Pipelines in the crosshairs

A protester's hands covered in crude oil during a 2011 protest against Royal Dutch Shell after pipeline spills in Nigeria, in 2008 and 2009. Shell allegedly ignored advice to replace the outdated Trans Niger Pipeline, which ruptured and inundated villages in Ogoniland with thousands of barrels of oil. Anti-pipeline movements have been around for decades, and are joining up across the globe.

Militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) patrol the oil-rich creeks of the Niger Delta of Nigeria in September 2008. MEND militants were alleged to have sabotaged and destroyed crude oil pipelines run by the likes of Shell and Chevron, which they say bring little benefit to local communities and cause massive local environmental destruction.

Police stand guard at the entrance of Peru's national oil company in Lima, August 2016, where activists placed a coffin filled with items painted in black to represent a contaminated environment. The state oil company Petroperu has admitted to numerous spills in the old and extensive pipeline system that transports oil from the Amazon to the Pacific coast.

TransCanada's Tamazunchale Pipeline met with resistance in Mexico during its construction through the country's mountainous and fertile southern region. Several Mexican indigenous communities have joined forces to fight the pipeline. The wall painting here reads: "No to the gas pipeline, we're an indigenous community and demand respect."

Opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline march out of their main camp in North Dakota in February 2017. The anti-pipeline resistance movement that gathered on Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands became a social media phenomenon under the #NoDAPL hashtag, galvanizing global resistance against attempts to expand the flow of climate change-inducing fossil fuels.

A Native American woman recovers after being pepper-sprayed by police after she and other protesters sought to build a new camp to block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in late 2016. While the #NoDAPL movement did not succeed in preventing the pipeline from being built, it focused attention on the topic and drew together social justice and environmental movements.

More than 10,000 people march in British Columbia in March 2018 to protest Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline, which is to transport tar sands oil to the west coast of Canada and on to Asian markets. After months of protests led by First Nations and environmental activists, the pipeline company halted construction in April.

Lakota spiritual leader Chief Arvol Looking Horse demonstrates outside the White House in 2015 against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. US Republicans authorized the pipeline — but in November 2018, a court again blocked its construction.

In March 2017, after Italy's State Council permitted construction of Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), demonstrators in Puglia southern Italy clashed with police to protest removal of 1,600 centuries-old olive trees. Several were injured. A 350.org petition claims TAP will "destroy Europe's climate targets" and has "destructive, unjust impacts on the communities in its path."

The TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline project was launched in Herat in western Afghanistan in February 2018, and will carry gas from Turkmenistan to the subcontinent. On hand at the launch were a group of Taliban militants (pictured) insisting they would not sabotage — as many feared — but instead assist the pipeline project.