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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

In this conversation, edited and updated, Bioneers Producer Stephanie Welch speaks with Chloe Maxmin. Hailing from rural Maine, Chloe is the Co-Founder of Dirtroad Organizing alongside her best friend, Canyon Woodward. She also runs Begin Again Farm with her partner, Bill Pluecker, growing organic vegetables for her community. Chloe received an honors degree from Harvard College, where she co-founded Divest Harvard. Chloe served in the Maine House of Representatives in 2018 and the Maine State Senate in 2020. She was the youngest woman ever to serve in the Maine Senate and is the co-author (with Canyon) of Dirt Road Revival. (Note: Dirtroad Organizing is a non-partisan organization that focuses on values, not Party. Chloe’s political work does not affect Dirtroad’s non-partisan commitment.)

STEPHANIE: In this political climate, where we’re being told how polarized we are as a country, but there are many issues that a majority of people in the U.S. agree on, such as the need for universal healthcare, a living wage, having clean air, water, and food. Considering your work finding common ground, is it frustrating to hear all the time the refrain, especially in the media, that we can’t come together? How are you feeling about that aspect of our current political climate?

CHLOE: I mean, we are polarized. It’s something I experience in my community, and people who come through our organization, Dirtroad Organizing, are experiencing it, too. The ability to simply have a conversation across party lines is very, very difficult right now, and it takes a lot of intention and thought to make that happen. 

But at the same time, I think that the power of finding common ground still exists. We have to carve out the space to make that happen. We’re told a lot of stories that make it hard for people to hear the other side. This has made it both much more difficult to have space for another point of view, and it has also stoked horrible racism, xenophobia, and violence in our country that has made these bridge-building conversations unsafe for many people. At Dirtroad Organizing, our work is about trying to find the space where you can find that moment to reach beyond. 

There’s definitely a lot of prejudice and judgment on the left about rural voters that voted for Trump, and that’s a theme that rural voters feel. I feel it as a progressive living in a rural area–a kind of remote disdain from the left about folks in my community. People in my community are good people, and they’re disenfranchised and don’t feel represented, and can’t make ends meet. But in so many spaces that I’m in on the left, it feels like I have to make the case that they should talk to people who voted for Trump. 

Of course, some people who voted for Trump are far right extremists that I don’t have space for. But most folks are just trying to find the best way towards a good life for themselves and their families. I hear many folks saying, you know, just trust Trump, it’s all going to work out, he’s going to keep his word. And then I hear other people saying, “I regret voting for him.” I think time will tell, and we’ll see how it shakes out in our elections.

Photo by Henney Sullivan, courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

STEPHANIE: I was in Iowa and interviewed small farmers and others who were sick of agribusiness and were organizing locally to advocate for busting up monopolies that are killing their communities. I sat with one farmer who showed me his childhood photo album saying: This used to be a vibrant community, we had dances every Saturday night, farmers could earn a living and pass on the farm to their children. And now everything here is boarded up and the town is dead. These are farmers who got arrested in 2008 protesting the Obama Administration for turning its back on homeowners. The rally I went to included immigrant workers dealing with unfair treatment by the meat packing industry, and local labor unions. One farmer, who happened to be a woman, told me we have got to reinvest in rural America, or this country is doomed. But I don’t see a focus on rural communities as a strong part of the current progressive agenda, do you? 

CHLOE: Yeah, I agree. I don’t think it’s represented well at all on the left. It’s a huge challenge. I think it’s one that rural folks feel quite acutely that the left doesn’t quite have the policy solutions that many rural communities need. The issues may be the same, but the approaches that you need in a rural community just look different. It’s complicated.

There’s an amazing book, The Politics of Resentment, focused on rural Wisconsin and how rural folks perceive a lack of support, especially on the policy level, from urban Democratic policymakers. There are many incredible books on this topic that can speak to it better than I can. But it’s a very pervasive feeling among rural folks that they don’t feel represented. The left doesn’t show up in rural communities, especially when they’re campaigning, and so we’ve seen just a systemic disenfranchisement of rural communities’ voices on the left as we’re making this policy. So it’s a circular problem. 

You can’t make policy for impacted communities unless you have those impacted communities at the table, and if we’re not actively organizing and investing in what are now conservative rural spaces, then we’re never going to understand that experience and what we need to be integrating into our laws. This is true for all communities that have not historically been central to Democratic law-making.

STEPHANIE: I find that there are still many people who don’t realize that millions who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump the first time, and they’re still wedded to this idea that there are these stagnant voting blocs. Over and over again, when voters are asked what they care about most, they say the same thing: the economy and the cost of living. And when the Democrats don’t deliver to voters and make material differences in people’s lives, they lose. Is that what you’re finding with voters that you talk to in rural areas? Is that an issue for them?

CHLOE: Yeah, based on my own experience and what I hear from the folks that we work with, I don’t think rural folks see their issues reflected in policymaking. And the challenges they face in their lives have gotten worse and worse. There are now many incredible organizations working to address this, and I do think that the tides are turning for the better thanks to this amazing work. 

Rural voters are privileged in our American democracy just the way that our Electoral College is set up, the way that our Congress is set up. So rural voices have an outsized influence on our policy at the national and at the state level. So if we’re talking about building durable progressive power that truly does advocate for the rights of everyone, we can’t get there unless we’re actively organizing in rural places. 

On the left, I think there’s frustration amongst policymakers that they’re losing ground, and there’s certainly frustration amongst the folks in rural communities. They don’t see themselves reflected in what’s happening with the people that they elect. It definitely feels like a huge mess. So from that perspective, it’s like people needed something different. The politics as usual was not working for rural folks, and, mostly for worse, people saw that reflected in Trump and his campaign. So that’s how I see the reality that we’re living with, people are just desperate to be heard and represented and have their needs met.

I think back to 2018 when I first ran, and talking to so many folks who had voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary and then voted for Trump, and trying to understand what that thread was. I think part of it is that folks felt an authenticity in Bernie, and they felt some form of authenticity in Trump, and that translated. But I think the sense of populism was also a common theme, that they felt like Bernie was trying to advocate for everyone in working class folks, and then they also saw that represented in Trump, and they didn’t see that represented in the Democratic establishment. 

Photo courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

STEPHANIE: Let’s talk about your work in rural communities in your neck of the woods. How did you get involved in politics?

CHLOE: I’ve always loved my hometown. And growing up, I knew I didn’t share the same politics with everyone that was part of the village that was raising me, but they were all good people, and we shared our core values. 

When I was in high school in 2009, there was no partisan lean amongst rural voters. But then I went off to college, and I met Canyon Woodward, who managed both of my campaigns. Canyon also grew up in a rural red town. And while we were in college, something really interesting was happening in rural America. By 2016, by the time we had graduated, just seven years later, rural voters were swinging to the right by over 16 points. So when we went home after graduation, it really felt like a different world, and that is obviously manifested in 2016 when Trump was elected. My hometown State House district and my hometown State Senate district voted for Trump, and what that policy represented to me felt really at odds with the good-hearted community around me.

So in 2018, I decided to run for State House in my hometown, which had a plus 16 Republican advantage, and Canyon came up to manage the campaign. The work was really just about trying to understand what was happening in rural America and why things went so far one direction so quickly. We ran a campaign that was really based in grassroots organizing and relationship building, and we won. Then in 2020, we ran for the state Senate against the highest ranking Republican in the state, and we won again using the same philosophy of just reaching across differences and building really strong, broad, intentional movements. I served four years in the legislature, and this experience taught us so much about what it means to organize in rural America. 

A core part of our campaign was trying to get away from how things had been done, because that obviously wasn’t working well in our districts or in other districts like ours across the country. I don’t think anything we did was that radical, just minor changes to make our campaigns more representative of the communities we were organizing in. I was very lucky that Canyon had the skillset to create our canvassing universe. It’s basically the list of folks that you go and talk to when you, unfortunately, just don’t have the time to knock on every door.  We really focused on talking to Republicans and independents because it’s a conservative district. 

So many of those conversations were purely about bridging divides and trying to find common ground. It was so shocking how, on a daily basis, we would talk to people who had never been contacted by a Democratic candidate or campaign in their entire voting history. And many people said no candidate had ever come to their door, regardless of political affiliation. It was every day. I mean, it was so wild. I still hear this pattern echoed today with the leaders that come through Dirtroad Organizing, all these years later. They hear the same thing in their rural communities as they are out organizing. 

Photo by Forest Woodward, courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

In my mind, it’s like, okay, if this person hasn’t been contacted before, maybe there’s a reason why. You know, maybe they’re too conservative to consider voting for someone like me, but that was not the case at all. These were incredible people with incredible stories who truly just wanted to be heard and represented, and we, as the left, had never shown up to hear their stories. Their stories shaped me; stories that I didn’t see reflected in the left and how we think about policy. So it was just very important to me to talk to folks.

I remember one door in particular. It was a trailer in the middle of the woods, down a very long dirt road. I canvassed by myself, which is not safe or accessible for everyone, but it’s what worked for me, and I could see that a guy lived there, and all the curtains on this trailer were drawn. And, you know, my heart was going a little bit. But I went up and knocked on his door, and we ended up having this really lovely discussion. And he said, “You are the first person to ever come and knock on my door, and people judge what my house looks like, and I can just see them drive away.” And that was so touching to me. 

I felt that judgment too when I drove up to the door. But that’s a lesson, you know, not everything is as it seems. And he ended up voting for me. And he kept my palm card on his fridge. It was one of those life-changing moments that challenges how you perceive the world. 

STEPHANIE: Were you finding common concerns among the people you talked to?

CHLOE: This was now many years ago, but I was surprised that the biggest thing that I heard was that people just didn’t feel represented. It was like everything had failed folks so much that it wasn’t one particular issue anymore, but just the system in general was failing people. And everyone has very specific examples in their lives of how politics has failed them. It was a sacred priority for me to actually represent my community once I was elected. I didn’t want to go hear stories and then go sponsor bills that weren’t reflective of the issues that I heard, or take votes that weren’t reflective of my community. So that felt very important to me.

I think everything has gotten more and more polarized since then. But my own experience to this day is that this sense of not feeling represented has gotten stronger and stronger and stronger, and everything that we’re experiencing right now is a consequence of people just feeling deeply unrepresented and not seeing the very personal challenges that they have in their lives addressed by the people that they elect.

STEPHANIE: When you were being presented with bills to vote on, or introducing your own legislation, what was your experience working with people who voted for you and those who didn’t vote for you who were still in your district?

CHLOE: It was fascinating, and taught me so much about myself and my community, and the Democratic Party in general. There were times when I didn’t vote with my party because I was representing my community, and there were times when I voted with my party, and maybe it didn’t match up with my community. It’s so hard. I always thought when I was elected it’d be very easy to tell where my community landed on an issue, but, people reach out when they’re fired up about one issue, and it’s very hard to tell what the other side thinks if they’re not as fired up. I knocked on so many doors, so I felt like I had a really good sense of where my community was, but that kind of real-time feedback was tough. 

Policymaking is very nuanced. An issue can be black and white, but the bill that the issue is held in can be very complicated. And so there can be one line in a bill that could have huge consequences, but it takes time and energy to communicate that to your constituents. I always viewed it as my job as an elected official – I’m getting paid to do this work, I’m getting paid to go to Augusta and read all of the bills – so I always tried to take the time to explain to people why I voted one way or another. But it’s almost never black and white.

As a constituent before I was elected, I always looked at policymaking and it seemed really black and white to me. And as an elected official, you realize there’s just always more to consider than what it seems. Of course, there are some issues where I do think it’s black and white, but I think in most cases that it’s more complicated.

STEPHANIE: It seems if you’ve built trust, to a certain extent, a lot of people would say, okay, I trust you; I know you’re going to compromise. Were you getting any pushback, including from the Democratic Party in general when you weren’t voting for the bills they were putting forward? Did you feel a lot of pressure?

CHLOE: Most elected officials have felt pressure at one point or another in their service. But, yeah, there’s pressure. There’s pressure, for sure. I think some of that is understandable, and some of it I don’t love. But, you know, that’s part of the experience of being elected, is being able to navigate that and kind of understanding why you’re there. 

I was there to represent my community, and that’s what I focused on. As a Democrat representing a conservative community, the way that I navigate the situation is going to be very different from how a Democrat representing a more liberal community is going to navigate it. And since we have more Democrats representing liberal communities than conservative communities, I think it’s just a different dynamic. And that’s okay.

STEPHANIE: Have you thought about being part of another party outside of the Democrats and Republicans? 

CHLOE: I’m a bit of a cynic. I think we’re kind of stuck with the two-party system, and I believe in reforming the Democratic Party from the inside out, that’s just my own personal theory of change. But we need all of the theories of change to move forward in this work. There’s so much work going on right now to support pro-democracy Republicans and conservatives that are running for office. I think that’s so important. A lot of Republicans don’t represent some of the social extremism that we’re seeing reflected right now in the larger Republican Party. 

I think it’s also important for Independents to run for office. One of my bills was to support independents voting in primaries in Maine to kind of even out the partisanship that we see in party primaries. I really like rank choice voting, which we also are lucky to have in Maine, because that allows Independents to have a fair shot when they’re running for office. 

Photo courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

Dirtroad Organizing supports candidates, organizers, and staffers in rural areas across the country. To date, we have over 200 alumni from 39 states. These rural leaders are bringing so much love and empathy and care to the people they live with, and they’re paving a better way forward for all of us. We’re a non-partisan organization, and for me, it’s more about the values that you’re running to represent rather than the party that you’re from. As I chose to run, I wanted to run as a Democrat because I feel like the values of the Democratic Party are supposed to serve rural places well, they’re supposed to serve my community well. But they’re just not. So trying to kind of do some of that translation work, that was the task that I wanted to take on. But it’s not for everybody, and not every community wants that as well.

STEPHANIE: Right, and they abandoned the working class by design. Senator Chuck Schumer said their strategy was to appeal to suburbia and that for every working class Democrat voter they lost, they would get two Centrist Republicans. I don’t think that worked out for them, but it’s no surprise that low-wage workers feel they have no one representing them. The Democratic Party is very low in opinion polls, so maybe it’s a great time to be reforming it.

CHLOE: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s going to be a multi-decade task, probably. We’ve lost folks pretty quickly and have not been super successful at making the case that the Democrats do advocate for working class folks, as you just said. Again, I think this narrative is starting to shift now, which is really exciting to see.

The work of rural organizing is very complicated, and there is so much to unpack in what it means. Rural organizing as a white woman in my Maine hometown is very different from what it looks like in the South. But at the core, I really believe in the power of showing up and having really intentional and authentic face-to-face conversations. I feel like that’s the only way to break down some of the silos and judgments that each party has about each other. In my experience, and what we hear from our folks through Dirtroad Organizing, is when you knock on a door, the first question is: Are you a Democrat or a Republican? And you know, I would always blurt out very quickly, “I’m a Democrat but I’m a good Democrat.” But oftentimes the door gets shut in your face before you can even have a conversation. 

So I think that the best way for Democrats to make the case that they do care about working class folks and rural working class folks is that you have to show up at people’s doors, and you have to prove it. You have to show it. And then you have to get elected and you have to actually work on the policies that benefit those rural working class folks in a way that resonates with them, with the messaging and the stories that rural folks will listen to, because it’s a different language in rural America. 

Rural America deserves that nuance and attention. We’ve got to show up, and we have to kind of be able to hold that door open long enough to have that conversation, and plant that seed that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to vote for this person. I think that’s very important to do that consistently, not just in every October of an election year, but really showing up and organizing in communities. That’s so important. There are so many rural heroes who are doing this work, day in and day out, year after year–and those folks to me are the ones who are holding our democracy together.

I think it’s also important to have different voices and different representation in office that reflect the reality of rural communities. We also know you don’t get paid to run for office, and in many state legislatures, you don’t get paid a living wage at all to serve. In New Hampshire, you make $100 a year. In New Mexico, you make nothing. When I was in the Maine statehouse, I think it was like $14,000 in our first year, and $10,000 the second year. Most folks who do get elected at the state or local level don’t make enough to survive. So there’s a reason why our politics are skewed to older, retired folks or independently wealthy people, because that’s who it’s accessible to. 

There are so many movements right now to rethink how to make politics more accessible, to have campaign finance laws, or to allow folks to pay for childcare if they’re a parent while they’re campaigning to have a living wage while you’re serving. There’s so many pieces to it. Also, if you get elected and you don’t look like the majority of the body that you’re going into, then that’s a very difficult and isolating experience, as well, and you are more likely to get targeted. And that’s very scary. There’s a lot of risk involved as well if you don’t reflect kind of the majority of what our politics look like. So I think that’s a huge part of it. 

We also believe, at Dirtroad, that running for local office can still make such a huge difference. So much of our political conversation is at the statewide or national level, and that feels very hard to influence. You know, you’re one vote out of millions if you’re at the state level. At the national level you’re one vote out of hundreds of millions. So it just feels like no matter what you do or who you call, that it doesn’t really have an impact. And I certainly feel that, even though I’m very involved in politics. 

But at the state legislative level, at the local level, those bodies have a huge influence over what our communities look like, over the policies that we’re living in every single day. But they’ve been very overlooked, especially by the left. The right has done an incredible job of organizing at the local level, and we’ve seen that, especially at the school board level with all the effort to ban books and really use school boards to influence what our education system looks like. 

When you run at the local level, you can win by like five or ten votes. In Maine, we have state legislative races where people win by one vote. So you can see that every vote does make a difference, and it is important that you’re engaged and that you show up. And as the candidate, or as someone in the campaign, every vote truly does matter. It matters how many people we talk to. It matters that we’re reaching beyond the choir, because that’s how we make sure that we’re electing folks that are more representative of the communities.

STEPHANIE: Is it pretty consistent that candidates who have a solid ground game, who are actually talking to people and have support to knock on doors and have the conversations, win? 

CHLOE: Not always. We try and encourage folks to look at their campaigning as social movement building, that it’s not about a vehicle that gets one person from being a citizen to an elected official, it’s hopefully part of the journey, and an opportunity to organize in your community and talk to people. You have an excuse to go knock on doors, to make phone calls, to write postcards, to reach out in ways that you just don’t have the social license to at other times of the year. So I think that’s such a big part of it, is that ground game. 

Of course, that doesn’t always work, and I think especially in some conservative districts where it’s a steep hill to climb, you know? So we work with people who build incredible ground games, and it doesn’t quite get them to the finish line, but at the same time, winning isn’t always winning. They’ve been building movements, building volunteer infrastructures, creating a dialogue in their community where that dialogue wasn’t there before, and it looked very different than it was before they ran. So thinking about it that way is important. 

STEPHANIE: A movement definitely emerged with the Bernie campaigns. There was momentum and excitement, and a lot of organizing. They relied on small donations, which inspired a lot of people. And then he just handed everything over to the Democrats, including my email, which really makes me mad because I cannot get off their lists. But, you know, the air was really let out of that tire, so to speak. 

CHLOE: Yeah, I think that’s a theme for the Democrats, just universally, that we build movements and then we can’t quite sustain them. And I think there are examples of movements that have done  amazing jobs at sustaining very large movements over many cycles, and I think that’s pretty cool. But oftentimes, we do that organizing and then we’re burned out, we’re tired, we’re exhausted, we’re bummed, and it’s very hard to keep that organizing going. It’s like this boom or bust cycle of electioneering that has also impacted communities because they see people coming to their doors and all of this energy being invested for this year, and then it’s gone. It doesn’t make anyone feel good if you just kind of flit in when someone needs you. You want to be shown that it’s important that you’re there all the time. 

There are so many organizations that are doing year-round organizing across the country in every single state and at the national level, focused on doing this ground work in a way that bridges cycles, and that isn’t just tied to one candidate and one election. I feel like that’s such an important model as well. I mean it’s hard work. And we work with so many folks who put themselves on the line. They put their lives on hold. They don’t get to see their families and their friends and their loved ones because they’re campaigning. And they build these really beautiful movements, and then, you know, organizing in conservative districts, you don’t win, and that’s so hard. 

So part of our work – and we’re in these coalitions – is to support those people who did that incredible movement-building work, to support them if they want to run again, to support the movements that they built if they don’t want to run again. But just trying to think of it all more holistically and what it takes to organize in rural spaces. But as we started this conversation with the level of polarization and othering right now is at a very scary and dangerous level. And so to us, it makes it even more important to be able to do this work of bridging differences in rural America.

STEPHANIE: Yeah, I do feel there’s a kind of hopelessness. But I also feel that these experiences of making connections is key to despair. My cousin, who sadly passed away recently, was a trucker who worked all the time and dealt with a lot of stress and frustration. We grew up in Kentucky. And we went back and forth online politically, disagreeing on this and that, and after a while he said, “You know, Cous, I think you might have a point. I think a lot of what I’m putting out there is just a bunch of BS, and I don’t really mean it.” He was just caught up in the drama and didn’t have time to do a lot of research. We found a lot of things we agreed on. So I hope people become more open to having conversations with others who they might even perceive to be extreme. And just dig a little bit. You know? 

CHLOE: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I feel so inspired by the stories that we hear from the folks we work with, how they’re still finding common ground. You know, I hear over and over again, and it’s something that we talk about in our trainings as well – How do we want to show up in communities? How can we show up in ways that are authentic, that resonate, no matter what political party people are from? How can we really run on values that show that we’re all connected and are all facing so many of the same struggles? We might be facing them in different ways, and some of us are experiencing some struggles more acutely than others, but we are all in the same boat. 

In 2024, Dirtroad Organizing had 37 folks on the ballot all across rural America, and over 50 percent either won their seats or outperformed past cycles, and even in districts where Trump made huge gains, these folks were outperforming when they were running at the local level. We had one guy, David Arends, who ran in a very conservative district in northern Montana. He made his ballot competitive for the first time in over a decade, and he outperformed that district by nine points because he just literally went and talked to everybody. This year, we have over 70 Dirtroad alumni on the ballot. These folks are incredible leaders who deeply care about their communities and are out there, right now, organizing for a better future for all of us. Again, we’re a non-partisan organization. Many of our candidates gain ground because they run authentic grassroots values-based campaigns that are really focused on representing their community. So that, to me, that’s a sign that that’s where it’s at. That’s where our hope is. 

But running for office, working on campaigns, rural organizing in general is tough work. It’s tough work. And it can be really lonely and isolating, even though I think it’s the most important thing that we can be doing right now. So everything that we do is about trying to bring more resources and attention to the stories of what this organizing actually looks like. Dirtroad Organizing actually just launched a story telling program to uplift the incredible work of our alumni. It’s called HomeGrown, and you can find us on Substack. 

• Dirtroad Organizing website
• Homegrown Substack by Dirtroad Organizing
• 2020 Bioneers Online Keynote from Chloe as State Senator

The post Showing Up for Rural America: A Conversation with Chloe Maxmin appeared first on Bioneers.

The government’s approval of the Jackdaw gasfield, off Aberdeen, has been widely condemned by environmental campaigners.

Previous protest against Equinor, one of the companies behind the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields. Photo: © Ron Fassbender

Opponents of the decision include the campaign network, the Weald Action Group, which with Sarah Finch, secured a landmark judgement later used to quash the original Jackdaw permission.

The government said today Jackdaw could begin extracting gas within months and increase UK production by about 6% at its peak. But it admitted that the field would not reduce household bills.

A decision has yet to be made on the Rosebank oilfield, off Shetland. The Guardian reported this afternoon that the government was leaning towards rejecting development of Rosebank. Oil from that field would be exported and sold on international markets.

Jackdaw and Rosebank were approved by the Conservatives. But in 2025 the Scottish Court of Sessions confirmed that both decisions were unlawful.

The judge said the Finch Ruling by the UK Supreme Court should apply restrospectively to both Rosebank and Jackdaw.

The Finch case had successfully argued that decisionmakers must consider the climate impact of greenhouse gases released when fossil fuels were eventually burned. The original decisions on Jackdaw and Rosebank had not taken account of these emissions, known as downstream or Scope 3.

Weald Action Group reaction “classic case of misdirection”

Campaigner Sarah Finch said:

“Giving the go ahead to Jackdaw is a mistake and classic case of misdirection.

“The UK has the oldest and least efficient housing stock in Europe with one in five homes lacking proper insulation.

“Instead of approving a gas field that will do nothing to cut heating bills this winter or make a meaningful difference to energy security, the UK government should be investing in a systematic and comprehensive home energy efficiency programme”.

Campaigner Kirsty Clough said:

“Governments around the world already plan to produce over 90% more gas than is compatible with keeping global average temperature rise below 1.5oC.

“At home droughts and wildfires blighted our country this summer. What more evidence do leaders need that the climate crisis is not some distant threat for future administrations to deal with? It is real and it is happening now.

“Approving Jackdaw will only make the situation worse”.

Other campaign reaction ClientEarth – “we pay price of extreme weather”

Kyle Lischak, head of UK at Client Earth

“The companies drilling our oil and gasfield will soon leave the empty oilfields with record profits, whilst we pay the price of extreme weather for decades to come.”

The organisation also said:

“The approval of Jackdaw showed the strength of the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying. To stop Rosebank, the Government must feel our collective opposition is even stronger.

“This is the final stage of a years-long fight by many individuals, communities and organisations. If enough people speak out now, we can make sure Rosebank is rejected once and for all.”

E3G – “more drilling is the wrong answer”

Ellie Mae O’Hagan, the UK energy programme lead, said:

“After a summer of deadly heatwaves, the public has made up its mind: more drilling is the wrong answer. If the prime minister wants a decade in power to change the country, he should invest in heat pumps and solar, not tax breaks for the oil and gas companies driving up our bills and polluting the planet.”

Friends of the Earth – “bridge to nowhere”

Energy campaigner, Danny Gross, said:

“Giving Jackdaw the green light is a huge blow to Labour’s green credentials. It comes the same day the UN warns the world must cut carbon emissions by nearly a fifth in the next four years to avoid climate catastrophe – and just weeks before the Prime Minister is due to attend the global climate talks in Turkey.

“With extreme heat, devastating floods, wildfires, droughts and rising food prices already giving us a glimpse of a future of climate chaos, the science is clear – there can be no new oil and gas if we’re to avert the worst of climate breakdown.

“Jackdaw is a bridge to nowhere. It will slow down the shift to cheaper, cleaner energy and the green jobs of the future.

“The coming months are now crucial for the government. Andy Burnham must put ordinary people before the interests of the oil and gas lobby and polluters by saying no to Rosebank and a third Heathrow runway and putting a pause on the energy-hungry data centres threatening communities and the environment. The government can’t keep allowing developments that blow holes in our carbon ambitions, fuel the climate crisis and put our future at risk.”

Greenpeace – “toxic grip of fossil fuel lobbyists”

Ami McCarthy, head of politics, said:

“Approving Jackdaw shows the toxic grip fossil fuel lobbyists still hold over our energy policy. Andy Burnham promised pragmatism, but there is nothing pragmatic about rubber-stamping a project that won’t lower energy bills, won’t boost energy security and will create just 27 full-time jobs.

“What Jackdaw is guaranteed to do is generate record profits for Shell and Equinor while supercharging the climate chaos hitting families here and abroad. Going on to approve Rosebank would detonate an even bigger carbon bomb, releasing as much carbon as 56 coal plants operating for a year.

“True pragmatism means severing our reliance on expensive oil and gas that leaves British households broke, supercharges extreme weather and leaves our energy security at the mercy of petrostates.”

Uplift – “caving to oil industry”

Tessa Khan, executive director,said:

“This benefits oil giants and their shareholders and doesn’t make life more affordable as Burnham promise. Clean energy is how we lower bills, reindustrialise regions and increase public control – not by caving to an oil industry making obscene profits while pushing up bills, laying off workers and driving the heatwaves we saw this summer.”

She also said:

“Jackdaw will provide around just 2 per cent of our gas demand for roughly ten years. It has been oversold and won’t stop the decline in North Sea jobs, as it will be largely unmanned and operated remotely.”

She added:

“Labour’s climate credibility is on the line. No new oil and gasfields are compatible with safe climate limits.”

“Shell will be cheering this decision but it won’t knock a penny off our energy bills, which is what’s keeping people up at night, or make a meaningful difference to our gas supply.”

Adapted from Chapter 5 of The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth From the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction (Princeton University Press).

Blame the word wizardry of Charles Dickens. In 1852 the great Victorian novelist described a long-forgotten naval admiral with the coinage “as dead as the Dodo.” The phrase was catchy. It appeared just a few years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which stoked almost as much interest in the ends of species as in their beginnings. The poor dodo then appeared, as a clownish figure, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The bird’s reputation was sealed, and the dodo became not just an emblem of extinction but a byword for doomed obsolescence. To go the way of the dodo meant to succumb to inevitable oblivion.

In truth, the dodo’s fame is out of proportion to its significance. And yet the bird, rightly understood, is the perfect allegory for the fate of island biota in modern times. That is to say, if we understand its story correctly in place and time, the precise way that its evolutionary history intersects our own, the dodo can help us understand the true depth of human impact — and why the conventional ways we measure that impact threaten to understate the damage we have done.

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) lived on the island of Mauritius in the Mascarene archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The species was a flightless member of the pigeon/dove family (Columbidae). Dodos boasted long and colorful beaks. They ate fruit and perhaps small crabs. The portrayal of the dodo as ridiculous or clumsy is absurdly unfair. Mauritius lacked native mammals (with the exception of one bat, now endangered), so the niches normally occupied by mammals were infilled by birds, reptiles, and even crabs. The dodo, far from a defective product of evolution, was a stroke of creative genius, executed under the severest constraints — a plump pigeon playing the part of a mammal. Until we showed up, they thrived.

The Mascarenes make a rich case study in the annals of extinction history because, as Anthony Cheke and Julian Hume have observed, “Their despoilers took good notes.” This is no accident. The Mascarenes were ground zero for some of the first environmental thinking — and activism — in recognizably modern form. Deforestation and defaunation startled European observers. Mauritius, in the words of the historian Richard Grove, acquired “a disproportionate significance in the history of European colonial environmental policy.” The phrase “dead as a dodo” was not only catchy — it had been primed for success by two centuries of awareness and angst about European impact on this exotic landscape.

Even so, the exact date of the most famous extinction is still fuzzy: The dodo was last securely observed in the 1630s, but they may have survived for a few more decades. The precise cause of their demise is also obscure — in large part because the bird suffered all the usual forces of ecological upheaval at once. Their habitat was destroyed by farms. Their eggs were eaten by invasive species. And, certainly, we hunted the dodos.

The dodo symbolizes the total biotic chaos instigated when Europeans showed up on these islands. At some point or another, more than seventeen mammals, roughly three dozen birds, over a dozen reptiles, a handful of frogs, and numerous invertebrates (among them the nasty predator known as the rosy wolf snail) were introduced. The archipelago’s new residents made their presence felt: Pigs ran rampant, rats gorged on birds and their eggs, and the crab-eating macaque, a monkey native to Southeast Asia, feasted on unwary endemic animals. The effects rippled. Since the first caravel cast its shadow on these shores, more than fifty species have vanished from the Mascarenes.

Human arrival unthreaded a unique fabric woven over incomprehensible reaches of geological time. Islands confront us with the active role of geology in evolution. Islands broadly fall into two types, oceanic and continental, with distinctive evolutionary dynamics. Oceanic islands are usually volcanic in origin (e.g., Palmyra, Hawaii, the Mascarenes), though sometimes they are created by uplift (e.g., Cyprus). Continental islands are bits of landmasses that have become stranded (e.g., the British Isles). Unlike oceanic islands, continental islands start with life, a random sample drawn from continental flora and fauna, like a handful of trail mix grabbed in the dark.

Evolution will work with whatever it is given, and since the constraints are heavy, island biogeography is, in the words of David Quammen, “a catalogue of quirks and superlatives.” Physical barriers drive evolutionary divergence; island populations, separated from the continents, follow unique evolutionary paths. With predators absent and competition sparse, natural selection tilts in unexpected directions. Traits that make no sense on continents — like flightlessness in birds — flourish. Entire systems of interdependence evolve around these peculiarities. And the result is that a staggering share of the world’s species diversity has been hatched on islands.

With great distinctness comes great fragility. Small populations on islands are always vulnerable to shocks, and island species often lack defenses that continental animals must acquire in constant competition against predators, parasites, and even disease. In sum, it is exactly that which makes islands different that leaves them especially vulnerable to us. Their essence is isolation; ours is connectivity. Their tempo is Earth time; our schedules are manic. And when the two collide, the result is often catastrophic.

The Portuguese first set foot on Mauritius around 1507 CE. This timing is of enormous consequence. The year 1500 has come to denote a stark boundary in the literature on the Sixth Extinction (in essence, because the IUCN started noting known extinctions since that date in its Red List). In order to compare past and present rates of extinction, it is commonplace to start tallying species that have disappeared since that time. Round numbers are always suspect, but this one is unusually complicated. Scientists, with a solemn duty to measure things precisely, must start somewhere. Historians, whose tapestry is woven of countless threads, prefer to linger over complexity, to insist on a mix of continuity and change in all human affairs. As a scholar of divided loyalties, I can sympathize with, and become frustrated by, both sides.

Even if the year 1500 is asked to bear an unrealistic amount of weight, the choice is not arbitrary. Around this time, Europeans started crossing oceans with some regularity. The pace of change accelerated. The human impact on biodiversity not only became more pronounced in the Age of Discovery, but the record of our impact also became much richer. No one denies that something dramatically changes around the year 1500, but as the ecologist Robert Whittaker put it, “Using a baseline of AD 1500 is to begin in the middle of the movie.” Whittaker describes our impact on islands in terms of “successive waves of transformation, a form of anthropogenic ratchet effect.”

Human impact on island fauna goes back to the original Ice Age dispersal of humans. Since the Pleistocene, colonization has often meant the onset of hunting and the beginning of the end for large animals, like the pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants on Cyprus. In general, the bigger the animal and the higher up the food web, the more likely it was to vanish. Flightless birds and big reptiles bore the brunt. The giant ground birds of New Zealand, the moas, are a striking case. Geology destined it to be a land of birds. With no mammals (apart from a few bats), the avian fauna of New Zealand gives us a sense of what evolution might have done if the asteroid had wiped out the mammals. The Polynesians who arrived found an Edenic landscape: nine moa species, some towering up to 12 feet tall and weighing hundreds of pounds. Tens to hundreds of thousands of these birds roamed the islands. Within two or three centuries, every species of moa was extinct.

European colonization in the Age of Discovery marked a new era within this much longer story. What makes this period stand out is that the fate of island biodiversity became entangled with novel power dynamics between human societies. Virgin islands like Mauritius were long since rare by 1500 CE, so in most cases, Europeans arrived on already-inhabited islands, disrupting socioecological balances of long standing. The Caribbean offers a quintessential case. Even before European contact, human impact unfolded in distinct waves, but the arrival of Columbus brought a cascade of new pressures: invasive animals, unfamiliar pathogens, and extractive technologies. Indigenous societies and island ecosystems were thrown into turmoil.

The result is measured in rapid faunal turnover. In the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico), there were 116 species of mammals at the beginning of the Holocene. Around 60 of them are gone. If bats are excluded, more than 4 out of every 5 mammals have gone extinct. Cuba, which includes the largest island in the Caribbean plus an archipelago of more than three thousand small islands, has seen approximately 24 of its 59 native mammals go extinct. Deforestation and direct exploitation were important drivers, but the role of invasive species was primary: Over 40 nonnative mammals have been introduced. To the east, on Hispaniola, virtually all the nonflying mammals are gone. On Puerto Rico, all seven are gone.

Mammals were not the only victims. Caribbean birds were threatened by new predators like rats and cats, and they were evicted from their shrinking forests. More than 60 species of birds have certainly gone extinct, and most that remain are threatened or endangered. Over half of the endemic parrots of the Caribbean have been snuffed out. Reptiles have suffered a similar fate. Although modern research has skewed away from our cold-blooded cousins, reptiles are integral to Caribbean ecosystems. Yet since European arrival, turtles, snakes, and lizards have been in freefall. On Guadeloupe, for instance, half to two-thirds of snakes and lizards have gone extinct. Many of the ecological jobs undertaken by reptiles go unreplaced, making the loss of functional diversity even greater.

The story of island biodiversity will thread through future chapters too. As steam replaced sail, the problem of invasive species only became more acute. In the last century, pollution and climate change have become new threats. There was a long pre-history to human impact before 1500 CE; European colonization marks not a beginning but a distinct new phase, a speeding up; and now the Anthropocene is somehow accelerating human impact again.

All in all, the human-dominated planet leaves less life on islands. What endures is quieter, more uniform, less exuberant than before. The raw numbers are revealing. Consider that since the beginning of the late Pleistocene — roughly 126,000 years ago — about 600 bird species are known to have gone extinct, and the real number is probably twice as high. Around 80% of the extinct species were island endemics. Even more generally, around three out of every four anthropogenic extinctions to date have involved island species. If global biodiversity is a great library, written over tens of millions of years, then we have erased an inordinate portion of its rare books collection — the most archaic, most colorful, and most singular volumes.

The year 1500 always saw a speeding up of human impact on ocean life, but the contrast between oceans and islands puts the proposition of the Sixth Extinction, its limits and its strengths, in a distinct light. Oceans are vast and resilient. Islands are small and fragile. If we measure human impact by counting extinctions alone, we will underestimate what we have done to life in the oceans. At the same time, extinction is a reasonable measure of our impact on islands, at least so far, even if we rarely count or even consider the losses before 1500 CE. And counting extinctions is only one crude measure of what we care about. Conceivably, the rate of island extinction could slow down, only because we have already done so much damage to the most vulnerable ecosystems. This is hardly cause for complacency. In fact, just the opposite: Because we have already lost so much diversity on islands, we might strain all the more to protect what remains.

Previously in The Revelator:

For Bald Eagles, the Descendants of the Destroyers Became the Restorers

The post The Way of the Dodo: Thinking Historically About Extinction appeared first on The Revelator.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES — 20 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-093 The Sakhalin Papers LXXXIII: The Energy Charter Treaty Trap — How a Gazprom-Owned Company Challenged the EU, and Where Shell Fits In A 2019 arbitration notice, a 192-page investment claim, the European Union’s jurisdictional objections and an extraordinary legal complication: Brussels has now withdrawn from the very treaty under which the case was brought.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-093
Publication date: 20 October 2026
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers — Shell, Gazprom and Russia
Previous instalment: The Sakhalin Papers LXXXII, 19 October 2026
Principal sources: Shell corporate announcements and financial reports; Nord Stream 2 AG’s arbitration notice and memorial; the European Union’s September 2020 jurisdictional memorial; Permanent Court of Arbitration Procedural Order No. 4; EU judicial records; and contemporaneous Reuters reporting.
Evidence classification: Authenticated primary documents; recorded legal allegations and responses; judicial findings; and separately identified editorial commentary.

INTRODUCTION: THE TREATY THAT OUTLIVED THE INVESTMENT

There is a revealing passage in a legal document dated 26 September 2019.

The document was submitted on behalf of Nord Stream 2 AG, the Swiss-registered company responsible for constructing the controversial pipeline from Russia to Germany.

It was addressed to the European Union.

Its purpose was to commence international arbitration.

The company alleged that changes to European gas-market legislation had unlawfully damaged its investment.

It sought orders protecting its ability to operate the pipeline under the commercial arrangements originally envisaged.

And it reserved the right to seek financial compensation.

The document appeared three years before Shell wrote off its entire $1.126 billion Nord Stream 2 loan.

It also preceded Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s suspension of the pipeline’s certification process and the explosions that damaged sections of the Nord Stream infrastructure in September 2022.

The legal dispute was therefore not originally about the war.

It was about something more fundamental: whether an international investment treaty could be used to challenge the consequences of European legislation governing energy infrastructure.

Seven years later, the arbitration remains unresolved.

The previous instalment examined how European sanctions created uncertainty about whether the arbitration itself could proceed.

Today, we return to the beginning of the dispute and examine the underlying documents.

They reveal a disagreement extending beyond the commercial fate of a pipeline.

At issue are the rights of foreign investors, the regulatory powers of governments, and the circumstances in which changes to legislation can create international compensation obligations.

There is also a striking subsequent development.

The European Union withdrew from the Energy Charter Treaty on 28 June 2025.

Yet that withdrawal did not simply erase the legal history of investments made while the treaty was in force.

The treaty contains a provision designed to preserve certain investment protections for another twenty years.

The potential implications are considerable.

For Shell shareholders, the documents provide an opportunity to examine the legal environment surrounding a financing decision that eventually resulted in a substantial write-down.

1. THE DOCUMENT THAT IDENTIFIES SHELL

We begin with an important primary source.

Nord Stream 2 AG’s original Notice of Arbitration, dated 26 September 2019, is publicly available through the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law’s transparency registry.

Page 3 of the numbered notice, corresponding to page 5 of the PDF, identifies the financing arrangements concluded in 2017.

Among the companies named is:

Shell Exploration and Production (LXXI) B.V.

This is significant because it is not simply a retrospective description of Shell’s involvement.

It is the name of a Shell entity appearing in a contemporaneous legal document submitted by the pipeline company itself.

The notice records that financing agreements were concluded with Gazprom and five European energy companies, including Shell.

It also identifies the pipeline company’s gas transportation agreement with Gazprom Export LLC, concluded on 7 March 2017.

These arrangements formed part of the commercial structure through which the project was intended to operate.

The existence of Shell’s financing commitment is independently confirmed by Shell’s own announcement of 24 April 2017.

That announcement identified ENGIE, OMV, Uniper and Wintershall alongside Shell.

Each company committed financing and guarantees covering up to 10% of the project’s estimated €9.5 billion cost.

Gazprom remained the sole shareholder of Nord Stream 2 AG.

Thus, Shell was a financier rather than an equity shareholder in the pipeline company.

This distinction is important.

The claimant in the subsequent arbitration was Nord Stream 2 AG.

Shell was not the claimant.

Nevertheless, Shell’s involvement was expressly recorded in the investment documentation underlying the dispute.

The original arbitration notice therefore provides a useful independent cross-reference to Shell’s corporate announcement. UNCITRAL

Primary documents: Nord Stream 2 AG — Notice of Arbitration, 26 September 2019 and Shell’s authenticated April 2017 financing announcement, page 40.

2. APRIL 2019: THE DISPUTE BEGINS BEFORE THE DIRECTIVE TAKES EFFECT

On 12 April 2019, Nord Stream 2 AG initiated the formal process of seeking an amicable settlement under the Energy Charter Treaty.

The date matters.

The disputed European legislation had not yet formally been adopted.

Directive (EU) 2019/692 was adopted on 17 April 2019 and entered into force on 23 May 2019.

The directive extended important EU internal gas-market requirements to transmission pipelines connecting EU Member States with third countries.

Those requirements included the separation of gas transmission from production and supply activities, third-party access provisions and tariff regulation.

Nord Stream 2 AG maintained that the new rules would seriously interfere with the project’s commercial arrangements.

The company argued that the investment had been undertaken in reliance upon a different regulatory framework.

It also contended that the legislative changes unfairly targeted Nord Stream 2.

These were allegations advanced by the pipeline company, not established findings of unlawful discrimination.

Contemporaneous reporting confirms that the dispute was already attracting attention.

On 25 April 2019, Reuters reported that Nord Stream 2 had warned the European Commission of potential legal proceedings.

The report described a letter seeking assurances that the project would be exempted from the new requirements.

The Commission’s response was uncompromising.

Its position was that the legislation had been approved through the European Union’s established procedures and would apply.

The Reuters report also identified Shell among the project’s European financial backers.

This reporting is valuable because it establishes how the dispute was understood at the time, before the subsequent invasion of Ukraine transformed its political significance. Yahoo Finance

Contemporaneous source: Reuters, 25 April 2019 — EU Says New Energy Rules Apply to Nord Stream 2.

3. SEPTEMBER 2019: THE PIPELINE COMPANY INVOKES AN INTERNATIONAL TREATY

On 26 September 2019, Nord Stream 2 AG formally commenced arbitration against the European Union.

The legal basis was Article 26 of the Energy Charter Treaty.

The proceedings were brought under the 1976 UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration subsequently administered the case under reference PCA 2020-07.

The claimant was a company incorporated in Switzerland.

The respondent was the European Union itself.

This was an important distinction from disputes brought solely against individual European governments.

Nord Stream 2 AG relied upon Switzerland’s status as a contracting party to the Energy Charter Treaty.

It claimed to be a qualifying foreign investor with qualifying investments situated within the European Union.

Those investments included pipeline infrastructure, German landfall facilities, construction contracts and regulatory permits.

The company therefore argued that it was entitled to invoke treaty protections against conduct attributable to the European Union.

The original arbitration notice alleged breaches involving discriminatory treatment, interference with investment rights and violations of obligations to provide fair and equitable treatment.

It referred particularly to Articles 10 and 13 of the treaty.

Article 10 contains obligations concerning the treatment and protection of qualifying investments.

Article 13 addresses expropriation and measures having an equivalent effect.

But there was an important procedural question.

Had the European Union actually consented to international arbitration of this particular dispute?

That question became central to the litigation.

4. JULY 2020: THE 192-PAGE MEMORIAL REVEALS WHAT THE CLAIMANT WANTED

On 3 July 2020, Nord Stream 2 AG submitted its principal memorial.

The document runs to 192 PDF pages.

It provides a detailed reconstruction of the project’s commercial arrangements, the development of European gas legislation, the competing political interests and the alleged consequences for the investment.

The memorial was accompanied by witness statements, expert evidence and numerous documentary exhibits.

Its contents are important for understanding the claimant’s position.

Nord Stream 2 AG argued that the amended European legislation damaged the commercial structure upon which the pipeline had been financed.

In particular, it objected to the consequences of applying unbundling, third-party access and tariff regulation requirements.

The company’s case was that the pipeline had been developed around a long-term transportation agreement with Gazprom Export.

That arrangement was intended to generate a predictable revenue stream.

The new European requirements, it argued, threatened to interfere with this structure.

The company also alleged that the legislation had been deliberately designed to disadvantage Nord Stream 2.

Again, this was the claimant’s allegation.

The memorial did not itself establish that EU institutions had acted unlawfully.

Nevertheless, the submission provides a detailed record of what the pipeline company believed had gone wrong.

It also reveals an aspect of the claim that is easily overlooked.

Nord Stream 2 AG was not initially seeking only a financial damages award.

Its principal requested remedy was regulatory.

The company wanted the tribunal to order the European Union, by means of its own choosing, to remove the application of specified gas-market obligations to Nord Stream 2.

In paragraph 527 of the memorial, the company identified particular provisions of the Gas Directive.

These included Articles 9, 10 and 11, together with specified provisions of Articles 32 and 41.

In the alternative, it sought compensation in an amount to be assessed.

This distinction matters.

The primary objective was to preserve the commercial viability of the investment by obtaining relief from the regulatory consequences being challenged.

Compensation was an alternative.

The company was seeking to protect an operating business, not merely recover money from a project that had already failed.

Primary document: Nord Stream 2 AG — Claimant’s Memorial, 3 July 2020. See particularly the summary of claim and paragraphs 527–529. International Arbitration Database

5. THE EUROPEAN UNION’S FIRST DEFENCE: YOU HAVE ALREADY CHOSEN A COURT

On 15 September 2020, the European Union submitted its Memorial on Jurisdiction and Request for Bifurcation.

This authenticated document is particularly revealing.

Rather than immediately concentrating upon the underlying commercial allegations, the EU advanced two objections to the tribunal’s jurisdiction.

The first concerned a legal principle commonly known as a fork-in-the-road provision.

The expression describes treaty arrangements under which an investor may be required to choose between different dispute-resolution procedures.

Depending upon the precise treaty language, choosing one procedure can prevent the investor from subsequently pursuing the same dispute through another.

The European Union relied upon Article 26(3)(b)(i) and Annex ID of the Energy Charter Treaty.

It argued that its consent to international arbitration was conditional.

In particular, it maintained that an investor could not pursue the same dispute through arbitration after previously submitting it to the relevant courts or another applicable dispute-resolution procedure.

Nord Stream 2 AG had already challenged the 2019 directive before the EU General Court.

That action was filed on 25 July 2019.

The arbitration commenced two months later.

The European Union argued that the two proceedings concerned fundamentally the same dispute.

It also referred to litigation involving Germany’s energy regulator.

By September 2020, therefore, there were proceedings concerning Nord Stream 2 in several different legal forums.

The EU contended that this was precisely the situation the treaty’s restrictions were designed to prevent.

The company disagreed.

It maintained that its EU court challenge and international arbitration involved different legal rights and remedies.

The General Court action concerned the legality of the directive under European Union law.

The arbitration concerned alleged violations of international investment obligations.

Whether those distinctions were sufficient to defeat the EU’s objection was a matter for the arbitral tribunal.

Primary evidence: European Union — Memorial on Jurisdiction and Request for Bifurcation, 15 September 2020. See paragraphs 2–15. UNCITRAL

6. THE SECOND DEFENCE: WAS THE EUROPEAN UNION THE CORRECT RESPONDENT?

The European Union’s second objection concerned responsibility.

This was more technical but potentially just as important.

The disputed measure was an EU directive.

Directives generally require Member States to implement their requirements through national legal arrangements.

The EU argued that the practical effects alleged by Nord Stream 2 AG would arise from decisions taken by Member States, particularly Germany.

It maintained that national authorities retained discretion over the implementation of the relevant provisions.

Consequently, according to the EU, any alleged injury could not simply be attributed to the European Union.

In legal terminology, this was described as an objection concerning jurisdiction ratione personae.

The expression concerns whether the tribunal has jurisdiction in relation to the relevant parties.

The EU’s argument was that it was not internationally responsible for the alleged consequences of discretionary national implementation measures.

Nord Stream 2 AG disagreed.

Its position was that the European Union’s adoption of the amended directive was itself capable of violating the treaty.

The company argued that the regulatory changes and their consequences could not be separated in the manner proposed by the EU.

This dispute illustrates an important difficulty in international investment arbitration.

Where legislation is adopted at one level of government and implemented at another, determining responsibility can involve complicated questions of international law.

The tribunal would need to examine the legal obligations, the measures actually taken and the causal relationship between those measures and any proven injury.

The European Union’s jurisdictional objections were therefore substantial legal arguments.

But they were not, at that stage, judicial findings. UNCITRAL

7. DECEMBER 2020: THE TRIBUNAL REFUSES TO DECIDE JURISDICTION FIRST

The European Union wanted its jurisdictional objections decided before the tribunal examined the merits of Nord Stream 2 AG’s claims.

This procedure is known as bifurcation.

If a tribunal determines that it lacks jurisdiction, there may be no need to undertake a lengthy examination of the underlying allegations.

The EU therefore requested a separate preliminary phase.

Nord Stream 2 AG opposed that proposal.

It argued that the jurisdictional questions were closely connected with the substantive issues.

On 31 December 2020, the tribunal delivered Procedural Order No. 4.

The order is an authenticated primary document.

It records the arguments advanced by both parties and explains the tribunal’s reasoning.

The tribunal considered that the jurisdictional questions could not necessarily be resolved through a straightforward comparison of the different court proceedings.

It was concerned that an insufficiently detailed examination could lead to an incorrect application of the treaty’s restrictions.

The arbitrators also recognised that their eventual interpretation could have implications beyond Nord Stream 2.

Other international investment disputes involving the European Union might be affected.

The tribunal consequently rejected the European Union’s request for a separate preliminary jurisdictional phase.

It decided that the objections should be examined together with the merits.

But an important distinction must be emphasised.

This was not a determination that the European Union’s jurisdictional objections were wrong.

The tribunal expressly stated that it had reached no conclusion on their merits.

It had decided how the case should proceed, not whether Nord Stream 2 AG was entitled to succeed.

The tribunal also envisaged a separate damages phase, if necessary.

Thus, the immediate outcome was procedural.

The arbitration could continue to examine jurisdiction and liability together, leaving damages for possible later determination.

Primary document: Procedural Order No. 4 — Decision on Request for Preliminary Phase on Jurisdiction, 31 December 2020. See paragraphs 45–54. UNCITRAL

8. NOVEMBER 2024: A COURT REACHES AN UNFAVOURABLE CONCLUSION FOR NORD STREAM 2

The separate proceedings before the EU courts continued.

On 27 November 2024, the General Court delivered an important judgment.

It dismissed Nord Stream 2 AG’s action challenging Directive 2019/692.

The judgment is particularly relevant because it examined the company’s assertions concerning regulatory expectations and the foreseeability of legal changes.

The court concluded that Nord Stream 2 AG had continued investing during a period when there was no assurance that the existing regulatory position would remain unchanged.

It considered that the company could foresee the possibility of the EU extending its gas-market requirements to pipelines entering from third countries.

The court also concluded that the company’s exclusion from the derogation available to pipelines completed before May 2019 did not establish a violation of the relevant principles of EU law.

Its conclusions addressed legal certainty, legitimate expectations, equal treatment and proportionality.

The judgment was a substantive defeat for Nord Stream 2 AG.

It supported the legality of the legislation under the EU legal standards considered by the court.

However, the ruling did not itself determine the separate Energy Charter Treaty arbitration.

The legal foundations of the two proceedings were different.

The distinction remains significant even where the underlying facts overlap.

The court’s findings may be relevant to the arguments and evidence considered by an investment tribunal.

They are not automatically a final answer to every question arising under international investment law.

There is another important qualification.

The 2024 judgment examined the regulatory situation surrounding the 2019 directive.

It did not establish that Nord Stream 2 was commercially viable under the entirely different geopolitical circumstances prevailing after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Those later developments created additional and distinct obstacles.

Official judicial source: Court of Justice of the European Union — Press Release 195/24, 27 November 2024. Jus Mundi

9. JUNE 2025: THE EUROPEAN UNION WITHDRAWS FROM THE TREATY

The next development gives this historical dispute an additional dimension.

On 28 June 2025, the European Union’s withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty became effective.

The European Commission confirms the date on its official Energy Charter information page.

The withdrawal followed increasing concern that the treaty’s investment-protection arrangements were inconsistent with European and international climate-policy objectives.

Critics had argued that treaty protections could expose governments to compensation claims when they introduced measures intended to reduce fossil-fuel dependence.

Defenders of investment treaties emphasised the importance of legal certainty and protection against arbitrary or discriminatory government action.

The European Union ultimately concluded that withdrawal was appropriate.

But Article 47 of the Energy Charter Treaty contains a provision commonly described as a sunset clause.

Under Article 47(3), treaty protections continue to apply for twenty years to certain qualifying investments made before withdrawal took effect.

For the European Union, that period would extend to June 2045, subject to the applicable treaty conditions and any relevant legal disputes over interpretation.

The precise implications depend upon the investor, the respondent, the investment and the legal issues concerned.

A distinction is necessary between disputes involving investors from EU Member States and those involving investors from outside the Union.

Nord Stream 2 AG is incorporated in Switzerland.

Its position cannot automatically be equated with that of an investor incorporated within the European Union.

Furthermore, its arbitration commenced in September 2019, long before the EU’s withdrawal took effect.

The withdrawal therefore raises questions about the continuing application of treaty protections, but it does not establish that the original arbitration has been extinguished.

The proceedings remain listed as pending.

Official sources: European Commission — Energy Charter Treaty Withdrawal and Energy Charter Treaty — Article 47, Withdrawal and Continuing Investment Protection. PCA-CPA

10. THE COMPENSATION QUESTION: WHAT WOULD HAVE TO BE PROVED?

It is tempting to examine a €9.5 billion pipeline project and assume that any successful investment claim could automatically involve billions of euros in damages.

That assumption would be unjustified.

An international investment claim generally requires the claimant to establish several distinct elements.

The tribunal must have jurisdiction.

The claimant must demonstrate that the relevant treaty protections apply.

It must establish a breach of those protections.

If compensation is sought, it must also demonstrate legally recoverable loss and the necessary causal relationship between the breach and that loss.

Additional questions may concern valuation, mitigation and the appropriate form of relief.

The fact that an investment has lost commercial value does not automatically establish that a government must compensate its owner.

Likewise, the existence of regulatory changes does not automatically constitute expropriation or unfair treatment.

Governments possess legitimate regulatory powers.

The legal difficulty lies in determining when the exercise of those powers crosses the threshold established by the applicable treaty.

Nord Stream 2 AG’s July 2020 memorial requested compensation in an amount to be assessed only as an alternative to its principal regulatory remedy.

The official Energy Charter dispute record does not identify a final compensation award.

Nor has the public arbitration record examined for this instalment established a final damages figure.

The project cost, Shell’s loan impairment and any potential compensation entitlement must therefore remain separate categories.

There is a documented investment, a documented financial write-down and an unresolved legal claim. They are not interchangeable.

11. THE SHELL CONNECTION: FROM A FINANCING AGREEMENT TO A $1.126 BILLION WRITE-DOWN

For Shell shareholders, the documents offer a clear chronology.

On 24 April 2017, Shell announced its participation in financing Nord Stream 2.

By September 2019, Nord Stream 2 AG was pursuing international arbitration over European regulatory changes.

In July 2020, the claimant submitted a detailed memorial explaining why it considered the legislation damaging to its investment.

In December 2020, the tribunal rejected the EU’s request to determine jurisdiction separately.

In February 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine fundamentally altered the project’s political and commercial environment.

Shell announced its intention to end its involvement in Nord Stream 2 and withdraw from Russian ventures.

In its 2022 Annual Report, Shell recorded that the loan had been fully written down in the first quarter of that year.

The amount was $1,126 million.

The report also confirmed that the final loan instalments had been made during the second quarter of 2020.

This provides a notable chronological detail.

Shell’s financing commitments were being completed while Nord Stream 2 AG’s dispute with the European Union was already underway.

That does not establish that Shell’s management failed to assess the regulatory risks.

Nor does it establish that the arbitration was regarded internally as financially material to Shell.

Those questions would require additional evidence concerning Shell’s internal investment assessments, contractual arrangements and management deliberations.

The publicly available documents establish the chronology, but not the confidential reasoning behind every decision.

Nevertheless, the chronology is relevant to shareholders examining how legal and geopolitical risks were managed.

There is also no basis in the material examined to conclude that Shell would automatically benefit from a successful award obtained by Nord Stream 2 AG.

Shell’s status as a financier must not be confused with ownership of the claimant company or entitlement to compensation awarded to that company.

The terms of the financing arrangements would be relevant to any separate question concerning possible recoveries.

Authenticated corporate source: Shell Annual Report and Accounts 2022 — Nord Stream 2 Disclosure, page 263. Shell Norway

12. DOCUMENTARY FINDINGS Established Facts

Shell and four other European companies entered financing agreements with Nord Stream 2 AG in April 2017.

Gazprom was the pipeline company’s sole shareholder.

The September 2019 arbitration notice specifically identified Shell Exploration and Production (LXXI) B.V. among the financing entities.

Nord Stream 2 AG commenced Energy Charter Treaty arbitration against the European Union on 26 September 2019.

Its July 2020 memorial alleged breaches of investment protections and requested regulatory relief or, alternatively, financial compensation.

The European Union contested the tribunal’s jurisdiction on two principal grounds.

On 31 December 2020, the tribunal rejected the EU’s request for a separate preliminary jurisdictional phase.

The tribunal did not determine the substantive validity of those objections in that procedural order.

On 27 November 2024, the EU General Court dismissed Nord Stream 2 AG’s challenge to the 2019 gas directive.

The European Union’s withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty became effective on 28 June 2025.

Shell’s 2022 Annual Report recorded a full $1.126 billion write-down of its Nord Stream 2 loan.

The arbitration remains identified as pending in the official public case record.

Allegations and Contested Positions

Nord Stream 2 AG alleged that EU legislative changes unfairly discriminated against its investment.

It argued that the changes interfered with legitimate investment expectations and undermined the project’s commercial arrangements.

The European Union disputed the claimant’s interpretation of the treaty and objected to the tribunal’s jurisdiction.

It argued that the claimant had already pursued related proceedings before EU courts.

It also maintained that the alleged regulatory consequences would depend upon measures taken by Member States rather than conduct attributable to the EU itself.

The existence of these submissions is documented.

Their underlying allegations must not be presented as established findings.

Matters Not Established

The examined records do not establish that the European Union unlawfully expropriated Nord Stream 2.

They do not establish that the arbitral tribunal has awarded compensation.

They do not establish that Shell directed or participated in the arbitration.

They do not establish that Shell would be entitled to receive proceeds from any future award.

They do not establish that the European Union’s withdrawal from the treaty has terminated the proceedings.

They do not establish that Shell’s executives ignored legal warnings or concealed information from shareholders.

Those distinctions are essential to the accuracy of the archive.

EDITORIAL COMMENTARY: THE UNINTENDED LONG LIFE OF AN ENERGY INVESTMENT

There is a broader historical lesson in these documents.

International energy projects are frequently developed over periods measured in decades.

Their financial structures depend upon assumptions concerning political stability, market access, regulatory arrangements and long-term demand.

Those assumptions can change.

Sometimes the changes are gradual.

Sometimes they are sudden and catastrophic.

Nord Stream 2 experienced both.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the project was already involved in a substantial legal dispute over European gas-market rules.

The proceedings concerned the rights of investors and the powers of governments.

Then came the war.

The pipeline’s commercial future changed dramatically.

Shell withdrew and recognised its financial loss.

Yet the original arbitration continued.

The fact that the European Union subsequently withdrew from the treaty under which the proceedings were commenced adds another layer of complexity.

A treaty designed to encourage long-term energy investment became controversial partly because of the protections it offered to investments that governments later considered undesirable.

That tension is not unique to Nord Stream 2.

It lies at the heart of a continuing international debate about the balance between investment protection and regulatory freedom.

Investors need predictable legal frameworks.

Governments need the ability to legislate in the public interest.

Neither proposition, standing alone, determines whether compensation is appropriate in a particular case.

The answer depends upon the applicable legal obligations and evidence.

From an archival perspective, the remarkable feature of Nord Stream 2 is how clearly its history illustrates the successive stages of international investment risk.

The financing commitments are documented.

The initial regulatory dispute is documented.

The arbitration submissions are publicly available.

The subsequent judicial decisions can be examined.

Shell’s financial write-down is recorded in its published accounts.

And the later complications arising from European sanctions have themselves generated further procedural orders.

For historians and shareholders, this creates an unusually extensive documentary trail.

The challenge is to avoid treating it as a single, uncomplicated story.

Nord Stream 2 was not one dispute. It became a sequence of commercial, legal, political and financial consequences extending across more than a decade.

The same distinction is essential when examining Shell’s historical involvement in Russia.

The company’s decision to withdraw from an investment does not necessarily close the historical record concerning how that investment was made, financed and assessed.

That record deserves careful examination.

SOURCE RECORD AND DOCUMENTARY PROVENANCE

The following primary and contemporaneous sources support this instalment.

1. Shell — 24 April 2017. The original corporate announcement confirms the financing agreements, participating companies, investment limits, project cost and Gazprom’s ownership of Nord Stream 2 AG.

Shell Corporate Press Releases 2017 — Nord Stream 2 Financing Announcement

2. Nord Stream 2 AG — 26 September 2019. The original arbitration notice identifies the claimant, respondent, legal basis, investment arrangements, alleged treaty violations and requested relief. It expressly names the Shell financing entity.

Nord Stream 2 AG — Original Notice of Arbitration

3. Reuters — 25 April 2019. Contemporaneous reporting establishes that Nord Stream 2 had warned the Commission of possible legal action before the arbitration formally commenced. It also records the Commission’s response.

Reuters — EU Says New Energy Rules Apply to Nord Stream 2

4. Nord Stream 2 AG — 3 July 2020. The claimant’s 192-page memorial sets out the allegations concerning investment protection, regulatory treatment, expropriation and the remedies requested.

Claimant’s Memorial — 3 July 2020

5. European Union — 15 September 2020. The EU’s memorial advances jurisdictional objections based upon the treaty’s dispute-resolution provisions and the attribution of alleged regulatory consequences.

EU Memorial on Jurisdiction and Request for Bifurcation

6. Permanent Court of Arbitration — 31 December 2020. Procedural Order No. 4 rejects the request for a separate preliminary jurisdictional phase without determining the substantive objections.

Procedural Order No. 4 — Full Decision

7. Court of Justice of the European Union — 27 November 2024. The official judicial announcement records the General Court’s dismissal of Nord Stream 2 AG’s challenge to Directive 2019/692.

Official Court Press Release 195/24

8. Shell — 2022 Annual Report and Accounts. Shell’s financial disclosures confirm the complete $1.126 billion write-down of its Nord Stream 2 loan.

Shell Annual Report and Accounts 2022

9. European Commission — Energy Charter Withdrawal. The Commission confirms the EU’s withdrawal from the treaty, effective 28 June 2025.

European Commission — Energy Charter

10. Energy Charter Treaty — Article 47. The treaty’s withdrawal provision establishes the framework for continuing protection of certain qualifying investments.

Energy Charter Treaty — Article 47

Archive disclaimer: This instalment draws upon authenticated corporate documents, international arbitration submissions, procedural decisions, legislation and judicial records. Allegations advanced by litigants are attributed to those parties and are not presented as findings of wrongdoing. Shell was a financier of Nord Stream 2 AG, not a claimant in the arbitration examined here. No finding is made that Shell directed the proceedings, concealed information or is entitled to any future arbitration recovery. Outstanding legal claims remain unresolved unless determined by the competent tribunal or court. Editorial commentary is distinguished from documentary findings.

The website’s general disclaimer also applies.

NEXT IN THE SHELL LEAKS FILES SLF-2007-094 — The Sakhalin Papers LXXXIV: The Foreseeability Test — What Shell and Its Partners Knew Before the Nord Stream 2 Investment Was Written Off

The next instalment will examine one of the most consequential findings in the European General Court’s November 2024 judgment.

The court concluded that Nord Stream 2 AG had continued investing despite being able to foresee changes to European gas-market regulation.

That conclusion raises an important question for investors.

What information was available to Shell and the other European financiers when they entered the project in 2017?

What changed during the following three years?

And how should the regulatory dispute already underway in 2019 be understood alongside Shell’s confirmation that the final Nord Stream 2 loan instalments were made in the second quarter of 2020?

The next investigation will reconstruct the documentary chronology using Shell’s published statements, European legislative records, the claimant’s own evidence and contemporaneous reporting.

It will distinguish risks known at the time from developments that could not reasonably have been anticipated.

The objective will not be to impose hindsight upon historical investment decisions.

It will be to establish what the contemporary record actually shows.

Because there is a fundamental difference between an investment becoming unsuccessful through unforeseeable events and an investment proceeding while material risks are already apparent.

Shell’s financial loss is documented.

The precise history of the risks surrounding that investment deserves closer examination.

The Sakhalin Papers continue.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES — 20 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 20, 2026 at 9:43 pm.
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Organisations in the North Yorkshire village of Burniston are urging the Environment Agency (EA) to extend its consultation on plans for drilling and fracking.

Photo: DrillOrDrop

The deadline for comments is tomorrow (21 October 2026).

But local campaigners and councillors have called for more time to review two documents on the environmental permit, which the EA revised earlier this month.

The EA acknowledged what it called “drafting errors and “a small number of minor typographical errors and inconsistencies”.

Burniston Parish Council has called for an extension to the consultation of at least two months.

The local campaign group, Frack Free Coastal Communities, said it needed more time for a “comprehensive analysis of shortcomings that affect the EA’s technical analysis and appraisal of the permit application”.

DrillOrDrop asked the EA to respond to the local complaints and calls for more time. The organisation replied on 21 October 2026 refusing to extend the consultation. More details soon.

The organisation initially said it needed more time to reply to us. A spokesperson described the issue as “a fairly complex matter” that required “a lot of different input from different officers and teams”.

The spokesperson added:

“it may take a day or two to provide a response”.

Details

The EA announced on 3 August 2026 that it was “minded to approve” the permit for gas exploration and lower-volume fracking at a site on the edge of Burniston.

But after widespread criticism of the draft permit, the EA extended the consultation and then issued revised versions of the draft decision document and the draft permit.

Analysis of the amended documents by DrillOrDrop found at least 58 changes to the updated draft decision document and more than 20 in the draft permit report here.

Many complaints had not been addressed in the revisions.

The parish council chair, Richard Parsons, told DrillOrDrop:

“Burniston Parish Council and members of our community have become extremely concerned about the changes that have been made to the Environmental Agency report into the Burniston Gas drill licence. There have, very recently, been a large number of changes many of which do not just cover minor errors.

“We appreciate that the EA realise that in order to hold a proper public consultation the end date needed extending. Taking into account the volume and importance of the changes, closing this consultation on October 21st does not leave enough time for anyone to respond in any detail. Many of our residents did not receive the change of consultation date letter, from the EA, until October 14th.

“It is worth noting that most of the changes and the extension, were made as a result of the original consultation, whereby the many and important EA errors in the report, were pointed out. 

“Burniston parish councillors have written to the Environment Agency requesting the public consultation is adequately extended to allow everyone to read, understand and comment in a timely manner. We would suggest this extension is for at least a further two months and whenever the EA make further changes, further extensions are applied.”

Frack Free Coastal Communities (FFCC) said:

“Revisions to the draft decision document are extensive and much more than the correction of minor typographical errors.

“The EA has admitted that they are aligning their terminology with that used by the applicant. Given the contradictions and inconsistencies in that terminology, some of which have been made worse by the revisions, proper public scrutiny of the revised document requires significant time.

“To close the consultation on 21st October does not give sufficient time and goes against the spirit of the EA’s published code of practice for consultations.”

FFCC also said:

“Letters to local residents informing them of the revisions and the new consultation deadline only began arriving on 12th October and some residents have not yet received theirs. This is contrary to the standards the EA holds itself to.”

It added:

“we require additional time to scrutinise the terminology used in the revised draft and compare it to the applicant’s documentation so that we can submit a comprehensive analysis of shortcomings that affect the EA’s technical analysis and appraisal of the permit application.

“This includes lack of evidence to support conclusions; confusion over the meaning of ‘phase’ and ‘stage’ of hydraulic fracturing and consequently over the potential volumes of fracking fluid to be used; and confusion about the purpose of the hydraulic fracturing (proppant squeeze) in the specific context of the target formations for the proposed well.”

DrillOrDrop will report separately on responses to the revised documents.

• The permit consultation is separate from the planning application, which was refused by North Yorkshire Council earlier this year.

A legal letter from a campaigner has warned Surrey County Council that approval of drilling and production at the Horse Hill oil site would be unlawful.

Horse Hill, Surrey, January, 2026. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize

The site, near Redhill, was stripped of its planning permission in a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in June 2024. The court said the original permission granted in 2019 was unlawful because it failed to assess the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the end-use of the oil.

Oil production has been suspended since October 2024.

The site operator, Horse Hill Developments Limited (HHDL), it is now seeking to reinstate the permission. If granted, this would allow the company to drill four new production wells and extract 600,000 tonnes of oil over 20 years.

Use of the oil would release about two million tonnes of greenhouse gases, HHDL has estimated in new environmental information.

Dennis May, a member of Frack Free Misson who supported the Supreme Court case by Sarah Finch and the Weald Action Group, is the latest campaigner to oppose the application. (More details here and here)

In a letter from the law firm, Leigh Day, he argues:

• The assessment of emissions from the use of the oil was “so flawed” that permission could not lawfully be granted under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations.
• The proposal contravened local planning policy, including the influential development plan, because it had not demonstrated the need for more drilling and production. The plans would also have “a significant adverse effect on the climate”.
• The proposal was not supported by national policy

The letter concluded:

“The Proposed Development is contrary to Development Plan policy, will have no guaranteed benefits for national energy security, receives no national policy support, and will have a major adverse impact on the climate.

“For all of these reasons permission should be refused. A decision to grant consent, on the basis of the information currently before the Council, would be unlawful, irrational and in breach of the EIA Regulations.”

Core fuel

HHDL had characterised the project as a “core fuel sector” activity under the Energy Act 2023. This seeks to maintain and improve core fuel sector resilience and ensure continuity of supply in the UK.

But Mr May’s letter said projects for the commercial extraction of crude oil were not included in the statutory definition of the core fuel sector. The letter said:

“HHD issimply wrong in law in its assertion that the activity is wihtin the core fuel sector regime”.

It added:

“HHD is wrong to seek to conflate its project for the commercial extraction of crude oil with the powers of the Secretary of State to safeguard downstream core fuel supplies.”

Climate impact

The company had also argued in the new information that the emissions from use of the oil would be “not significant” for climate change and that drilling and production at Horse Hill would contribute to national energy security.

Mr May’s letter said there was “no credible basis for suggesting the impact on the climate would not be significant”.

HHDL’s assessment of the climate impacts was “deeply flawed”, the letter said. Methods used to give context to the significance of the emissions did not follow relevant guidance and/or were misleading, it said.

The letter added

“When the correct principles are applied it is absolutely obvious that the grant of permission for new oil and gas development … will have a major adverse effect on the climate.

“The applicant’s scattergun calculations may make it difficult to establish the precise magnitude of the effect with confidence, but it will self-evidently be significant in EIA terms. Any suggestion to the contrary is smoke and mirrors.”

“The FEI [further environmental information] submitted by HHD is logically unsound and legally inadequate. On that basis alone, permission for the proposed development should be refused.”

Policy support

The letter said HHDL was wrong to argue that the application benefitted from “active national policy support” in the National Policy Statement for Energy

It said the statement did not support the argument that new oil and gas extraction should be considered as infrastructure for which there was an urgent need.

Mr May countered any argument that the application was not for new oil and gas infrastructure. He said previous lawful planning permissions at Horse Hill had been for exploration and appraisal, not production. The first permission for production had been quashed by the Supreme Court.

The revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) – the blueprint for decision-making – removed the previous positive weight given to the economic benefits of onshore oil and gas development, the letter added. The NPPF also removed the requirement on decision-makers to “plan positively” for onshore oil and gas.

Decision date

No date has been confirmed for deciding the Horse Hill application.

But Surrey County Council told us today the January 2027 meeting of the planning committee was “currently looking the most likely”.

This meeting is expected to be on Wednesday 27 January 2027 at 10.30am. The committee usually meets in the council chamber at county council headquarters, Woodhatch Place, 11 Cockshot Hill, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 8EF.

energy B has announced an agreement that would give it total control of the suspended Horse Hill oil site in Surrey.

Horse Hill oil site in Surrey. Source: Google Earth downloaded 21/7/2026

In a stock market statement this morning, the company said it had agreed to buy the remaining stakes in Horse Hill, held by Arkadian Strategic Metals plc and Azzuro Resources.

The deals will cost a total of £167,748, energy B said.

In June 2026, energy B agreed to buy the majority interest in the site, near Gatwick Airport, then held by UK Oil & Gas plc (UKOG).

Today’s announcement would give energy B full ownership of the operator, Horse Hill Developments Limited (HHDL), the company said.

All three deals must be approved by the industry regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).

Energy B said formal application for the change of control was made to the NSTA on 30 September 2026.

DrillOrDrop recently asked NSTA whether the deal with UK Oil & Gas had been approved. The regulator said it could not comment on individual cases.

Production halted

Oil production at Horse Hill has been suspended since October 2024. This followed the landmark Finch ruling by the Supreme Court, which quashed planning permission at the site.

The court ruled that the consent had been granted unlawfully in 2019. The decision-maker, Surrey County Council, had failed to assess the greenhouse gas emissions from using Horse Hill oil, known as downstream or scope 3 emissions.

HHDL submitted a new planning application in May 2026 for further drilling and long-term oil production at Horse Hill.

The application has been widely criticised by environmental campaigners, particularly over the assessment of scope 3 emissions. (Details here and here.)

Surrey County Council suggested today that a decision on the Horse Hill plans would not be made in 2026. A spokesperson said the date of the deciding planning committee meeting had not been confirmed but January 2027 was “currently looking the most likely”. More details

Neil Ritson, chief executive of energy B, said today:

“These minority interest buyout agreements are important to us as they will give us day to day control of the Gatwick energy site going forward. This will allow us to streamline our approach to the future field development and in dealing with the UK Government and regulators.

“We hope to restart production at the site early 2027 but timing depends on the discussions that are ongoing with the Surrey Country Council and the field’s planning amendments that are currently before them.”

Fundraising

energy B also said it had received firm commitments to raise £100,000 in share issues.

These include a £50,000 conditional subscription from the company’s chair, David Lenigas.

He said today:

“Consolidating our ownership of the Gatwick energy site into one single entity under energy B paves the way to reopen the site and supply British oil and gas to the British market.

“Historically, all of the oil from Gatwick has gone to the Fawley refinery near Southampton. It is the largest refinery in the UK, and it supplies about a fifth of the nation’s refinery capacity.

“Around 85% of its products travel to five distribution terminals plus, Heathrow, Gatwick and Birmingham airports. The oil from HH-1 also goes into the mix for Fawley’s dedicated jet fuel pipelines to the major airports.

“The Gatwick energy site can again be a home-grown contributor to Britain’s energy security.”

The decision on plans for drilling and long-term oil production at the Horse Hill oil site in Surrey is unlikely to be made this year (2026).

DrillOrDrop asked Surrey County Council when the application was likely to be considered by its planning committee. The council told us this morning:

“The January [2027] meeting is currently looking the most likely but is still to be confirmed”.

The January 2027 meeting is likely to be on Wednesday 27 January 2027 at 10.30am. The committee usually meets in the council chamber at county council headquarters, Woodhatch Place, 11 Cockshot Hill, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 8EF.

Application

The application, by the site operator, Horse Hill Developments Limited (HHDL), seeks permission to drill four new production wells and extract oil for 20 years.

A previous permission for the work, granted in 2019, was quashed by the Supreme Court in the landmark Finch Ruling in June 2024.

The court said the permission had been unlawful because Surrey County Council failed to consider the climate impact of emissions from using Horse Hill oil.

Oil production at the site has been suspended since October 2024.

HHDL submitted a new application to reinstate permission in May 2026. It was published in mid June 2026.

Since then, environmental campaigners have objected to the application, particularly its claims that there would be “no significant” impact on climate change or that it had national policy support.

The most recent criticism warned the county council that approval of the application would be unlawful. Report coming soon.

• energy B, the company which agreed to buy the majority stake in HHDL, announced today a deal to buy the remaining share. More details soon.

Correction: January meeting of Surrey’s planning meeting is on Wednesday 27 January 2027 (not 2026 as previously stated)

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES — 19 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-092 The Sakhalin Papers LXXXII: Gazprom’s Pipeline Takes Europe to Court — The Energy Charter Treaty, Secretive Arbitration and the Battle Over Billions An investment dispute begun in 2019, a European court defeat, sanctions that interrupted the arbitration itself, and an extraordinary January 2026 order questioning the European Union’s explanations

Archive reference: SLF-2007-092
Publication date: 19 October 2026
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers — Shell, Gazprom and Russia
Previous instalment: The Shell Leaks Files — 18 October 2026
Principal evidence: Shell’s authenticated 2017 financing announcement and 2022 financial disclosures; Permanent Court of Arbitration Case No. 2020-07; Procedural Orders Nos. 18 and 19; European Union legislation; General Court judgments; and official records of subsequent legal proceedings.
Evidence classification: Authenticated corporate records, legislation and judicial decisions; documented submissions by opposing parties; independent legal reporting; and separately identified editorial analysis.

INTRODUCTION: THE PIPELINE THAT WENT FROM THE BALTIC TO THE COURTROOM

The previous instalment examined a remarkable possibility.

Four years after explosions damaged the Nord Stream pipelines, and despite the collapse of the commercial and political assumptions underpinning Nord Stream 2, influential figures were still discussing whether the infrastructure might be revived.

Shell had helped finance the project.

The company subsequently wrote off its $1.126 billion loan.

The pipeline never entered commercial operation.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed Europe’s energy policies.

Sanctions created formidable obstacles to any revival.

Yet the documentary record revealed continuing commercial interest.

Today we turn to another part of the story.

While politicians, investors and governments debated whether Nord Stream might ever carry Russian gas again, the company that owned Nord Stream 2 was pursuing a different strategy.

It was taking the European Union to court.

And, in an extraordinary development, the legal proceedings themselves became entangled in European sanctions.

The consequences are preserved in two authenticated arbitration documents.

On 22 October 2025, an international tribunal suspended proceedings because it considered there was a real risk that European sanctions could affect the arbitration and its participants.

Three months later, on 24 January 2026, the same tribunal issued another order.

This time, the arbitrators criticised the European Union’s answers to their questions about how the proceedings could safely continue.

The criticism was not merely an allegation made by Gazprom’s subsidiary.

It appeared in the tribunal’s own decision.

The resulting documentary record raises questions about investment protections, European energy policy, legal certainty and the consequences of financing infrastructure that subsequently becomes politically unacceptable.

For Shell shareholders, it also illuminates a distinction sometimes lost in discussions of the company’s Russian investments.

A company can recognise a financial loss and withdraw from a project while the wider legal consequences of that investment continue for years.

1. THE SHELL DOCUMENT THAT STARTS THE STORY

The appropriate starting point is 24 April 2017.

On that date, Shell announced that it had signed financing agreements with Nord Stream 2 AG, alongside four other European energy companies:

ENGIE, OMV, Uniper and Wintershall.

The project involved construction of a 1,220-kilometre natural gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea.

Its estimated cost was €9.5 billion.

Each of the five European companies agreed to provide financing and guarantees covering up to 10% of the project’s estimated cost.

Shell’s individual commitment could therefore reach approximately €950 million.

The financing arrangement included a €285 million long-term funding facility and up to €665 million in additional financing and guarantees, subject to the project’s requirements.

Crucially, Shell’s announcement confirmed that Gazprom remained Nord Stream 2 AG’s sole shareholder.

Shell was a financier, not a shareholder in the pipeline company.

This distinction matters when examining subsequent litigation.

The claimant in the proceedings discussed below is Nord Stream 2 AG.

It is not Shell.

Shell’s financial involvement nevertheless forms part of the investment’s documented history.

The company’s announcement provides an authenticated starting point, establishing the contractual and financial relationship before the subsequent deterioration in relations between Russia and the European Union.

Primary evidence: Shell’s 24 April 2017 announcement, preserved in its official 2017 Corporate Press Releases, page 40 of the PDF. Shell

2. THE FIRST LEGAL BATTLE: EUROPE CHANGES THE RULES

Two years after the financing agreements, a new dispute emerged.

In April 2019, the European Union adopted Directive (EU) 2019/692.

This legislation extended important European gas-market rules to pipelines connecting EU territory with countries outside the Union.

The rules concerned matters including the separation of gas production and supply from transmission activities and the provision of third-party access to pipeline infrastructure.

These requirements were intended to support competition and the functioning of the European gas market.

There was an important qualification.

Pipelines completed before 23 May 2019 could potentially benefit from a derogation from some of the requirements.

Nord Stream 2 had not been completed by that date.

The project’s operating company argued that the legislative changes unfairly disadvantaged its investment.

The issue was commercially significant.

Nord Stream 2 had been conceived as a major route for transporting Russian gas directly to Germany.

Changes to the rules governing its operation could affect the investment’s economics and the arrangements under which gas would be transported.

The dispute eventually reached the European Union courts.

But Nord Stream 2 AG also opened another legal front.

It invoked an international investment treaty.

That treaty was the Energy Charter Treaty.

3. THE ENERGY CHARTER TREATY: AN INVESTMENT DISPUTE AGAINST THE EU

On 26 September 2019, Nord Stream 2 AG commenced arbitration proceedings against the European Union.

The proceedings were brought under the Energy Charter Treaty and the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration, based in The Hague, was appointed to administer the case.

Its reference is:

PCA Case No. 2020-07 — Nord Stream 2 AG v. The European Union.

The Energy Charter Treaty was designed to establish a legal framework for cooperation and investment in the energy sector.

Among its provisions are protections potentially available to qualifying foreign investors.

Such protections can include safeguards against certain forms of discriminatory treatment, unfair treatment and unlawful expropriation.

Whether any particular investor is entitled to those protections depends upon the treaty’s terms, jurisdictional requirements, applicable law and the facts of the dispute.

The existence of the treaty does not automatically entitle an investor to compensation whenever legislation reduces the value of an investment.

Nor does commencement of arbitration establish that the challenged legislation is unlawful.

Those questions are for the tribunal to determine.

Nevertheless, the procedure gave Nord Stream 2 AG an opportunity to contest the legal consequences of European regulatory changes through an international arbitration mechanism.

The tribunal consists of three arbitrators:

Professor Ricardo Ramírez Hernández, presiding; Professor Philippe Sands KC; and Justice David Unterhalter SC.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration identifies the case as pending.

Authenticated source: Permanent Court of Arbitration — Nord Stream 2 AG v. European Union, Case No. 2020-07. PCA-CPA

There is an important qualification concerning the description of this arbitration as secretive.

International investment arbitrations can involve confidential submissions, procedural arrangements and commercially sensitive information.

However, this particular proceeding has a substantial public documentary record.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration makes available numerous pleadings and procedural orders.

It would therefore be misleading to characterise the entire case as secret.

The publicly available material is sufficiently extensive to reconstruct significant parts of the legal dispute.

And it contains some revealing documents.

4. NOVEMBER 2024: NORD STREAM 2 LOSES AN IMPORTANT COURT CASE

While the arbitration continued, a separate challenge to the 2019 gas-market legislation proceeded through the EU courts.

The procedural history was complicated.

In May 2020, the General Court initially dismissed Nord Stream 2 AG’s action as inadmissible.

Nord Stream 2 appealed.

On 12 July 2022, the Court of Justice partly upheld that appeal, allowing the legal challenge to proceed.

The case was returned to the General Court for consideration of its substance.

On 27 November 2024, the General Court delivered its judgment.

Nord Stream 2 lost.

The court dismissed the company’s challenge to the legislation.

Its reasoning was particularly significant.

The court concluded that Nord Stream 2 AG had continued investing during a period when it had no assurance that European gas-market rules would remain inapplicable to the pipeline.

The company could foresee the possibility of regulatory changes.

The court also found that the project’s exclusion from the derogation available to pipelines completed before May 2019 did not, in itself, prevent operation under economically viable conditions.

It rejected the relevant challenges based on legal certainty, legitimate expectations, equal treatment and proportionality.

The court’s judgment therefore supported the legality of the 2019 legislative changes.

This was a substantive judicial defeat for Nord Stream 2 AG.

It was not, however, a final determination of every legal question raised by the separate Energy Charter Treaty arbitration.

The General Court proceedings and the investment arbitration have different legal foundations.

The 2024 judgment was also appealed, with the subsequent appeal recorded as Case C-118/25 P.

Official judicial source: Court of Justice of the European Union — Press Release 195/24, 27 November 2024. curia

5. JULY 2025: SANCTIONS CREATE ANOTHER LEGAL OBSTACLE

The next development concerned European sanctions against Russia.

On 18 July 2025, the Council adopted Regulation (EU) 2025/1494 as part of its eighteenth package of restrictive measures.

The regulation introduced Article 5af into the existing sanctions framework.

This provision restricted transactions connected with Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, including transactions concerning completion, operation, maintenance, use and associated financing.

The objective was to prevent the infrastructure from being used in ways inconsistent with European sanctions policy.

But the legislation also contained exceptions and mechanisms through which national authorities could authorise specified transactions.

These included certain transactions connected with compensation claims, payments under existing obligations, maintenance for safety reasons and legal proceedings.

Article 5af(3)(d) expressly provided for authorisations relating to settlements and judicial or arbitration proceedings.

This detail is essential.

The regulation did not expressly declare that Nord Stream 2 AG was prohibited from pursuing arbitration.

Instead, it established a legal framework whose application to particular transactions became disputed.

The European Commission considered that the regulation did not prevent the arbitration from continuing.

Nord Stream 2 AG eventually reached a different conclusion.

And the resulting disagreement interrupted the proceedings.

Legislative source: Council Regulation (EU) 2025/1494, Article 5af.

6. OCTOBER 2025: THE PIPELINE COMPANY ASKS FOR ITS OWN CASE TO BE SUSPENDED

The immediate chronology is preserved in Procedural Order No. 18.

On 1 October 2025, Nord Stream 2 AG raised concerns about Article 5af with the arbitral tribunal.

Its initial submission maintained that the new regulation should not interfere with the proceedings.

On 6 October, the European Union confirmed that the Commission considered the arbitration unaffected.

But Nord Stream 2 AG reconsidered its position.

On 13 October, it applied to the EU General Court to annul the relevant sanctions provision.

The following day, it informed the arbitral tribunal of that action.

The company now argued that the legislation’s broad language created unacceptable uncertainty.

Its concern was not limited to the corporate claimant.

It suggested that people and organisations participating in the proceedings could face legal risks.

These potentially included:

• The claimant and its employees.
• Lawyers, witnesses and expert advisers.
• The arbitrators themselves.
• The Permanent Court of Arbitration and others involved in administering the proceedings.

The argument was that transactions associated with conducting the arbitration might fall within the regulation’s prohibitions.

The European Union disagreed.

Its representatives maintained that the regulation did not prevent the proceedings from continuing.

They also pointed out that there was no evidence of European authorities using the provision to obstruct the arbitration.

The Commission nevertheless acknowledged an important institutional limitation.

It could express its interpretation of EU law.

It could not provide an authoritative interpretation binding the EU courts.

Nord Stream 2 AG argued that this distinction left the participants exposed to unacceptable uncertainty.

The tribunal was therefore presented with competing positions.

One side said the arbitration could continue.

The other maintained that continuing without clarification could create legal risks.

The tribunal had to decide what to do.

7. THE AUTHENTICATED ORDER OF 22 OCTOBER 2025

Procedural Order No. 18 is the central document in this instalment.

It was issued on 22 October 2025.

The order records the parties’ submissions, reproduces the relevant sanctions provisions and explains the tribunal’s reasoning.

The tribunal acknowledged that Nord Stream 2 AG had changed its interpretation of Article 5af during the preceding weeks.

It also recognised the Commission’s position that the provision did not prevent the arbitration from proceeding.

But the tribunal considered that the Commission had not provided a sufficiently binding assurance.

This mattered because the potential consequences of an incorrect interpretation could be significant for those involved.

In paragraph 34, the tribunal concluded that there was a real risk of Article 5af being applicable to the arbitration and its participants.

The tribunal did not determine that the participants had violated sanctions.

It did not find that the European Union had unlawfully prevented access to justice.

It concluded that the uncertainty was sufficiently serious to justify suspension.

In paragraph 36, it ordered the proceedings suspended until the relevant risk could be adequately addressed.

The planned hearing on jurisdiction and merits, scheduled for 10–16 December 2025, was cancelled.

The parties were instructed to seek clarification urgently.

The tribunal also left open the possibility that the difficulty might be resolved without waiting for a final judgment from the EU General Court.

Primary document: Nord Stream 2 AG v. European Union — Procedural Order No. 18, 22 October 2025. italaw

This was already an unusual situation.

An international investment tribunal was examining a claim brought against the European Union.

A later EU sanctions regulation then created a dispute about whether the arbitration itself could lawfully proceed.

And the tribunal concluded that it could not safely resolve the uncertainty merely by accepting the Commission’s explanation.

But the story did not end there.

8. JANUARY 2026: A SECOND ORDER REVEALS THE TRIBUNAL’S FRUSTRATION

On 24 January 2026, the tribunal issued Procedural Order No. 19.

This document takes the dispute a stage further.

It records correspondence exchanged after the October suspension.

The tribunal had attempted to establish whether authorisations under Article 5af could resolve the problem.

It wanted practical answers.

Who could apply for an authorisation?

Which transactions might require one?

Could the Permanent Court of Arbitration apply on behalf of the arbitrators?

Could the European Commission itself initiate the process?

Would several national authorities need to be involved?

And could the authorisations provide sufficient protection for everyone participating in the proceedings?

The European Union continued to maintain that authorisations were unnecessary because the arbitration was not prohibited.

It nevertheless explained the authorisation arrangements that might hypothetically apply.

Among other things, it stated that the Commission could not itself initiate the relevant national authorisation procedure in the manner suggested.

It also acknowledged that, if authorisations were necessary, more than one Member State’s authorities might have to be involved.

Nord Stream 2 AG regarded the answers as inadequate.

The tribunal’s subsequent observations are striking.

In paragraph 22, it indicated that the European Union was particularly well placed to provide guidance concerning legislation adopted by its institutions.

In paragraph 23, the tribunal observed that the Commission’s position still did not provide binding certainty.

Then, in paragraph 26, the tribunal criticised the detail of the responses.

It described the European Union’s answers as “limited and wanting.”

That is the tribunal’s own assessment.

It was not merely Nord Stream 2 AG’s characterisation of its opponent.

The arbitrators went on to identify practical questions that remained unanswered.

The tribunal reminded both parties of their duty to cooperate in progressing the arbitration.

It also drew attention to the possibility that their conduct could become relevant when costs were allocated.

Finally, the tribunal directed the European Union to provide a more detailed explanation of whether and how the Permanent Court of Arbitration could obtain sufficient authorisations to address the perceived risks.

Primary document: Procedural Order No. 19, dated 24 January 2026 — Full Eight-Page Decision. italaw

What the January order establishes

It establishes that the tribunal remained dissatisfied with the clarity of the European Union’s explanations.

It establishes that the tribunal wanted a practical mechanism through which the proceedings could resume.

It establishes that the tribunal considered further cooperation necessary.

It does not establish that the EU deliberately obstructed the proceedings.

Nor does it determine that Article 5af actually prohibited the arbitration.

The order also does not resolve the underlying investment dispute.

There is no finding in the document that Nord Stream 2 AG is entitled to compensation.

The legal proceedings remained unresolved.

As of this instalment, the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s public case register continues to identify the arbitration as pending, with Procedural Order No. 19 the latest listed procedural order. PCA-CPA

9. THE DISPUTE EXPANDS INTO THREE SEPARATE EU COURT CHALLENGES

Alongside the arbitration, Nord Stream 2 AG has continued challenging European legislation before the EU courts.

The proceedings need to be distinguished carefully.

They concern related infrastructure but different legislative measures and legal questions.

The 2019 Gas Directive

The challenge to Directive (EU) 2019/692 resulted in the General Court’s judgment of 27 November 2024.

The company lost that case at the General Court.

The subsequent appeal was registered as C-118/25 P.

The 2025 Sanctions Regulation

On 13 October 2025, Nord Stream 2 AG brought proceedings challenging Article 5af of Regulation 2025/1494.

The case was registered as T-722/25.

The claimant sought annulment of the provision, or alternatively more limited relief concerning particular restrictions.

Its arguments included alleged interference with property rights and the freedom to conduct business.

Those are the claimant’s legal arguments, not findings that the legislation is invalid.

Official record: Case T-722/25 — Nord Stream 2 AG v. Council of the European Union.

The 2026 Russian Gas Import Regulation

A further challenge followed the European Union’s legislation to phase out Russian natural gas imports.

Regulation (EU) 2026/261 established new restrictions intended to end dependence on Russian gas.

On 27 April 2026, Nord Stream 2 AG brought another action.

This became Case T-264/26.

The company sought annulment of the regulation or, alternatively, particular provisions.

Its arguments included alleged breaches of proportionality, property rights and equal treatment, together with challenges to the legal basis of the measure.

The underlying allegation was that the new restrictions undermined the potential use and economic value of the pipeline.

Reuters reported the action on 23 June 2026.

The proceedings illustrate that Nord Stream 2 AG was not relying solely upon the original 2019 investment arbitration.

It was continuing to challenge subsequent European legislation.

Official judicial record: Case T-264/26 — Action Brought on 27 April 2026.

Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, 23 June 2026 — Nord Stream 2 Pipeline Owner Sues EU Over Russian Gas Ban.

The existence of multiple proceedings should not be confused with multiple successful claims.

The available records establish litigation.

They do not establish successful compensation awards.

10. THE BATTLE OVER BILLIONS — WHAT CAN ACTUALLY BE ESTABLISHED?

The financial scale of Nord Stream 2 is beyond dispute.

Shell’s authenticated 2017 announcement placed the project’s estimated cost at €9.5 billion.

Gazprom controlled the company responsible for constructing and operating the pipeline.

European energy companies supplied substantial financing.

The project was completed physically but never entered commercial service.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany suspended the certification process, while sanctions and other restrictions transformed the project’s prospects.

Shell’s financial disclosures provide a particularly clear record of the consequences for one investor.

In its 2022 accounts, Shell reported that it had fully written down its Nord Stream 2 loan.

The amount was $1.126 billion.

The company also recognised substantial separate charges associated with its withdrawal from Russian operations.

These were documented accounting consequences.

They were not hypothetical future losses.

Authenticated financial source: Shell Form 20-F 2022 — Russia Withdrawal and Nord Stream 2 Disclosures. Shell

But the scale of the original investment should not be confused with the value of any compensation claim.

The €9.5 billion project estimate is not an arbitration award.

Shell’s $1.126 billion write-down is not a damages award against the European Union.

And the existence of an Energy Charter Treaty claim does not establish that any compensation is payable.

The publicly examined procedural orders do not determine a damages amount.

We should therefore distinguish the financial scale of the underlying investment from the unresolved question of legal compensation.

The billions invested are documented. The existence of an enforceable compensation entitlement has not been established.

That distinction is essential to an accurate historical account.

11. WHY DOES THIS MATTER TO SHELL SHAREHOLDERS?

Shell is not identified as a party to the Nord Stream 2 arbitration.

The claimant is Nord Stream 2 AG.

Nothing in the documents examined establishes that Shell is directing these proceedings or participating in the reported discussions about possible pipeline revival.

Nor do the records establish that Shell would receive any financial benefit from a successful arbitration claim.

However, the wider history remains relevant to Shell shareholders.

Shell’s financing commitment was a documented commercial decision undertaken while European relations with Russia were already politically contentious.

The company committed financing to infrastructure controlled by Gazprom.

It subsequently withdrew from the project and recognised a substantial financial loss.

The pipeline operator meanwhile continued pursuing legal remedies concerning European regulatory decisions.

That sequence raises legitimate questions about geopolitical risk, investment protection and the limitations of contractual safeguards.

A company can undertake a commercially rational transaction under the assumptions prevailing at the time.

Those assumptions can subsequently change.

Political decisions, legislation and international conflict can destroy the anticipated commercial benefits.

Legal disputes may then continue long after the original participants have written down their investments.

For shareholders examining historical management decisions, the lesson is not simply that Nord Stream 2 failed.

It is that investment exposure can endure through several stages: financing, regulation, sanctions, impairment, restructuring and litigation.

The documentary record makes those stages visible.

12. DOCUMENTARY FINDINGS Established Facts

Shell entered a financing agreement with Nord Stream 2 AG on 24 April 2017 alongside four other European energy companies.

Gazprom remained the pipeline company’s sole shareholder.

Nord Stream 2 AG commenced Energy Charter Treaty arbitration against the European Union on 26 September 2019.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration administers the proceedings as Case No. 2020-07.

On 27 November 2024, the EU General Court dismissed Nord Stream 2 AG’s challenge to the 2019 gas directive.

On 18 July 2025, the European Union adopted new restrictions concerning transactions connected with Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2.

On 22 October 2025, the arbitral tribunal suspended proceedings because of unresolved concerns about the possible application of those restrictions.

On 24 January 2026, the tribunal issued a further order seeking more detailed explanations from the European Union.

Nord Stream 2 AG has also pursued separate EU court challenges concerning the 2025 sanctions regulation and the 2026 Russian gas-import legislation.

Shell’s 2022 financial disclosures confirm a $1.126 billion write-down of its Nord Stream 2 loan.

These propositions are supported by authenticated corporate, judicial and regulatory records.

Positions Advanced by the Parties

Nord Stream 2 AG argued that Article 5af created unacceptable legal uncertainty for participants in its arbitration.

It maintained that the possibility of sanctions-related consequences made suspension necessary.

The European Union maintained that the legislation did not prevent the arbitration from continuing.

It disputed the claimant’s interpretation and pointed to the absence of evidence that authorities had applied the provision to obstruct the proceedings.

The tribunal accepted that unresolved risk warranted suspension but did not determine that participating in the arbitration violated European sanctions.

The wider investment dispute remains contested.

Matters Not Established

The available documents do not establish that the European Union deliberately adopted Article 5af to prevent Nord Stream 2 AG from pursuing its arbitration.

They do not establish that Shell participated in developing or conducting the litigation.

They do not establish that the EU has been found liable to pay compensation.

They do not establish that Nord Stream 2 AG has obtained a damages award.

They do not establish that success in any court action would result in reopening the pipeline.

They do not establish that an eventual recovery by Nord Stream 2 AG would restore Shell’s previously written-down financing.

These distinctions should be preserved in any subsequent historical account.

EDITORIAL COMMENTARY: WHEN A PIPELINE BECOMES A LEGAL PROBLEM

There is a striking irony at the centre of this file.

Nord Stream 2 was conceived as physical infrastructure.

Its purpose was to move natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Its economics depended upon construction, financing, certification, access to European markets and sustained commercial demand.

The investment was substantial.

Its sponsors expected the infrastructure to operate for decades.

Instead, the pipeline became entangled in one of the most consequential geopolitical confrontations of the modern European energy industry.

The financial consequences followed.

Shell wrote down its loan.

Other participants were left facing the consequences of a stranded investment.

The company owning the pipeline pursued legal remedies.

Then came an unexpected complication.

The legislation intended to prevent commercial activity involving Nord Stream became the subject of disagreement about whether the company’s own international arbitration could safely proceed.

The tribunal asked the European Union for clarification.

The Commission said the proceedings were not prohibited.

But it could not provide the binding assurance requested.

The tribunal suspended the case.

Three months later, it was still seeking practical answers.

This is not evidence that the European Union acted unlawfully.

Nor does it vindicate Nord Stream 2 AG’s original investment claims.

It demonstrates something more specific.

The legal consequences of a major energy investment can become extraordinarily complicated when commercial expectations collide with changing geopolitical circumstances and regulatory policy.

For Shell shareholders, the most useful question may not be whether Nord Stream 2 should ever have been financed.

That is a legitimate subject for historical debate.

The more important documentary question is how the risks were assessed, how they changed and what the consequences reveal about the management of large international investments.

Those questions require evidence.

And the Shell documents, court records and arbitration orders provide a substantial foundation for answering them.

SOURCE RECORD AND DOCUMENTARY PROVENANCE

Shell — 24 April 2017. The company’s original financing announcement establishes the participating companies, estimated project cost, financing limits and Gazprom’s sole ownership of Nord Stream 2 AG. Shell’s authenticated 2017 announcement archive.

Shell — 2022 financial disclosures. Shell’s Form 20-F documents its withdrawal from Russian activities and confirms the full $1.126 billion write-down of the Nord Stream 2 loan. Shell Form 20-F 2022.

Permanent Court of Arbitration — Case No. 2020-07. The official case register establishes the parties, commencement date, treaty basis, tribunal composition, procedural history and pending status. Official PCA Case Register.

Court of Justice of the European Union — 27 November 2024. The official court record confirms dismissal of Nord Stream 2 AG’s challenge to the 2019 gas-market legislation and explains the General Court’s findings on legal certainty, legitimate expectations and proportionality. Official Court Press Release 195/24.

Council of the European Union — 18 July 2025. Regulation 2025/1494 introduced Article 5af, including the relevant restrictions and authorisation provisions concerning Nord Stream transactions. Regulation 2025/1494.

Permanent Court of Arbitration — 22 October 2025. Procedural Order No. 18 records the parties’ conflicting interpretations of Article 5af, the tribunal’s assessment of risk and its decision to suspend proceedings. Full Text of Procedural Order No. 18.

Permanent Court of Arbitration — 24 January 2026. Procedural Order No. 19 records the subsequent exchanges and the tribunal’s dissatisfaction with the clarity of the European Union’s explanations. Full Text of Procedural Order No. 19.

General Court of the European Union — 2025 and 2026. The official notices concerning Cases T-722/25 and T-264/26 establish the additional challenges to the sanctions regulation and Russian gas-import legislation. Case T-722/25 and Case T-264/26.

The primary documents were produced by Shell, the European Union institutions and the arbitral tribunal. The attribution of arguments to parties is not an endorsement of their accuracy. The documentary record has been distinguished throughout from subsequent interpretation.

Archive disclaimer: This instalment examines proceedings involving Nord Stream 2 AG and the European Union. Shell’s historical financing relationship does not make Shell a party to those proceedings. No allegation is made that Shell directed the litigation, that EU officials deliberately obstructed it, or that any tribunal has established wrongdoing or compensation liability in the proceedings discussed. Pending claims remain unresolved unless and until determined by the competent court or tribunal. Editorial analysis is identified separately from authenticated documentary findings.

The website’s general disclaimer also applies.

NEXT IN THE SHELL LEAKS FILES SLF-2007-093 — The Sakhalin Papers LXXXIII: The Energy Charter Treaty Trap — Nord Stream 2, Investor Rights and the Question of Compensation

The next instalment will move beyond the procedural dispute over sanctions to examine the underlying investment arbitration itself.

The central documents will be Nord Stream 2 AG’s original arbitration notice, its July 2020 memorial and the European Union’s response concerning jurisdiction.

What protections did Nord Stream 2 AG claim under the Energy Charter Treaty?

Why did the European Union contest the tribunal’s jurisdiction?

How might the distinction between ordinary regulatory changes and internationally unlawful treatment affect the claim?

And can an investment made in anticipation of long-term access to European energy markets generate compensation rights when the political, legal and commercial circumstances change so dramatically?

The documentary trail will also examine the consequences of the EU courts’ subsequent decisions for the original treaty arguments.

The question is no longer simply whether Nord Stream 2 might reopen.

It is whether the legal framework protecting international energy investments can produce an enforceable remedy for infrastructure that has become commercially stranded.

The pipeline has never delivered gas to Germany.

But the legal contest over the investment that created it is far from over.

The Sakhalin Papers continue.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES — 19 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 19, 2026 at 8:07 pm.
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Concerned about Project Ranger?  Join State Emergency Response Commission Virtual Meeting on Thursday, October 22nd

Did you know that this week Tessa Snyder, the Hazardous Materials Coordinator, confirmed in writing that she recently met privately with Castelion Corporation about their Project Ranger, a 1,000-acre hypersonic missile motor manufacturing and static firing testing complex – the largest in the United States – on the West Mesa near Rio Rancho, New Mexico? https://www.castelion.com/project-ranger/

Snyder informed Castelion of the upcoming Thursday, October 22nd State Emergency Response Commission (SERC) meeting of the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. https://www.dhsem.nm.gov/preparedness/hazardous-materials-program/serc/ and https://www.dhsem.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/August-2026-SERC-Meeting-Minutes.pdf

She also reported that Castelion has attended the Sandoval County Local Emergency Planning Committee meetings, where members of the public can ask questions. But no notifications have been provided to the community members living near the weapons complex. https://www.sandovalcountynm.gov/departments/emergency-management/

These facts raise serious questions about agency transparency, hazardous materials oversight, and the public’s right to know. https://commongroundrising.org/castelions-project-ranger-solid-rocket-motor-plant/

 

Get all the details at nuclearactive.org

Indonesia is a young country — in more ways than one.

Its current democratic government dates back under three decades to 1998, after the fall of Soeharto, the military dictator who led the country for 32 years.

It’s also demographically young, with a median age of just 31. That means fewer and fewer people in Indonesia remember the time they were under Soeharto’s ‘New Order’ rule.

But despite the fading memory of Soeharto’s reign, one of the decisions he made in the later years — selecting a National Precious Bird — is outlasting his regime.

Ten days into January 1993, President Soeharto signed his fourth Presidential Decree of that year. The first three dealt with setting the domestic retail sale prices of petroleum and tariffs for electricity and public transportation. The fourth declared an until-then largely unknown bird, the Javan hawk-eagle (Nisaetus bartelsi), as Indonesia’s national bird. The United States had its bald eagle, China had its giant panda, and now Indonesia had its hawk-eagle.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Three reasons favored giving the Javan hawk-eagle this title.

First, their appearance and prominent crest mirrors the mythical bird Garuda, which is central to Indonesia’s national coat of arms, the Garuda Pancasila.

Second, the loss of rainforest on Java — Indonesia’s most densely populated and least forested island — meant very few hawk-eagles remained, and increased attention could be beneficial to their conservation.

Third, a national bird had to be found exclusively within Indonesia, and Soeharto’s regime heavily favored Java, leading to a “Javanization” of Indonesian politics, culture, and economic development. The Javan hawk-eagle fit like a glove.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Ornithologist Bas van Balen, one of the first people to study the species, recalls that the decree established three national “mascots” — a popular animal, a charming one, and a rare one. The animals were selected “during a workshop in 1993, attended by representatives of various governmental bodies, such as the Forest and Environmental departments, the parliament, the scientific authority, local universities, media mass, NGOs and various experts. Worries that the eagle would undergo the same fate as for instance the black-naped oriole — provincial faunal symbol of Central Java, which was much sought after for the bird trade in the years after its nomination — were discounted, as its protection was believed by the committee to be the authorities’ responsibility.”

In 1993 I was a young biologist, eager to study birds in the rainforest. The announcement of the Javan hawk-eagle as Indonesia’s national bird, and the observation by French naturalists of a juvenile on a mountain in central Java, spurred me on to make the move to Indonesia.

At the time there were no photographs of the bird — either in the wild or in captivity — and I had to rely on some 30 preserved skins in Dutch museums to get a good idea what the bird looked like. I also had the fortune to become acquainted with the then 87-year-old ornithologist Hans Bartels, the middle of the Bartels family (Max Sr, Max Jr, Hans, and Ernst) after which Javan hawk-eagles received their taxonomic name.

Javan hawk-eagles were already legally protected — all birds of prey in Indonesia were put on the county’s protected species list in 1970, signed by Soeharto’s long-trusted Minister of Agriculture, Toyib Hadiwinata — and none lived in zoos or private collections. After the national bird declaration, any individuals or institutions that wanted to keep a Javan hawk-eagle had to receive presidential permission. Only one person was granted this: Ibu Tien, Soeharto’s wife. Her Javan hawk-eagle, a juvenile bird almost certainly illegally taken from its nest, was displayed at a Jakarta zoo run and managed by one of many Soeharto family foundations.

In those first years during many of my visits, more zoo directors expressed the desire to display Javan hawk-eagles and even breed them. Of course zoos were not allowed to obtain them, but “gifts by anonymous donors” created a loophole. Two years after the declaration, three zoos on Java displayed or had displayed a total of 14 Javan hawk-eagles, six of whom died within one year.

Photo: Vincent Nijman

Zoos were not the only ones eager to own a national bird. In an Indonesian context, owning and displaying legally protected species was, and perhaps still is, seen as a sign of status, of “being untouchable” or above the law. Ibu Tien’s display of a Javan hawk-eagle could be interpreted in this context, as was the decision by a national celebrity to have himself photographed in traditional dress next to his pet Javan hawk-eagle for the women’s magazine Femina.

It was, and still is, challenging to keep a rainforest eagle in captivity, as attested by the high mortality rates in Indonesian zoos. Most of the Javan hawk-eagles I saw in zoos in the 1990s and 2000s were first-year birds — easily recognizable as such because young birds have blueish eyes that turn yellow as they get older.  This was not evidence of captive breeding but attested to them being poached from their nests.

Looking back, the decision to declare such a rare bird as a national symbol, without first putting proper protection and management in place, may not have been wise. When I started my research on Java, every large eagle regardless of species was described as a “Javan eagle,” but this changed rapidly and the Javan hawk-eagle quickly became recognized as something special. Enforcement of protected species legislation in Indonesia was and continues to be weak, and under Soeharto’s rule corruption and nepotism allowed for exceptions to be made.

Today numerous people and zoos keep Javan hawk-eagles, and young birds are frequently offered for sale. In the early years one could find them in the dark corners of one of the many bird markets that are present throughout Indonesia, but increasingly they are offered for sale on e-commerce platforms and social media sites.

But all is not negative.

At time of the declaration, very little was known about Javan hawk-eagles. Based on very limited surveys — including ones done by Bas van Balen — they were considered among the rarest birds in the world, with fewer than 60 pairs confined to five or six widely separated forest fragments and millions of people living in the areas in between. The first people who recorded the species and commented on their conservation were non-Indonesian birders, either living in Indonesia or visiting.

This has now changed. Today Javan hawk-eagles are arguably Indonesia’s most frequently studied birds, with university students’ conducting projects year after year on the eagles themselves, their habitat, and their distribution.

Meanwhile a solid group of dedicated raptor enthusiasts works to study, monitor, and protect the species. We now know more about Javan hawk-eagles than ever before, and the earlier population estimates were off by an order of magnitude.

And it turned out that the birds were not confined to the island of Java: They’ve been observed flying on neighboring Bali as well.

Trade and continuing habitat loss remain the main threats to the species, but guard nest protection programs have been very successful.

Zaini Rakhman, chairman of Raptor Indonesia, says that “between 2001 and 2021, 40 confiscated or surrendered Javan hawk-eagles were released and 27 of them survived in their new habitats.”

In 2023 two Javan hawk-eagles, captive born in an Indonesian zoo, were released into a national park in western Java — an area that might not have been protected if not for the birds.

“The presence of Javan hawk-eagles was one of the reasons why the forests on Mt. Murio in central Java were declared as a Grand Forest Park,” says Rakhman. “Increased protection of additional forest areas are currently under review.”

In the early 1990s Hans Bartels was of the opinion that the survival of the Javan hawk-eagle and its forest was fully dependent on Indonesia’s younger generation. They have taken this to heart. The eagle is now the pride of many Indonesians — and rightly so — and December 2025 saw the opening of the Bartels Javan Hawk-Eagle Conservation Museum, in a historic building that had originally been the private residence of the Bartels family.

Even President Soeharto could not have imagined this would be the cumulation of his single-handed declaration of Indonesia’s national bird.

References:

Nijman, V. 2020. Illegal trade in Indonesia’s National Rare Animal has moved online. Oryx 54(1), 12.

Nijman, V., Shepherd, C.R., Van Balen, S. 2009. Declaration of the Javan hawk eagle Spizaetus bartelsi as Indonesia’s National Rare Animal impedes conservation of the species. Oryx 43(1), 122-128.

Thiollay, J.M., Meyburg, B.U. 1988. Forest fragmentation and the conservation of raptors: a survey on the island of Java. Biological Conservation 44(4),229-250.

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The post Authoritarianism and Conservation: How a Dictator Shaped the Future of an Endangered Bird appeared first on The Revelator.

GAIA Statement | Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration | October 2026 · Leer en español

As communities across the world mobilize against waste incineration, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) is raising the alarm about the waste-burning industry’s presence at COP31, the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in Antalya, Türkiye, this November.

At a time when the COP31 Presidency has made zero waste a priority, representatives of the incineration industry are expected to participate in discussions on circular cities, waste management, and climate finance.

These include CEWEP, the European waste-to-energy industry’s lobbying association, which actively promotes incineration as a climate and energy solution, and Kanadevia Inova, a major waste-to-energy technology provider, both listed in the COP31 official side events agenda. CEWEP has previously promoted incineration at UN climate conferences, including COP30. Meanwhile, Kanadevia Inova’s involvement in the proposed Smokey Mountain incineration project in Manila, alongside its local partner Philippine Ecology Systems Corp. (PhilEco), has raised serious concerns among human rights advocates, environmental organizations, and local residents, as documented in GAIA’s report, The Smokey Mountain Waste-to-Energy Project: Arrested Development and Environmental Justice in Urban Manila.

There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this participation: an industry whose business depends on burning waste is seeking to influence discussions about waste prevention, climate action, and the transition towards sustainable waste systems.

The global zero waste agenda must not become an opportunity to greenwash incineration, legitimize polluting infrastructure, or redirect climate finance away from real solutions that protect communities, support a just transition for waste workers, and deliver meaningful climate benefits.

Key findings

• Waste-to-energy incineration emits about 1.7 times more greenhouse gas per unit of electricity than coal-fired power.
• Europe’s existing incinerators could burn almost 65 million more tonnes of waste a year than they currently process.
• GAIA’s Clearing the Air research recorded fine particulate levels 5 to 8 times above WHO guidelines near sites in Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines.
• The proposed Smokey Mountain project in Manila: ₱26 billion, 100 MW, built to burn around 3,000 tonnes of waste a day.
• More than 550 municipalities worldwide are taking steps towards zero waste.

Burning waste fuels the climate crisis

Waste-to-energy is often marketed as clean or renewable energy. But burning waste does not make its carbon emissions disappear.

Waste-to-energy incineration produces approximately 1.7 times as much greenhouse gas pollution per unit of electricity as coal-fired power plants. Plastics, which are made primarily from fossil fuels, contribute significantly to these emissions.

Incineration also destroys materials that could otherwise be reused, recycled, or composted, creating additional emissions through the extraction and manufacture of replacement products.

Far from advancing a circular economy, incineration perpetuates a linear model of extraction, consumption and destruction.

An expensive industry that locks cities into burning waste

Incinerators are among the most capital-intensive waste management facilities. Their financial models frequently depend on long-term contracts, public subsidies, and guaranteed volumes of waste.

These arrangements can lock municipalities into decades of waste burning, even as they seek to reduce waste generation, expand recycling and introduce separate collection of organic waste.

The financial consequences are particularly serious for cities in the Global South, where scarce public resources are urgently needed for basic waste services, community infrastructure, and climate adaptation.

Meanwhile, Europe is already struggling with overcapacity. According to Zero Waste Europe’s latest update of its Enough is Enough report, existing incineration infrastructure has the capacity to burn almost 65 million tonnes more waste annually than it currently processes.

Yet incineration companies continue promoting and exporting the same infrastructure model internationally.

Why should countries facing urgent development and climate challenges invest in infrastructure that other regions have already built in excess?

Communities pay the price

Behind the industry’s promises of clean energy and modern infrastructure are communities facing pollution, financial burdens, and threats to their livelihoods.

GAIA’s Burn Book: Incinerators that Threaten the Climate, Public Health, and our Finances highlights how these concerns recur across countries and regions.

In Delhi, India, communities around the Timarpur-Okhla waste-to-energy plant have raised concerns about air pollution and the facility’s proximity to residential neighbourhoods.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Reppie waste-to-energy facility illustrates the risks of prioritizing large, centralized waste-burning infrastructure in cities where recycling, organic waste recovery, and inclusive waste services require investment.

In Surabaya, Indonesia, community-led air quality monitoring near waste-burning operations has documented serious pollution concerns. GAIA’s Clearing the Air research, covering sites in Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, recorded fine particulate matter levels five to eight times higher than World Health Organization guidelines.

And in Manila, Philippines, the proposed Smokey Mountain waste-to-energy project offers a stark warning about the environmental justice implications of incineration expansion.

The proposed ₱26 billion, 100 MW project, designed to process approximately 3,000 tonnes of waste per day, threatens to transform an area with a long history of environmental injustice into a new site of industrial waste burning.

GAIA’s investigation into the Smokey Mountain project documents concerns over displacement, inadequate community consultation, environmental risks, and threats to waste-picker livelihoods. Kanadevia Inova has been identified as a technology partner in the project.

These examples expose a wider pattern: communities already bearing the burden of waste pollution are being asked to accept new infrastructure that may deepen existing inequalities, while the companies promoting these projects present themselves as providers of climate solutions.

Incineration also threatens the livelihoods of waste pickers, who play a vital role in recovering materials and sustaining local recycling economies. By burning valuable recyclables, incinerators can displace workers and undermine existing recovery systems. A just transition must recognize their contributions, protect their rights and livelihoods, and strengthen their role in building inclusive zero waste systems.

Climate finance must not subsidize false solutions

At COP31, the participation of CEWEP in an event addressing the Global Zero Waste and Methane Fund raises particularly serious concerns.

Methane reduction in the waste sector is urgently needed. But replacing methane emissions from organic waste with fossil carbon emissions from burning plastics is not a credible pathway to a zero waste future.

Climate finance should support prevention, separate collection, composting, anaerobic digestion where appropriate, recycling, and the inclusion of waste pickers.

It should not be used to finance infrastructure that burns recoverable materials, creates long-term financial liabilities, and competes with the very systems needed to achieve zero waste.

The presence of industry representatives in climate policy discussions also raises important questions about conflicts of interest, transparency, and whose expertise is prioritized.

The companies and associations that stand to profit from expanding incineration should not be given privileged influence over the policies and financing mechanisms intended to accelerate the transition away from polluting waste management.

Real solutions are already here

Around the world, GAIA members are working with municipalities, waste pickers, and communities to demonstrate practical alternatives to incineration.

More than 550 municipalities worldwide are taking steps towards zero waste, demonstrating that preventing waste, recovering materials, managing organics, and protecting livelihoods can form the foundation of effective local climate action.

These approaches reduce methane emissions, prevent pollution, conserve resources, and support a just transition by recognizing waste pickers, improving working conditions, and creating opportunities for decent livelihoods.

They are the solutions that deserve international recognition, technical support, and climate finance.

GAIA calls on the COP31 Presidency and climate finance institutions to:

1. Keep the incineration industry out of climate policymaking. Establish safeguards against conflicts of interest and prevent companies with vested interests in waste burning from shaping the zero waste agenda.
2. Reject incineration as a zero waste or climate solution. Ensure that COP31 commitments prioritize waste prevention, reuse, separate collection, recycling, and organic waste management.
3. Exclude incineration from climate finance. Establish explicit safeguards preventing the Global Zero Waste and Methane Fund and other climate finance mechanisms from supporting waste burning, including refuse-derived fuels and co-incineration.
4. Put communities, waste pickers and a just transition at the center. Guarantee meaningful participation, protect workers’ rights and livelihoods, and invest in inclusive zero waste systems that improve working conditions, provide social protection, and strengthen local economies.
5. Invest in proven, community-led solutions. Direct international climate finance towards zero waste systems that reduce emissions, improve public health, create dignified livelihoods, and support local governments, waste picker organizations, and communities.

As the Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration brings together communities resisting waste burning across the world, their message to COP31 is clear:

The climate crisis cannot be solved by burning more waste.

Climate finance must not fuel incineration. Climate policy must not be shaped by the industries that profit from it. And a just transition must not leave behind the workers and communities who are already building the solutions we need.

Incinerators Out of COP31. Zero Waste In.

Frequently asked questions Why does GAIA want incinerators kept out of COP31?

Waste-burning industry groups, including CEWEP and Kanadevia Inova, are listed in COP31’s official side events on circular cities, waste and climate finance. GAIA argues that an industry that profits from burning waste shouldn’t shape the zero waste agenda.

Is waste-to-energy a clean or renewable energy source?

No. Burning waste releases its carbon, and waste-to-energy produces about 1.7 times more greenhouse gas per unit of electricity than coal. It also destroys materials that could be reused, recycled or composted.

Why shouldn’t climate finance pay for incinerators?

Incinerators rely on long contracts and guaranteed waste volumes that lock cities in for decades and compete with recycling and composting. Swapping methane from organic waste for fossil carbon from burning plastic isn’t a credible path to zero waste.

What is GAIA asking the COP31 Presidency to do?

Keep the incineration industry out of climate policymaking, reject incineration as a climate or zero waste solution, exclude it from climate finance, put communities and waste pickers at the center, and invest in proven, community-led zero waste solutions.

What are the alternatives to incineration?

Waste prevention, reuse, separate collection, composting, recycling and the inclusion of waste pickers. More than 550 municipalities worldwide are already moving towards zero waste.

Related resources

• Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration
• Waste-Burning 101: What Is Waste-to-Energy?
• The High Cost of Waste Incineration
• Lee esta declaración en español

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The post Incinerators Out of COP31: The Climate Crisis Cannot Be Solved by Burning Waste first appeared on GAIA.

Declaración de GAIA | Semana Mundial de Acción contra la Incineración | Octubre de 2026 · Read in English

Mientras comunidades de todo el mundo se movilizan contra la incineración de residuos, la Alianza Global para Alternativas a la Incineración (GAIA) alerta sobre la presencia de la industria de la incineración en la COP31, la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático que tendrá lugar este noviembre en Antalya, Turquía.

En un momento en que la Presidencia de la COP31 ha situado la basura cero entre sus prioridades, se espera que representantes de la industria de la incineración participen en debates sobre ciudades circulares, gestión de residuos y financiación climática.

Entre ellos se encuentran CEWEP, la asociación europea que representa los intereses de la industria de la valorización energética de residuos y que promueve activamente la incineración como solución climática y energética, y Kanadevia Inova, uno de los principales proveedores de tecnología de incineración con recuperación de energía. Ambas organizaciones figuran en el programa oficial de eventos paralelos de la COP31. CEWEP ya ha promovido anteriormente la incineración en conferencias climáticas de la ONU, incluida la COP30. Por su parte, la participación de Kanadevia Inova en el proyecto de incineración propuesto para Smokey Mountain, en Manila, junto con su socio local Philippine Ecology Systems Corp. (PhilEco), ha suscitado graves preocupaciones entre organizaciones de derechos humanos, organizaciones ambientales y residentes de la zona, como documenta el informe de GAIA The Smokey Mountain Waste-to-Energy Project: Arrested Development and Environmental Justice in Urban Manila.

Existe una contradicción fundamental en esta participación: una industria cuyo modelo de negocio depende de quemar residuos pretende influir en los debates sobre prevención de residuos, acción climática y transición hacia sistemas sostenibles de gestión de residuos.

La agenda mundial de basura cero no puede convertirse en una oportunidad para maquillar de verde la incineración, legitimar infraestructuras contaminantes o desviar la financiación climática de las verdaderas soluciones que protegen a las comunidades, apoyan una transición justa para las personas trabajadoras del sector de residuos y generan beneficios climáticos reales.

Datos clave

• La incineración con recuperación de energía emite unas 1,7 veces más gases de efecto invernadero por unidad de electricidad que las centrales de carbón.
• Las incineradoras de Europa podrían quemar casi 65 millones de toneladas más de residuos al año de las que procesan actualmente.
• La investigación Clearing the Air de GAIA registró partículas finas entre 5 y 8 veces por encima de las guías de la OMS cerca de instalaciones en Indonesia, Nigeria y Filipinas.
• El proyecto propuesto en Smokey Mountain (Manila): 26.000 millones de pesos filipinos y 100 MW, para quemar unas 3.000 toneladas de residuos al día.
• Más de 550 municipios de todo el mundo avanzan hacia la basura cero.

La quema de residuos agrava la crisis climática

La incineración con recuperación de energía suele presentarse como una fuente de energía limpia o renovable. Sin embargo, quemar residuos no hace desaparecer las emisiones de carbono.

La incineración de residuos con recuperación de energía genera aproximadamente 1,7 veces más emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero por unidad de electricidad producida que las centrales eléctricas de carbón. Los plásticos, fabricados principalmente a partir de combustibles fósiles, contribuyen significativamente a estas emisiones.

La incineración también destruye materiales que podrían reutilizarse, reciclarse o compostarse, lo que genera emisiones adicionales asociadas a la extracción de materias primas y la fabricación de nuevos productos para sustituirlos.

Lejos de impulsar una economía circular, la incineración perpetúa un modelo lineal de extracción, consumo y destrucción.

Una industria costosa que condena a las ciudades a seguir quemando residuos

Las incineradoras se encuentran entre las instalaciones de gestión de residuos que requieren mayores inversiones de capital. Sus modelos financieros suelen depender de contratos a largo plazo, subvenciones públicas y volúmenes garantizados de residuos.

Estos acuerdos pueden comprometer a los municipios a seguir quemando residuos durante décadas, incluso cuando intentan reducir su generación, ampliar el reciclaje e introducir la recogida separada de residuos orgánicos.

Las consecuencias financieras son especialmente graves para las ciudades del Sur Global, donde los escasos recursos públicos se necesitan urgentemente para servicios básicos de gestión de residuos, infraestructuras comunitarias y adaptación al cambio climático.

Mientras tanto, Europa ya se enfrenta a un problema de sobrecapacidad. Según la última actualización del informe Enough is Enough de Zero Waste Europe, la infraestructura de incineración existente tiene capacidad para quemar casi 65 millones de toneladas adicionales de residuos al año respecto a los volúmenes que procesa actualmente.

A pesar de ello, las empresas incineradoras siguen promoviendo y exportando este mismo modelo de infraestructura a otros países.

¿Por qué deberían los países que afrontan desafíos urgentes de desarrollo y acción climática invertir en infraestructuras que otras regiones ya han construido en exceso?

Las comunidades pagan las consecuencias

Detrás de las promesas de energía limpia e infraestructuras modernas de la industria de la incineración hay comunidades que sufren contaminación, cargas financieras y amenazas a sus medios de vida.

La publicación de GAIA Burn Book: Incinerators that Threaten the Climate, Public Health, and our Finances muestra cómo estas preocupaciones se repiten en distintos países y regiones.

En Delhi, India, las comunidades que viven alrededor de la planta de incineración con recuperación de energía de Timarpur-Okhla han expresado su preocupación por la contaminación atmosférica y la proximidad de la instalación a zonas residenciales.

En Adís Abeba, Etiopía, la planta de incineración con recuperación de energía de Reppie ilustra los riesgos de priorizar grandes infraestructuras centralizadas de quema de residuos en ciudades donde el reciclaje, la recuperación de residuos orgánicos y los servicios inclusivos de gestión de residuos necesitan inversión.

En Surabaya, Indonesia, el monitoreo comunitario de la calidad del aire cerca de instalaciones de quema de residuos ha documentado graves problemas de contaminación. La investigación de GAIA Clearing the Air, que abarca instalaciones en Indonesia, Nigeria y Filipinas, registró niveles de partículas finas entre cinco y ocho veces superiores a los valores recomendados por la Organización Mundial de la Salud.

Y en Manila, Filipinas, el proyecto de incineración con recuperación de energía propuesto para Smokey Mountain constituye una clara advertencia sobre las implicaciones de la expansión de la incineración para la justicia ambiental.

El proyecto propuesto, valorado en 26.000 millones de pesos filipinos, con una capacidad de 100 MW y diseñado para procesar aproximadamente 3.000 toneladas de residuos al día, amenaza con transformar una zona marcada por una larga historia de injusticia ambiental en un nuevo emplazamiento de quema industrial de residuos.

La investigación de GAIA sobre el proyecto de Smokey Mountain documenta preocupaciones relacionadas con posibles desplazamientos de población, consultas comunitarias insuficientes, riesgos ambientales y amenazas a los medios de vida de las personas recicladoras de base. Kanadevia Inova ha sido identificada como socio tecnológico del proyecto.

Estos ejemplos ponen de manifiesto un patrón más amplio: se pide a comunidades que ya soportan las consecuencias de la contaminación por residuos que acepten nuevas infraestructuras que pueden profundizar las desigualdades existentes, mientras las empresas que promueven estos proyectos se presentan como proveedoras de soluciones climáticas.

La incineración también amenaza los medios de vida de las personas recicladoras de base, que desempeñan un papel fundamental en la recuperación de materiales y el sostenimiento de las economías locales del reciclaje. Al quemar materiales reciclables valiosos, las incineradoras pueden desplazar a estas personas trabajadoras y debilitar los sistemas de recuperación existentes. Una transición justa debe reconocer sus contribuciones, proteger sus derechos y medios de vida, y fortalecer su papel en la construcción de sistemas inclusivos de basura cero.

La financiación climática no debe subvencionar falsas soluciones

En la COP31, la participación de CEWEP en un evento dedicado al Fondo Mundial de Basura Cero y Metano (Global Zero Waste and Methane Fund) plantea preocupaciones especialmente graves.

Reducir las emisiones de metano del sector de residuos es una necesidad urgente. Pero sustituir las emisiones de metano procedentes de los residuos orgánicos por emisiones de carbono fósil derivadas de la quema de plásticos no constituye una vía creíble hacia un futuro de basura cero.

La financiación climática debe apoyar la prevención de residuos, la recogida separada, el compostaje, la digestión anaerobia cuando resulte apropiada, el reciclaje y la inclusión de las personas recicladoras de base.

No debe utilizarse para financiar infraestructuras que queman materiales recuperables, generan obligaciones financieras a largo plazo y compiten con los mismos sistemas necesarios para alcanzar la basura cero.

La presencia de representantes de la industria en los debates sobre políticas climáticas también plantea cuestiones importantes sobre los conflictos de intereses, la transparencia y qué conocimientos y experiencias reciben prioridad.

Las empresas y asociaciones que se benefician económicamente de la expansión de la incineración no deben gozar de una influencia privilegiada sobre las políticas y los mecanismos de financiación destinados a acelerar la transición hacia sistemas de gestión de residuos no contaminantes.

Las verdaderas soluciones ya existen

En todo el mundo, las organizaciones miembro de GAIA trabajan con municipios, personas recicladoras de base y comunidades para demostrar que existen alternativas prácticas a la incineración.

Más de 550 municipios de todo el mundo están avanzando hacia la basura cero, demostrando que la prevención de residuos, la recuperación de materiales, la gestión de residuos orgánicos y la protección de los medios de vida pueden constituir la base de una acción climática local eficaz.

Estos enfoques reducen las emisiones de metano, previenen la contaminación, conservan los recursos y apoyan una transición justa mediante el reconocimiento de las personas recicladoras de base, la mejora de las condiciones laborales y la creación de oportunidades de trabajo digno.

Estas son las soluciones que merecen reconocimiento internacional, apoyo técnico y financiación climática.

GAIA hace un llamamiento a la Presidencia de la COP31 y a las instituciones de financiación climática para que:

1. Mantengan a la industria de la incineración fuera de la formulación de políticas climáticas. Establezcan salvaguardas frente a los conflictos de intereses e impidan que las empresas con intereses económicos en la quema de residuos influyan en la agenda de basura cero.

2. Rechacen la incineración como solución climática o de basura cero. Garanticen que los compromisos de la COP31 den prioridad a la prevención de residuos, la reutilización, la recogida separada, el reciclaje y la gestión de residuos orgánicos.

3. Excluyan la incineración de la financiación climática. Establezcan salvaguardas explícitas para impedir que el Fondo Mundial de Basura Cero y Metano y otros mecanismos de financiación climática apoyen la quema de residuos, incluidos los combustibles derivados de residuos y la coincineración.

4. Sitúen a las comunidades, las personas recicladoras de base y la transición justa en el centro de las decisiones. Garanticen una participación efectiva, protejan los derechos y los medios de vida de las personas trabajadoras e inviertan en sistemas inclusivos de basura cero que mejoren las condiciones laborales, proporcionen protección social y fortalezcan las economías locales.

5. Inviertan en soluciones probadas y lideradas por las comunidades. Orienten la financiación climática internacional hacia sistemas de basura cero que reduzcan las emisiones, mejoren la salud pública, generen medios de vida dignos y apoyen a los gobiernos locales, las organizaciones de personas recicladoras de base y las comunidades.

Mientras la Semana Mundial de Acción contra la Incineración reúne a comunidades de todo el mundo que se oponen a la quema de residuos, su mensaje a la COP31 es claro:

La crisis climática no se resuelve quemando más residuos.

La financiación climática no debe alimentar la incineración. Las políticas climáticas no deben estar determinadas por las industrias que se benefician de ella. Y una transición justa no puede dejar atrás a las personas trabajadoras y las comunidades que ya están construyendo las soluciones que necesitamos.

¡Fuera las incineradoras de la COP31! ¡Sí a la basura cero!

Preguntas frecuentes ¿Por qué GAIA pide sacar a las incineradoras de la COP31?

Representantes de la industria, como CEWEP y Kanadevia Inova, figuran en el programa oficial de eventos paralelos de la COP31 sobre ciudades circulares, residuos y financiación climática. Una industria que se beneficia de quemar residuos no debería definir la agenda de basura cero.

¿La incineración con recuperación de energía es limpia o renovable?

No. Quemar residuos libera su carbono y genera unas 1,7 veces más emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero por unidad de electricidad que el carbón. Además, destruye materiales que podrían reutilizarse, reciclarse o compostarse.

¿Por qué la financiación climática no debe apoyar la incineración?

Las incineradoras dependen de contratos largos y volúmenes garantizados de residuos que atan a las ciudades durante décadas y compiten con el reciclaje y el compostaje. Sustituir el metano de los residuos orgánicos por carbono fósil de la quema de plásticos no es un camino creíble hacia la basura cero.

¿Qué le pide GAIA a la Presidencia de la COP31?

Mantener a la industria de la incineración fuera de las políticas climáticas, rechazarla como solución climática o de basura cero, excluirla de la financiación climática, poner a las comunidades y a las personas recicladoras de base en el centro, e invertir en soluciones de basura cero lideradas por las comunidades.

¿Qué alternativas hay a la incineración?

La prevención de residuos, la reutilización, la recogida separada, el compostaje, el reciclaje y la inclusión de las personas recicladoras de base. Más de 550 municipios de todo el mundo ya avanzan hacia la basura cero.

Recursos relacionados

• Semana Mundial de Acción contra la Incineración
• Incineración
• Clima
• Read this statement in English

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The post Fuera las incineradoras de la COP 31: la crisis climática no se resuelve quemando residuos first appeared on GAIA.

It’s the second-most used material on Earth, it’s an environmental disaster, and it’s falling apart all around us. Meet concrete, the subject of a new feature-length documentary by John Wilson, a filmmaker with a knack for finding laugh-out-loud absurdity in the mundane.

The History of Concrete stitches together quick cuts of handheld footage and deadpan narration in the same style as How To with John Wilson, the HBO show that made the filmmaker’s career. As in his episodes on “how to make small talk” and “how to put up scaffolding,” the titular subject of the film isn’t really the point. Instead, Wilson uses the theme of concrete as a kind of connective tissue, taking the viewer on a sprawling exploration of the overlooked corners of our world. Concrete’s pervasiveness allows this film to venture anywhere — a family-run mortuary that specializes in tattoo preservation, a patriotic brick-laying competition in Las Vegas, and a 3,100-mile spiritual race in which runners circle a single block in Queens for weeks on end.

It would be a stretch to call the documentary a climate film. (In fact, it’s explicitly styled like a Hallmark movie.) But with each turn of the lens, Wilson sheds light on an unfolding environmental disaster. After all, he points out, concrete is the third biggest contributor to global warming. And although concrete is an indispensable part of modern life, its short, crumbling lifespan makes it a hazard on an increasingly disaster-prone planet. (Reader beware, there are more grim facts about concrete — and spoilers —  ahead.)

Wilson’s fascination with concrete started when the basement of his apartment building in Queens began intermittently flooding. He tried to patch the repair himself with a store-bought concrete mix, but the leak kept coming back. His frustration is widely shared: As climate change intensifies storms and raises sea levels, New Yorkers are dealing with more extreme rainfall and coastal flooding than ever before. The abundance of concrete worsens flooding by preventing stormwater from seeping into the soil and, when it cracks, fails to block the water from filling subway stations and buildings for dozens of days a year.

More on concrete A new solution for flood-prone cities? Concrete made from shellfish waste. Ayurella Horn-Muller

Wilson goes on to discover our concrete-smothered world is full of hazards, owing to the material’s surprisingly short lifespan. Structures like the Brooklyn Promenade, which makes up the upper most deck of a four-layered expressway, aren’t supposed to last more than 40 years according to Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner who Wilson interviews. Today, the 1,800-foot-long artery is covered in patch jobs. Schwartz tells Wilson that a mass catastrophe could be just a few years away.

With these facts in mind, any city starts to look like a morass of potential disasters. It’s no wonder that Wilson spent at least a year filming the cracks around New York. Some places, such as a public swimming pool sanitation facility that is inundated with leaks, are given a few minutes of screentime. Others, including the architecturally famous Spring Street Salt Shed, which is patched with packing tape, and a 10-year-old skyscraper in midtown Manhattan that may already need to be demolished, are presented in a quick, jaw-dropping montage. As Wilson says, it feels as though “we’re all in danger somehow.”  

Perversely, climate change is making this problem even worse. Studies show that extreme weather hastens the deterioration of concrete structures around the world. And while Wilson doesn’t say this, it’s worth noting that even structurally sound concrete is a hazard as the planet warms. The material creates an “urban heat island” effect that can cause local air temperatures to rise as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit, turning the pavement into a scalding 140 degrees F griddle and killing hundreds of people in places like Arizona every year.

More on urban heat Report: 41 million Americans are simmering on urban heat islands Katie Myers

But, as a contractor tells Wilson, “We’d be up a creek without concrete. It is used for everything.” Places like New York require vast amounts of the material to build new housing and maintain urban areas. Unfortunately, sand — the key ingredient in concrete — is vanishing as coastlines erode and humans use up some 50 billion tons of the stuff per year. While most people remain blissfully unaware, Wilson says, experts have been trying to warn us of an impending global sand shortage. 

Near the end of the film, Wilson takes a peak at a concrete recycling plant, one of the few existing solutions to these problems. These facilities exist to stop debris from demolitions going to landfills, and, ideally, to make newly usable material with fewer emissions. But the one that Wilson found near Brooklyn’s marine terminal was also filling nearby neighborhoods with dangerous amounts of airborne dust, prompting protests and the plant’s eventual closure in 2025.

For now, our dependency on concrete seems as intractable as its pitfalls. “Once you’re used to something, it becomes hard to change your lifestyle without external pressure,” Wilson says.

I was already aware of the environmental costs of concrete when I first moved to New York City as an early-career climate reporter, but I wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like to be surrounded by so much of it. I found myself questioning the commonly cited statistic that urban lifestyles have a smaller carbon footprint than suburban ones. After all, these studies generally account for the energy and materials residents consume directly, while leaving out the emissions embodied in the buildings, sewers, and other parts of the built-up environment that make city life possible.

Although my own back-of-the-envelope calculations support the idea that living here is probably the greener choice, I still rush through my commutes to spend less time amid the chaos. But walking out of the Manhattan theater where I saw The History of Concrete, my gray surroundings came into sharper focus — almost like the film had never stopped. There’s a kind of poetry in Wilson’s work: the banal becomes beautiful, the bizarre becomes delightful, and the heartbreaks become unguardedly funny. His curiosity, bordering at times on voyeurism, is an invitation to join him in the simple act of paying attention.

And so I noticed the toddler lying on her belly outside of the gum-plastered entrance to the subway station. A dumpling food truck, seemingly stuck in a pothole. Groups of women in ballgowns rushing past, their long skirts dragging into puddles — all of it part of a concrete world worth noticing.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world is crumbling in ‘The History of Concrete’ on Oct 19, 2026.

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