A Critical Legal Geography of Petroleum Extraction and Spatial Justice in the Niger Delta

This study applies a critical legal geography framework to the relationship between petroleum extraction, legal space production, and spatial injustice in Nigeria's Niger Delta, arguing that petroleum law functions as a technology for reorganising social and physical space in ways that systematically disadvantage host communities. Legal geography, which analyses the spatial dimensions of legal norms and the legal dimensions of spatial arrangements, remains underutilised in Nigerian petroleum law scholarship. The research employs an interdisciplinary ethnographic-legal methodology, combining twelve months of immersive fieldwork in selected communities in Delta, Rivers, and Bayelsa States with doctrinal analysis of land tenure law, petroleum concession boundaries, and pipeline right-of-way regulations. GIS mapping of petroleum infrastructure overlaid on community settlement patterns is used to visualise spatial displacement effects. Theoretical engagement draws on critical legal geography literature from Blomley, Santos, and Delaney, applied to African petroleum contexts for the first time. The study generates an original concept of petroleum legal space as a site of community exclusion and proposes a spatial justice legal reform agenda. These theoretical contributions advance both critical legal geography and Niger Delta development scholarship. Keywords: legal geography, spatial justice, petroleum extraction, Niger Delta, critical theory.