Photo © Jordi Jon Pardo
Talent of the Year 2020 - NOMINEE: Jordi Jon Pardo
Area Albania
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Albania is currently among the poorest European countries with a per capita income of 4.500$. However, it is home to an immensely rich subsoil with more than 5,3 billion barrels of crude lying beneath the surface. The communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha began in 1941 and initiated an isolationism that only left the country open to like minded Soviet and Chinese influences. These relationships manifested themselves in the development of the technological capabilities necessary to begin tapping into Albania’s oil wells.
Since the fall of the regime in 1985, free market capitalism began to take hold and various corporations entered the single market once dominated by the state owned Albpetrol. Chinese and Canadian companies now own 95% of crude extraction in the Patos-Marzina region under the name of Bankers Petroleum. Despite a seismic shift in the market, a large part of the refineries and storage facilities built in the sixties and seventies have been maintained and are now the source of dangerous social and environmental issues in the region such as; contaminated lakes, oil leaks, abandoned structures, the poisoning of underground water wells rendering the water undrinkable and unusable for agriculture, and massive gas emissions that affect the villages surrounding the refineries.
Ballsh is the biggest town of the Mallakastra district and the main concerned by pollution, which affects directly about 27,000 residents. Agriculture and oil refining are the main sources of income in Ballsh. Poor investment in agriculture and decadent infrastructure have left many people with no other option that looking to migrate to Western Europe.
About author:
1996, Barcelona, Spain. He graduated in Journalism at the Universitat Ramon Llull and a Photojournalism Postgraduate at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His interest in the image began while studying photojournalism in the faculty, where he covered human, psychological and finally environmental conflicts. He has collaborated with several Spanish newspapers such as La Vanguardia, El Periódico de Catalunya, El Nacional, Nació Digital and more.
Since the fall of the regime in 1985, free market capitalism began to take hold and various corporations entered the single market once dominated by the state owned Albpetrol. Chinese and Canadian companies now own 95% of crude extraction in the Patos-Marzina region under the name of Bankers Petroleum. Despite a seismic shift in the market, a large part of the refineries and storage facilities built in the sixties and seventies have been maintained and are now the source of dangerous social and environmental issues in the region such as; contaminated lakes, oil leaks, abandoned structures, the poisoning of underground water wells rendering the water undrinkable and unusable for agriculture, and massive gas emissions that affect the villages surrounding the refineries.
Ballsh is the biggest town of the Mallakastra district and the main concerned by pollution, which affects directly about 27,000 residents. Agriculture and oil refining are the main sources of income in Ballsh. Poor investment in agriculture and decadent infrastructure have left many people with no other option that looking to migrate to Western Europe.
About author:
1996, Barcelona, Spain. He graduated in Journalism at the Universitat Ramon Llull and a Photojournalism Postgraduate at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His interest in the image began while studying photojournalism in the faculty, where he covered human, psychological and finally environmental conflicts. He has collaborated with several Spanish newspapers such as La Vanguardia, El Periódico de Catalunya, El Nacional, Nació Digital and more.