Gullan residents, along with... the newly formed [community network] Assembly for the Protection of the Environment and Public Rights, greeted Exxon trucks with placards denouncing the project... They objected for environmental and social reasons. They tried to be part of the process...

“We went to talk to the oil company,” Dara Ibrahim, a 25-year-old founding member of the environmental group, told me. “We asked if a member of our group could go with the oil company. They said absolutely not”... Several villagers made nervous references to [signed contracts]... Exxon did not leave behind a copy... the villagers could not recall the precise terms of the agreement.