In the international market, they call it sweet crude – low-sulphur crude oil. It is targeted by oil thieves in the Niger Delta, who siphon it from the pipelines and sell to the highest bidder. This brutal black market is a web connecting rich barons in gleaming cities to savage militants in the creeks. This is the world Bruce Telema is lured into. But even as he outruns poverty and gains a fearsome reputation in the oil cabal, death, karma and the law stay close on his heels.