A pipe dream is a fantastic hope regarded as impossible to achieve. The book is dedicated to the people of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, linked by an oil pipeline.

Born in Baku in 1977, Rena Effendi took her first job at nineteen as a translator for an international oil consortium, which gave her financial independence, the industry being the most lucrative employer for educated youth in the city. Having gained an inside perspective she turned her gaze outward and began working in 2001 on the effects of that industry on ordinary lives. In 2006 she received a commercial assignment to follow the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan segment in Azerbaijan, which produced a corporate calendar outlining a social responsibility programme; but in the course of it she was confronted with the reality that most people had not benefited from the wealth flowing beneath their feet.