the top of the barrels into the cooling vat to the left. You will note that at the bottom of the barrels in the centre there is a pipe passing at right angles to each barrel in the direction of the river. More of this later...

5.

Following the top pipes mentioned in step four, these pass at an angle of approx 25 degrees through a wooden trough that  during the process is filled with water. This acts to cool the vapour turning it back into liquid.

6.

As you can see the two distillate pipes pass beyond the tank where the cooling liquid drips into buckets to be sold as fuel for cooking or for engines. This fraction of the original oil is the only product of the process, so what happens to the rest of the oil that is still sitting in the oil drums above the fire, cooling? (hint: note the two pipes lying at an angle to the left of the wooden vat)

7.
Thats right, the waste oil from the process is released into the creek where it destroys
fish and shellfish stocks, polluting the water for drinking and washing, the entire area
pervaded by an acrid migraine inducing stench. You can even see another oil storage tank
across the creek in the left picture demonstrating how near these home distilleries are to
one another. In this stretch of river near the clinic there are more than seven situated
maybe 100 yards apart.

To moralise however is too simplistic. This area has grinding poverty and the chance to make
some real money entirely understandable.With no guarantees for tomorrow then people
have to seize the day.

Ironically the frantic growth of these pocket refineries has flooded the local market with cheap,
if engine wrecking fuel, and as such the price for fuel has fallen more than fifty percent,
slowing production as market forces take over. The rise in burns, gastro-intestinal complaints
and scarcity of fish may exert their own forces on this burgeoning industry.