Tuesday 30 November 2010

Brunei: Seria

One billionth barrel monument, SeriaThe town of Seria, located about 100km southwest of the capital along the coast, is where oil exploration began in Brunei in 1929. The ‘one billion barrel’ monument, modelled on a few bicycle inner tubes, commemorates the sucking of large amounts of the stuff from the ground and the seabed. Decades of oil exploration have taken their toll - Seria is not a pretty place.

1 comment:

Wendy said...

This sort of thing is why so many oil drilling contracts are now written with requirements for the oil companies to leave the place better than they found it.

I'm an oil field wife so I should be all defensive of the oil companies, but after living in the southwest USA and seeing what a mess oil & mining companies have made of New Mexico and Colorado - I think it's perfectly reasonable.

It's usually prohibitively expensive to clean up after the fact, too. Unfortunately.