Relativity Media has optioned the rights to the Vanity Fair article “Blood Oil,” by Sebastian Junger, a person familiar with the deal told TheWrap on Monday.
Published in 2007, the article is Junger’s harrowing account of the Niger Delta oil saboteurs (M.E.N.D.) as they play havoc with the world oil prices through their targeting of the West's oil operations in Nigeria.
The article posed the question of whether a group of Nigerian militants could bring about a recession in the U.S. through sabotaging the oil supply in Nigeria.
Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States.
Junger spent time in Nigeria exploring four decades of corruption for the piece.
Junger is no stranger to the film world, and his book “The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against The Sea,” was made into a 2000 film starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.
Junger also co-directed the Oscar-nominated documentary “Restrepo” with Tim Hetherington who was killed in a mortar attack last year while covering the Libyan civil war.
Hetherington, a well-known photojournalist, covered conflicts for numerous media outlets, including ABC News, Vanity Fair and the Associated Press. "Restrepo" followed his experiences being embedded with a unit deployed in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.
