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It didn’t take long for prospectors to stake their claims on land in southeast Utah that was previously protected in Bears Ears National Monument.

On September 11, the first day the 1.2 million acres were opened up, miners filed 16 claims, two months after President Donald Trump shrank the monument by about 90 percent. All of the claims appear to have been filed by small-scale local miners with other jobs, small businesses, and an interest in uranium mining. But the rapid timing of those claims alarmed environmental groups like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and they expect more to come. 

“Hobby miners who want to go locate claims, play miner on the weekend, leave disturbance and pollution in their wake, that really damages the monument resources,” said Steve Bloch, an attorney for the environmental nonprofit.

George Schultz, an off-roading guide based in Moab, filed three claims in the Lockhart Basin. He said staking a claim is merely a “step” in the mining process and noted Bureau of Land Management Lands outside of monument protections are meant for multiple uses. 

Schultz declined to say which minerals he expected to mine at his claim sites, but his LinkedIn profile notes experience in uranium exploration.

Thirteen of the Bears Ears mining claims were filed by Kimmerle Mining based in Moab, a family business, including two modifications to the 21-acre Easy Peasy mine and 11 additional claims nearby.

Kyle Kimmerle, a managing member of the mining company, declined to comment. He was appointed to the board of directors of Urano Energy, a Canadian mining company focused on uranium, in 2024. He also apparently operates a Moab-based general contracting business and a tire shop. 

Bears Ears became a political ping-pong ball immediately after the monument was established by President Barack Obama during his final weeks in office in 2016, adding protections to 1.35 million acres of federal land in the southeastern corner of the state.

The next year, Trump slashed the monument’s footprint by about 85 percent. President Joe Biden restored the monument’s original boundaries and also slightly expanded it during his term, only for Trump to once again shrink its size this summer.

Read Next Trump administration advances a plan to open national forests to development Ellis Juhlin

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, established by President Bill Clinton in 1996, saw a similar back-and-forth between the Trump and Biden administrations.

In the latest proclamation shrinking the monuments, Trump disbanded the tribal commission that managed Bears Ears along with the Bureau of Land Management. He also listed a “grab bag of minerals” the lands “may or may not” contain, Bloch noted, including silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc in Bears Ears. Trump’s proclamation said that these minerals “create jobs, fuel prosperity, and are essential to important sectors of the economy of the United States.” 

“He was kind of flagging for people that he [and] the administration think that mining is a better use of these areas,” Bloch said.

Kimmerle was also party to a 2023 lawsuit challenging Biden’s restoration of Bears Ears’ boundaries in 2021. His company owns the Easy Peasy mine and dug up 30 tons of ore in search of uranium in 2018. Uranium prices weren’t high enough to make mining profitable at the time, however, and the mine stopped operations.

But with the rise of artificial intelligence and massive projected demands on the electricity grid, the Trump administration and Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s own Office of Energy Development have championed nuclear energy as a solution for powering the country’s future. Uranium is the main fuel for nuclear power.

Having his mining claims “locked up” in the Bears Ears monument made them “useless,” Kimmerle asserted in the 2023 lawsuit, and cost him up to $3 million in lost profits.

Kimmerle attempted to file his Bears Ears claims in July, shortly after Trump issued his proclamation slashing the monument’s boundaries. But the proclamation did not open the lands to new mining claims until September 11 — the same day San Juan County recorded both the Kimmerle and Schultz claims, according to records obtained by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

The CEO and chairman of Energy Fuels also bought thousands of shares of his company’s stock just days before Trump downsized the monument. Energy Fuels operates the White Mesa Mill directly next to the former Bears Ears monument boundary, the last conventional uranium processing site in the country.

Utah was historically the third-most productive state for uranium, according to information from the Utah Geological Survey, with most of those minerals coming from the Colorado Plateau.

Bloch said he doubts there is enough uranium available to justify the expense and environmental damage of mining on lands removed from Bears Ears.

“It’s not like people weren’t poking around in the monument, locating claims, moving dirt, seeing what was there” in the decades before Bears Ears became a monument, and during the first Trump administration when it was originally shrunk, Bloch said. “There were no production-level mines that were established.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After Trump opened Bears Ears land to business, prospectors swooped in on Sep 28, 2026.

Marinette County could well become a model of sustainability. However, sprawling development may impede its progress as the next iteration of an economic threat to ecosystems.

Unlike previous technological revolutions, AI has the potential to reshape economies, education, science, healthcare, communication, and political decision-making.

Although rewilding is often thought of as keeping humans “away”, people must be integrated into much of the rewilding process, living alongside and allowing space for wildness.

Before the forest falls  Channel Comment brendan 28th September 2026 Teaser Media

• The New York Times ran a rather uninquisitive article about problems with electric school buses that doesn’t really explain why they’d need a range longer than 90 miles, other than the occasional field trip, or why electric city buses and freight trucks seem to work just fine. The broader issue for ending long dropoff and pickup lines is that districts are increasingly building schools on huge far-flung tracts that students can’t walk to and buses can’t efficiently serve, all but forcing parents to drive their kids (The Argument).
• Railway Age suggests using technology like enforcement cameras to keep motorists off of train tracks in dangerous situations.
• Micromobility encompasses a range of devices that should be considered differently, especially within the context of how auto-centric the city is. (Vital City)
• Sound Transit could save money by building elevated light rail rather than boring underneath Seattle. (The Urbanist)
• The Austin Transit Partnership scrapped widely panned plans to move into a $47 million new office space. (KUT)
• The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is about to start using bus-mounted cameras to warn or ticket drivers who block bus lanes. (WBUR)
• Bikeshare bikes are dwindling in Baton Rouge. (WBRZ)
• The Oklahoma DOT is spending $25 million to upgrade a freeway interchange for a Buc-ee’s truck stop. (Oklahoman; paywall)
• Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine warned against fellow Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to suspend the state gas tax. (Signal)
• The Minneapolis Green Line is scheduled to open next June. (Fox 9)
• Chattanooga will resume booting illegally parked cars on Oct. 1 after an amnesty period ends. (Times Free Press)
• Lexington started citing drivers who park in bike lanes on Sunday. (WKYT)
• Even in ancient times, sprawling cities like Angkor were less sustainable than denser ones like Rome. (Planetizen)
• Real estate around a future rail line in Montreal has already gotten so valuable that it could undermine plans for transit-oriented development. (Connect Canada)
• Electrifying Mexican transit could cut the country’s fossil fuel imports by a third. (Mexico Business)

Why is it so hard for Americans to imagine a future where they can live in their city without constantly driving?

That wasn’t exactly the topic of Time’s recent viral essay, but I sure thought about it a lot while reading it.

In “We Have a Climate Imagination Problem,” author and entrepreneur Solitaire Townsend argued that we won’t avert planetary disaster if the fight to do it remains “merely an ad nauseam echo of ‘climate change is real, humans are to blame, and the consequences are catastrophic.'”

Townsend is right, of course, that the “magic” of storytelling is an essential ingredient in any fight for systemic change, not just “the spoonful of sugar to help the scientific medicine go down,” as she put it. But it may be particularly difficult to spark our public imagination about our transportation future — never mind inspiring anyone to demand real change.

In other ways, though, transportation may just be the sector that has the most potential to inspire a new vision for how the world could be — if we just learned how to tell a better story about it.

Recommended Report: Confronting Car Dependence Won’t Just Help With Climate Change; It’s a $6.2 Trillion Opportunity Kea Wilson October 30, 2024

To understand how storytelling could inspire transportation change, though, it’s important to be honest first about why so many advocates struggle to do it.

Perhaps more than any other part of the climate problem — or the affordability problem, or our many intersecting public health problems, or whatever else we may happen to care about — streets feel like something we can’t change. They are literally cast in concrete and steel, at the cost of unfathomable trillions of dollars that most people cannot imagine “wasting” by, say, tearing highways down — even if, with only a fraction of those trillions, we could do just that, and build world-class transit in every major city in America.

Moreover, transportation infrastructure is all around us — unlike, for instance, coal-fired power plants that so few Americans actually see on a daily basis. And because roadways are so ubiquitous, we become emotionally attached to these fixtures of our mobility landscape in a way we don’t to other kinds of fossil fuel infrastructure.

Even a climate denier might not have a visceral reaction to news that an oil field in Texas has quietly shut down. But many drivers will go to absolute war over new bike lanes that remove a single parking space.

Ask even a eco-conscious voter to imagine removing the interstate that they use every day to care for their grandmother, and the outrage can be even more acute.

Recommended This Year’s Park(ing) Day Hopes to Inspire Big Policy Change Kea Wilson September 5, 2024

In some ways, transportation reformers are actually pretty good at navigating this minefield — at least at the neighborhood scale.

A quick Google search is all it takes to find a motherlode of “street redesign porn,” where advocates have documented the transformation of formerly car-dominated places and challenged others to imagine similar renaissances across the country. Sites like the one you’re reading right now are stuffed to the gills with other policy ideas that your community could steal right now, as well as stories of how doing it could make all our lives better — and those stories are backed by quantitative data and emotional experience.

Many advocates go beyond pointing out what other places are doing well, too. In arguably one of the more defensible uses of generative AI, advocates have used tools like Craiyon and Gemini to instantly illustrate how even the worst stroads could be reborn as pedestrian paradises with the right mix of asphalt and new laws (though, to be clear, hiring a human illustrator would result in an even more effective advocacy tool.)

Tactical urbanists have even brought a version of these speculative possibilities to life with events like Park(ing) Day, which temporarily turns curbside spots into cafes, green space, and just about anything else you can imagine besides car storage for a single driver. Open streets, pop-up bike lanes, and other events do the same thing at the scale of an entire block.

Recommended TACTICAL URBANISM: Let’s Make More Plazas Eve Kessler May 28, 2021

When it comes to the big picture and the long term, though, many transportation reformers struggle to paint a vivid picture of how our country could work better without so many damn cars.

The lowest-lift strategy might be to harness those moments when cars are already displaced from the top of our transportation hierarchy, and go the extra mile to challenge our neighbors to notice that the world didn’t end — and maybe even that they’re better off without so much driving.

In major cities, massive events like the World Cup, the Olympics, and Taylor Swift concerts can all become powerful catalysts for mode shift and new — albeit temporary — investment in transit. They’re not always catalysts for deliberate conversation about how sustained transportation changes could reshape our collective lives, but they could be.

What if we papered every subway car with urbanist propaganda on game day, along with links to petition drives to change transport policy?

Recommended How — And More Important, When — To Get Motorists to Ditch The Driving Habit Streetsblog July 13, 2023

In smaller communities without a stadium, tactical urbanist experiments could be expanded to a bigger scale, a longer time frame, or a more ambitious, repeated program that gradually becomes permanent.

There’s no reason why, say, a Park(ing) Day demonstration can’t be done at the scale of a mega-mart lot, or that the regional craft market can’t reclaim that space every Saturday … and Sunday … and eventually, every day of the week, by installing more durable pop-up retail. With enough resources and coordination, the single, sad traffic-cone “bike lane” to your kid’s school could be part of a week-long blitz, sketching out a complete cycling network that makes not driving anywhere an actual option.

Pair it with a strong messaging campaign, and you could launch a whole movement of advocates who have glimpsed the possibility of a different transportation culture and want to make it permanent.

Big cities should think bigger about this stuff, too. Why shouldn’t Chicago hold more events like Bike the Drive on its notorious lake-front highway? Moreover, why can’t we treat bike events as a publicly funded demonstration of the future we all deserve, rather than a premium experience that costs $69 each — and that’s not including the price of the commemorative T-shirt?

Recommended Study: COVID-Era Pop-Up Bike Lanes Increase Cycling Trips Up to 48% Kea Wilson January 27, 2022

Let’e be clear: lack of imagination is far from the only reason why so many American cities are ultra-car-dependent hellscapes.

We can could send every mayor in the country on a fact-finding mission to Amsterdam, and they wouldn’t all come home raring to build woonerfs. Not every driver who begrudgingly left his car at home for the Beyoncé concert can be transformed into a transit rider by encouraging him to just open his mind — or even by giving him a discount on his next month of rides.

Systemic reform is primarily about moving power, and it can take a frustratingly long time. Our country looks like an oil executive’s fever dream because those executives, and their allies in Big Auto, spent billions of dollars on lobbyists for a century, not just because they wished upon a star.

Still, it’s urgent that transportation reformers offer our neighbors a better vision for the future, rather than just doom and rage about where we’re headed if we fail to make a change. And to be frank, it isn’t even that hard.

Recommended Bill McKibben Talks How Walking Can Help End the Climate Crisis — And Make Americans Happier Streetsblog October 31, 2023

A city where you don’t have to depend on cars doesn’t mean you can’t visit your sick grandmother across town, because there’s no interstate to take you there and nowhere to park where you arrive. It’s a place where grandma can afford to live around the corner, and you can simply walk to reach her, the sun on your face and the wind in your hair. You can drive if you want to; if you don’t, you aren’t forced to.

When enough people aren’t functionally forced to drive, our cities become more joyful, peaceful, healthy, safe, affordable, child-friendly, accessible to people of all abilities, and fun. And that’s not even the end of the list.

If we fail to tell that story – and so many of us do — then it’s no wonder why so few people believe it’s possible to make it real.

Earlier this year, a string of intense winter storms brought weeks of subzero windchill and 41 inches of snow to the East Coast. The repeated precipitation, combined with persistently low temperatures, prevented melting for several weeks. 

In response, New York City deployed extensive plowing operations, dropped approximately 380,000 tons of salt, requested emergency civilian shoveling support, and deployed snow-melting “hot tubs” across the five boroughs. 

At the same time, the Department of Sanitation repeatedly suspended the city’s “alternate-side parking” rules, which usually require car owners to move their car once a week so that the agency can clean — or plow — one side of the street. With no risk of fines, many owners simply let their cars sit where they had parked them just before the storms. 

Recommended



Snow Problem: Can New York City Handle Big Winter Storms Anymore?
Sophia Lebowitz

February 9, 2026

New Yorkers witnessed the result of these conflicting policies. Endless miles of waist-high snowbanks stood for weeks. Ice and slush rendered curb lanes unusable, immobilized vehicles and narrowed sidewalks. Across the entire city, residents struggled to access bus stops, navigate intersections and patronize businesses.

These winter storms suddenly and totally transformed New York’s urban fabric, inviting intense and widespread scrutiny of street infrastructure and exposing systemic weaknesses in roadway design. This transformation was most visible at the curb, where hundreds of thousands of snow-entombed cars stood motionless for weeks on end. 

Even the police have nomobiles.

I like to call these vehicles nomobiles: street-parked cars incapacitated by snow or ice that do not move for an extended period of time. These cars no longer fulfill their central function as instruments of private mobility and instead become static, semi-permanent elements of the public realm.

This temporary metamorphosis provides an unusual opportunity to assess the underlying assumptions of curb management and roadside infrastructure and raises a crucial question: If hundreds of thousands of vehicles went offline for multiple weeks without halting everyday life, what role do privately owned cars actually serve in dense cities, and who ultimately pays for their presence? Nomobiles force us to evaluate the promise of convenience attached to car ownership, the consequences of publicly subsidized vehicle storage, and the labor required to maintain access at all times.

Recommended



Video: Another Way The Snow Reveals Our Misallocation of Public Space
Henry Beebe-Center

February 9, 2026

Nomobiles impose both tangible and immeasurable costs on the public. Obstructed curb lanes slow down plowing routes, while obstructed bike lanes require even more resources to clear. The economic value of the curb is not an accident. Recent statements by the Mamdani administration indicate growing interest in treating curb space as a fiscal and administrative resource, by expanding metered parking to generate revenue and practicing more deliberate curb management. 

Recent research shows that “curb parking on New York City streets is worth $12.3 billion annually if drivers paid the market rate for storing their vehicles in the public right of way.” This winter’s storms momentarily suspended the social contract surrounding this public, shared resource, thereby exposing who ultimately pays the cost of the shared space.

Not only does this nomobile raise questions about urban mobility, but it affects other modes, such as cycling.

The storms pointed a spotlight on New Yorkers who own cars, and their justifications for doing so in such a transit-dense city.  The 2022 Citywide Mobility Survey found that the majority of residents who purchased vehicles during and after 2019 did so because they “wanted the flexibility and convenience of having a vehicle.” Many of these drivers found themselves stranded by frozen cars.

The continued provision of free curbside storage reinforces these New Yorker’s expectation of reliable mobility. More than 97 percent of New York City’s three million parking spaces are completely free. This arrangement obscures the true costs of preserving curbside vehicular access.

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FLASHBACK: What Happened To Car-Free ‘Snow Routes’ — And Could They Have Helped City Clear the Streets?
J.K. Trotter

February 6, 2026

“I basically just wrote it off for two weeks,” said one Brooklyn schoolteacher I spoke with. “I was like, alright, I just don’t have a car right now.” The teacher had purchased a vehicle to shorten a long commute to a neighborhood without robust transit options and relied on curbside parking at home. “I hate that I have to own a car … Whatever kind of autonomy I have is illusory and, you know, for suckers.”

During the storms and their aftermath, the teacher spent several hundred dollars on rideshare trips, incurred additional transit fares attempting to connect between networks, and paid more than a thousand dollars in winter-related mechanical repairs while their vehicle was immobilized.

Beyond fiscal expenditures, households also absorb significant amounts of unpaid physical labor: digging vehicles out of compacted snow and ice, walking extended distances to reach alternative transit, and recalculating commutes. 

“The best case scenario is that you get plowed in, you dig yourself out, but you get plowed back in again,” said a St. George resident who purchased a vehicle after years without one to supplement limited borough connectivity. “The worst case scenario, at least on Staten Island, is that you don’t even get plowed in because the plows haven’t gotten to your street yet. So you can dig all you want, but good luck getting anywhere. It’s so obvious that something isn’t working here.”

As the economic burden of car ownership snowballs, those with greater financial flexibility are better positioned to maintain mobility through viable non-automobile options, while those without such resources must supply labor, tolerate prolonged immobility, or rely on more constrained transportation choices. 

This winter reminded New York City that car ownership does not insulate individuals from unreliable systems. Nomobiles disrupted the street as a whole. These vehicles did not generate movement, but they continued to generate work in a layered subsidy structure: public funds provided baseline accessibility, private labor absorbed recovery, and informal makeshift markets monetized the gap between the two. This system persists not because it is efficient, but because its costs are delayed, dispersed, and rarely itemized.

Free curbside parking is central to sustaining this arrangement. It is a publicly subsidized habit that maintains the illusion that private mobility is largely self-contained. Nomobiles highlight the limits of this assumption, revealing the payments we make in our fiscal and political economies to sustain private mobility, even when that mobility becomes obsolete. As climate change produces heavier snowfall and longer freeze periods, the gap between perceived convenience and actual cost is likely to further narrow.

Nomobiles provide a lens to critique and more precisely examine roadside infrastructure. Let them serve as a warning to citizens and planners alike: where habit and preference prevail, function will suffer.

Why don’t cities roll out the red carpet for new greenways — even as they host splashy ribbon-cuttings for the latest car infrastructure?

Miami Beach residents Charles Fischer and Matt Gultanoff asked themselves just that this summer, when local leaders in their home of Miami Beach staged an opening ceremony for a new parking garage. Those same leaders, though, didn’t consider active transportation infrastructure worthy of a photo-op. So the two men opted to host one themselves.

And their neighbors showed up in force. On September 17th, an unofficial ribbon-cutting event they had planned for a new bike lane attracted dozens of people and became a rallying point for safer streets.

“What started off as a little tongue-in-cheek way to poke fun at the city … turned into an actual meet-and-greet [for] neighbors who were passionately in favor of this bike lane,” Fischer said.

A young resident cuts the ribbon as Matt Gultanoff and Charles Fischer cheer on the new bike lane.

With only a Facebook post’s notice the day before the event, Fischer estimates that 35 to 40 neighbors showed up for their “guerrilla” event. Amongst the crowd were families and bike advocates, as well as elected leaders from Miami Beach and the neighboring town of Surfside. One group of cyclists spontaneously joined the party after riding past it from the new path.

Neighbors agree that the protected, two-way bike lane is a much-needed safety improvement, connecting homes along Jefferson Avenue to the rest of the Miami Beach. It’s widely popular, too — averaging nearly 600 daily trips, according to advocates with Better Streets Miami Beach and the Flamingo Park Neighborhood Association. One local mother, Miriam Haskell, even said that the bike lane gives her son the freedom to bike to soccer practice safely on his own.

Residents of the Flamingo Park neighborhood celebrated the bike lane as a needed alternative to driving.

But behind every smile at the ribbon cutting was a frustration with the city.

“We’re so focused on car and parking and car culture,” Fischer said.

The parking in question is a 300-space garage in the northern part of Miami Beach. In July, city leaders held their own ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of the first 150 spaces to the public.

“We know how dire the need for parking is for the North Beach neighborhood, and this fills that need with 150 spots,” Mayor Steven Meiner said at the event, according to StreetsWatch, which is operated by Better Streets Miami Beach.

But the city’s own data, along with eyewitness accounts, tell a much less exciting story. One month after the splashy stunt, advocates found only three cars parked in the garage on a Friday afternoon; the following Sunday evening, there were seven.

A new parking garage in north Miami Beach has stayed mostly-empty since its July opening.

That underwhelming usage isn’t because the area is unpopular; the garage is just a five minute walk from a major commercial corridor. But with stops on two major bus lines just one block away — and one of those lines running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as often as every nine minutes — neighbors don’t really need to drive to reach it.

And for those who do, there are already four other lots within a one-block radius of the new garage.

Giving more space to cars simply isn’t a priority for Miami Beach neighbors, local surveys show. Year after year, Fischer says those documents have demonstrated that traffic congestion is the most-pressing issue residents face — a problem that’d be better solved by getting drivers out of their cars and onto bikes and buses.

“You can’t get off this island because there are so many cars,” he adds.

Recommended Study: More Protected Bike Lanes = More Micromobility Users Kea Wilson December 18, 2025

Fischer says city leaders aren’t solving any problems by making it easier to park, particularly when better mobility solutions like transit are already in full effect. Rather than celebrating what hasn’t worked — and what continues to fail — they could take a note from their own constituents.

Luckily, those constituents are making their priorities loud and clear. The advocates behind the ribbon cutting made a point to gather participants’ contact information, so they can alert them about future opportunities to show their support for people-centered infrastructure.

“A lot of people came [to our ribbon-cutting] ready to be activated and to move onto the next one,” Fischer said. “We met a lot of [neighbors] that I didn’t know at all … that felt so passionately about this that they showed up.

“Not only did they want to celebrate this, but they wanted to see what’s next — and they wanted to help make what’s next happen,” he continued.

Dear friends,

On August 19, 2026, the Water Board released a final update to the Bay-Delta Plan, a critical rulemaking for ensuring: water quality, river flows and ecosystem protections for the state’s largest and most endangered estuary and watershed. Included in the final draft is the Board’s consideration of the inequitable and deceptive Voluntary Agreements. 

The inequitable and scientifically inadequate Voluntary Agreements (VAs) face potential failure as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the massive Westlands Water District indicated that they will not participate in the VAs if the State Water Board approves the updated San Francisco Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan. 

The State Water Board will soon be voting on whether to adopt the final draft of the Bay-Delta Plan and VAs.

We need your help to ensure they make the right decision! 

Join us on October 28 and/or 29 to raise your voice in opposition to the final draft plan. 

This is your final opportunity to voice opposition to the plan, which would be devastating to Tribes, environmental justice communities, and the Bay-Delta ecosystem.

Water Board Public Notice: https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/CAWRCB/2026/08/20/file_attachments/3753028/notice-2026finaldrftbdp.pdf

You’re Invited: Bay-Delta Plan Speaker Training:
 

The Bay Delta Flows Coalition and  Save CA Salmon are hosting a virtual speaker training session on October 21, 2026. 

We will cover what to expect at the October Board hearings, how to provide public comment, and our analysis of the Bay-Delta Plan and how it will impact Delta communities, and an update on Sites Reservoir proceedings and the upcoming Water Board vote in November.

• Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2026
• Time: 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
• Location: Online via Zoom
• Registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/AhASthLDT6m9UX1u8ZqTxQ#/registration

How You Can Participate:

The State Water Board will be voting on whether to adopt the final Bay-Delta Plan and Voluntary Agreements. This is your final opportunity to voice opposition to the plan, which would be devastating to Tribes, environmental justice communities, and the Bay-Delta ecosystem.

• When: October 28-29, 2026 and continuing on October 30, 2026, if necessary
• Time: Hearing starts at 9:00 am each day
• In-Person Location: Joe Serna Jr. CalEPA Building, Coastal Hearing Room 
• Address: 1001 I Street, Second Floor, Sacramento, CA 95814

How To Make A Public Comment:

• If you’d like to make a public comment, in person or virtually, please fill out a Speaker Card.
• Virtual Speaking Option: If you plan to participate virtually and would like to speak, please complete a Speaker Card. The Clerk to the Board will email you one business day before the hearing with the information needed to join the meeting.

Public comments are limited to 3 minutes. You can use our Bay-Delta Plan One-Pager to help draft a public comment explaining how the proposed final Bay-Delta Plan would negatively impact your family and community, business or organization, environment, and economic interests. 

Have You Commented In The Past?

The final Phase 2 report of the Sacramento/Delta Updates to the Bay-Delta Plan is posted here. 

If you previously commented and are interested in seeing responses to your comment :

• Click here and search your first and last name
• After finding it, record your “Letter number” on the left side column
• Then click here and scroll down to “Volume 3: Responses to Comments” 
• Continue scrolling down to “4. Responses to Comments Tables”
• Lastly, click on the indexed link that includes your letter number

11-03 * 13:00 - Energy and Thematic Group (Bea)

10-13 * 13:00 - GT FT meeting (Bea)

10-06 * 13:00 - Toolkit for Weaving (Bea)

10-05 * 13:00 - Radical Democracy Global Gathering 2027 Planning (Bea)

10-01 * 13:00 - Global of Alternatives - NEF (Bea)

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 27 SEPTEMBER 2026 SLF-2007-070 The Sakhalin Papers LX: The Permit War — When Shell’s Internal Emails Reached Russia’s Environmental Watchdog In September 2006, Russia moved against the environmental approval underpinning Sakhalin II Phase 2. Shell-led Sakhalin Energy said the approval had survived a Russian court challenge only weeks earlier and denied there were lawful grounds for revocation. Then another evidential strand entered the dispute. Internal Shell emails from 2002 — expressing concern about seismic faults, well design and a project being “schedule driven” — were supplied by John Donovan to Russian environmental official Oleg Mitvol. Contemporary Interfax and Argus reporting independently recorded that Mitvol received the material and sought answers from Sakhalin Energy. The emails did not prove environmental catastrophe, nor has any court identified here adjudicated their technical implications. But they became part of the regulatory confrontation at precisely the moment Shell was fighting to retain control of its largest Russian investment.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-070
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal corporate records: Shell/Sakhalin Energy statements; Shell internal Bouman–Van Spronsen emails; Royal Dutch Shell SEC filing of 21 December 2006
Regulatory record: Russian Ministry of Natural Resources/Rosprirodnadzor statements as reported contemporaneously
Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, Interfax, Oil & Gas Journal, The Guardian, Dow Jones/MarketWatch and Argus
Archive correspondence: John Donovan communications with Oleg Mitvol, August–November 2006
Later judicial context: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)
Evidence standard: Russian allegations, Sakhalin Energy responses, internal technical concerns, Donovan commentary and journalistic interpretation are kept separate. The transmission of the Shell emails to Rosprirodnadzor is documented; it is not inferred that those emails caused the Russian regulatory campaign or the subsequent transfer of control to Gazprom.

Introduction

Yesterday’s file ended with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development unable to progress its Sakhalin II financing decision because the project’s legal position had become uncertain.

The uncertainty had a name.

Order 600.

That was the Russian environmental approval associated with the State Ecological Expert Review for Sakhalin II Phase 2.

By September 2006 it had become the centre of a battle involving prosecutors, environmental regulators, Shell, Sakhalin Energy, foreign governments and — increasingly — Gazprom.

But something unusual happened as that battle intensified.

Documents originating inside Shell travelled outside the company.

They reached journalists.

They reached environmental campaigners.

And eventually they reached Oleg Mitvol, the Russian official becoming the public face of the Sakhalin II environmental investigation.

The provenance of those documents can now be reconstructed.

1. 18 September 2006: Russia moves against the permit

On 18 September 2006, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources announced action against the environmental approval for Sakhalin II Phase 2.

The immediate trigger was a protest from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office challenging the legality of the 2003 approval.

Sakhalin Energy chief executive Ian Craig subsequently described the sequence: the Prosecutor General issued its protest on 16 September; two days later the Ministry announced that Order 600 should be invalidated, subject to approval by the relevant technical agency. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Oil & Gas Journal described the practical effect more starkly: Russia had effectively moved to suspend Phase 2 on environmental grounds. Oil & Gas Journal

That distinction matters.

There was an announced governmental decision to invalidate the approval.

But the procedural position remained fluid.

2. Sakhalin Energy said the permit had just survived in court

Sakhalin Energy did not quietly accept the decision.

Its response was unusually specific.

The company said there were “no valid grounds” for revoking Order 600 and stated that the environmental approval had been successfully defended in a Russian court as recently as 29 August 2006. Oil & Gas Journal

The company also said the specific environmental issues identified by Rosprirodnadzor and the Natural Resources Ministry were being addressed and were insufficient to justify annulment. Oil & Gas Journal

A publicly accessible copy of that August judgment has still not been located for this archive.

Accordingly, the precise reasoning of the Russian court cannot responsibly be reconstructed here.

The established point is narrower:

Sakhalin Energy publicly stated that its environmental approval had survived a court challenge weeks before the federal authorities moved against it by another route.

3. The Government then paused

Eight days after the dramatic 18 September action, Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev altered the immediate trajectory.

Reuters reported on 26 September that construction could continue while a full environmental investigation proceeded.

Trutnev said the authorities should try to remedy the situation without stopping the project and that the permit would not be revoked while the investigation was under way. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

The Russian concerns he listed included deforestation, damage to marine areas, sediment clogging river beds and risks to pipelines from mudslides. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

This is an important procedural detail.

The September confrontation is sometimes compressed into the statement:

Russia revoked Shell’s permit.

The actual chronology was less tidy.

The Ministry moved to invalidate the approval.

Sakhalin Energy contested the legal basis.

Foreign governments objected.

Then Trutnev allowed work to continue pending further investigation.

The permit had become leverage inside an unresolved regulatory process.

That last sentence is commentary.

The chronology is documented.

4. Mitvol denied politics had anything to do with it

The obvious allegation was already circulating internationally.

Was environmental enforcement being used to pressure Shell into allowing Gazprom into Sakhalin II?

Oleg Mitvol rejected that interpretation.

In a contemporaneous interview with The Guardian, he insisted that there were only environmental issues at stake and denied that the action had commercial or political motives. He pointed to alleged damage to rivers and forests and accused Sakhalin Energy of ignoring environmental requirements. The Guardian

Sakhalin Energy denied breaching the regulations. The Guardian

This remains the correct evidential formulation.

Mitvol said it was environmental enforcement.

Critics suspected a political and commercial purpose.

Neither position becomes proven merely by repetition.

5. Shell said it was rapidly clearing the complaints

By mid-October, Shell was publicly arguing that most of the environmental allegations were already being resolved.

Reuters reported on 17 October 2006 that Shell Russia chief Chris Finlayson said the company had dealt with approximately 97 per cent of the alleged breaches identified during a September audit and expected the remainder to be resolved shortly. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

But another inspection was already under way.

Shell acknowledged that the new audit could produce another set of requirements. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

The regulatory target was therefore moving.

Shell’s position was essentially:

we are fixing the identified problems.

Russia’s position was:

we are still finding problems.

6. Then came the internal Shell emails

Running alongside the official inspections was a separate documentary story.

In 2002, Shell manager Hans Bouman, then Manager Asset Groningen at NAM, corresponded with Engel van Spronsen, who was associated with Sakhalin technical management.

Bouman had seen presentations concerning the planned Lunskoye wells.

His email was plainly cautionary rather than definitive.

He referred to an earthquake environment, young faults associated with gas plumes, limited winter access and concerns about the well design.

He wrote that several people had come away with the feeling that things were not going well and said he was troubled by hearing that the project was:

“schedule driven.” Shell2004

He was careful to acknowledge uncertainty.

His concerns, he wrote, might amount to hearsay rather than hard scientific evidence.

But his conclusion was unmistakable:

“I get this sinking feeling.” Shell2004

7. “I would NEVER EVER want to be schedule driven”

Bouman’s concern centred partly on technical decision-making before final investment approval.

He warned against being schedule driven on a project of roughly $9 billion and recommended bringing in senior specialists to subject the design to a rigorous review. Shell2004

In a later email, he identified several specific concerns:

limited seasonal access to the platform;

gas plumes associated with large faults;

the possibility of fault reactivation;

well reliability;

cuttings injection;

and the consequences of carrying out everything from a single platform. Shell2004

These were technical questions being raised internally.

They were not findings that the wells were unsafe.

They were not evidence that a blowout was inevitable.

And they were not an environmental judgment.

The distinction is essential.

An engineer saying “I am worried” is evidence of an internal concern.

It is not proof that the feared event would occur.

8. Van Spronsen’s reply supplied important context

Engel van Spronsen did not dismiss Bouman.

His response acknowledged concern about the schedule but explained one practical difficulty:

Russia’s approval regime required technical parameters to be fixed relatively early because significant changes could trigger new environmental-impact calculations and approvals. Shell2004

That exchange is valuable precisely because it is not a simple whistleblower accusation followed by corporate denial.

It is an internal professional discussion.

Bouman was worried about technical risk.

Van Spronsen explained regulatory and project constraints.

The correspondence reveals uncertainty and pressure inside the design process.

It does not by itself establish negligence.

9. Dow Jones checked the emails

The provenance became stronger when the emails left the archive and entered mainstream reporting.

The material reproduced in the Donovan correspondence includes an October 2006 MarketWatch/Dow Jones account stating that Bouman confirmed the emails were genuine.

The same report said Sakhalin Energy responded that the well design had subsequently been revised in 2005 but declined to discuss the specific issues raised by Bouman. Van Spronsen disputed suggestions that the project’s cost escalation resulted from poor technical solutions chosen under schedule pressure. Shell2004

This matters enormously for evidential purposes.

We are no longer dealing merely with documents that appeared anonymously on a website.

One of the authors confirmed them to a mainstream financial news organisation.

10. 7 August: the first approach to Oleg Mitvol

The regulatory connection actually began before the September permit crisis.

On 7 August 2006, John Donovan emailed Oleg Mitvol at the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources.

The message drew Mitvol’s attention to the Shell website and its anonymous Live Chat facility, where people claiming Shell knowledge had posted concerns relating to Sakhalin II.

The email explicitly cautioned readers to use their own judgment when evaluating anonymous postings. Shell2004

This was not the transmission of the Bouman emails.

It was an initial approach.

But it established contact between the Donovan archive and the official who would shortly become central to Russia’s Sakhalin environmental campaign.

11. 17 October: an offer of confidential information

On 17 October, Donovan faxed Mitvol again.

This time the message said he possessed confidential inside information concerning Sakhalin II and asked how the Ministry wished to receive it. Shell2004

The following day, the information was sent.

12. 18 October: the Shell emails go to Moscow

The 18 October 2006 fax is one of the more consequential documents in the archive.

It is headed:

“Shell Insider Information Regarding Sakhalin.”

It states that leaked Shell internal emails were enclosed and tells Mitvol that the material concerned potentially serious design and construction questions.

The fax then reproduced the Dow Jones report and the underlying Bouman–Van Spronsen correspondence. Shell2004

At this stage, one must distinguish two things.

The authentic internal Shell emails raised technical concerns.

Donovan’s covering correspondence went considerably further in its interpretation of the potential consequences.

Those interpretations are not transformed into Shell findings simply because Shell emails were attached to them.

The strongest evidence is the original correspondence itself.

13. The link to Rosprirodnadzor was independently reported

The most important corroboration appeared outside the Donovan archive.

Interfax reported on 13 November 2006 that Oleg Mitvol had written to Sakhalin Energy chief executive Ian Craig on 19 October asking the company to confirm or deny information contained in the confidential Shell correspondence.

Interfax expressly reported that copies of the emails had been supplied to Rosprirodnadzor by John Donovan, whom it described as a Shell shareholder and operator of a Shell news website. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

That is a significant independent checkpoint.

The sequence was no longer simply:

Donovan says he sent documents to Mitvol.

There was now contemporaneous reporting that the Russian regulator had received the documents and acted upon them.

14. Sakhalin Energy supplied a technical rebuttal

The same Interfax report supplies another important safeguard against one-sided reconstruction.

It reported that Sakhalin Energy’s technical director had responded in a letter dated 8 November.

According to that account, Sakhalin Energy rejected suggestions that platform access was as restricted as alleged.

The company said the development programme provided for round-the-clock staffing and year-round supply-vessel access.

It also said well trajectories had been designed to avoid problematic formations, considered fault reactivation unlikely, and noted that test drilling had assisted in producing the designs for the first Lunskoye wells. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Interfax further recorded that Russian technical authorities had previously approved industrial-safety conclusions and that Rosprirodnadzor itself had issued an ecological approval concerning the relevant projects in August 2006. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

That response must sit beside the original emails.

The internal engineers had raised concerns.

Sakhalin Energy later said the final design and operating arrangements addressed them.

15. Russia was making much wider allegations

The emails were only one part of Rosprirodnadzor’s case.

Interfax reported the Natural Resources Ministry alleging that the environmental-restoration measures proposed by Sakhalin Energy were inadequate and saying 529 rivers required restoration because of contractor activity. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

That figure was a Russian government assertion.

It should not be written as:

“Shell damaged 529 rivers.”

The documentary formulation is:

the Ministry said 529 rivers required restoration.

That distinction may appear small.

It is the difference between archiving an allegation and adopting it.

16. The Argus interview

Another independent strand appeared in an interview with Mitvol published by Argus and preserved in the archive.

Mitvol said he possessed internal management correspondence dating from 2002 and explicitly identified John Donovan as the source.

He said the material had been received on 19 October and forwarded to Sakhalin Energy for an official response. Shell2004

Mitvol characterised the emails as evidence that management knew of technical-standard problems and continued working to meet deadlines.

That was Mitvol’s interpretation.

It was not a court finding.

He also spoke of possible proceedings and a rough environmental-damages estimate exceeding $10 billion, while acknowledging that the figure was preliminary and would require expert assessment. Shell2004

17. There is an apparent discrepancy in the contemporary record

The Argus interview, as preserved in the 19 November Donovan correspondence, quotes Mitvol saying he had not yet received a response from Sakhalin Energy to his request concerning the emails. Shell2004

But the Interfax report dated 13 November refers to a Sakhalin Energy technical response dated 8 November. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Those accounts do not sit comfortably together.

There may be an innocent explanation.

They may concern different communications.

The Argus interview may have been conducted before the date on which it was distributed.

Mitvol may have meant that he had not received the particular formal response he wanted.

Or the reporting may simply be inconsistent.

The available archive does not resolve the discrepancy.

Accordingly, this instalment does not.

That is precisely the sort of small contradiction that should remain visible in a documentary archive rather than being silently smoothed away.

18. 29 November: another document is offered

The documentary exchange continued.

On 29 November, Donovan told Mitvol that he possessed an internal Shell PowerPoint presentation concerning Sakhalin II and offered to send it if the regulator supplied an email address. Shell2004

This proves the offer was made.

It does not establish from the document presently examined that Mitvol received the presentation.

It does not establish that Russian investigators relied upon it.

And it does not establish that it influenced any later governmental decision.

Those propositions would require separate evidence.

19. Meanwhile the regulatory threat became more serious

By late October, Russia was escalating the language surrounding the investigation.

Natural Resources Minister Trutnev said alleged violations potentially engaged provisions of Russia’s criminal law and extended the environmental investigation. The Guardian

In November, Mitvol was publicly discussing the possibility of international proceedings for environmental damage. The Guardian

Whatever the ultimate legal strength of those threats, the commercial effect was obvious.

Shell was attempting to complete a roughly $20 billion development while simultaneously facing uncertainty over its environmental approval, possible sanctions, investigations, legal claims and continuing negotiations over Gazprom’s participation.

20. Then the ownership negotiations accelerated

On 11 December 2006, Reuters reported that Shell was offering Gazprom control of Sakhalin II.

The report described threats involving licences, fines and litigation as continuing to disrupt the project and noted industry expectations that regulatory pressure might ease if Gazprom obtained control. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Mitvol publicly rejected any suggestion that a change in ownership would change his regulatory approach.

He said environmental law would continue to apply regardless of who owned Sakhalin Energy. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Again, both sides of the contemporary record need preserving.

Observers suspected regulatory leverage.

Mitvol said ownership was irrelevant to enforcement.

21. Ten days later, Shell surrendered majority control

On 21 December 2006, the transaction became official.

A Shell filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission records the agreement.

Gazprom would acquire:

50 per cent plus one share

of Sakhalin Energy for:

$7.45 billion in cash.

Shell’s holding would fall from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent.

Mitsui would fall to 12.5 per cent.

Mitsubishi would fall to 10 per cent.

Sakhalin Energy would remain operator and Shell would remain technical adviser. SEC

The filing also records that Phase 2 was more than 80 per cent complete and approximately $12 billion had already been invested by the end of the third quarter of 2006. SEC

Those are authenticated corporate facts.

22. What the emails prove

The Bouman–Van Spronsen correspondence establishes that technically knowledgeable Shell personnel raised concerns in 2002 about aspects of the Sakhalin well concept, including seismic faults, gas plumes, limited access and schedule pressure. Shell2004

The correspondence also establishes that the concerns were discussed rather than simply ignored: Van Spronsen responded and sought further technical clarification. Shell2004

Contemporaneous Dow Jones reporting said Bouman confirmed the emails were genuine. Shell2004

The archive establishes that Donovan sent the emails to Oleg Mitvol in October 2006. Shell2004

Interfax independently reported that Mitvol received the correspondence from Donovan and sought a response from Sakhalin Energy. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Those propositions are well supported.

23. What the emails do not prove

They do not prove that Sakhalin II’s completed wells were unsafe.

They do not prove that drilling through or near geological faults would have caused a blowout.

They do not prove that Shell deliberately endangered the environment.

They do not prove that regulators would have revoked the project’s permits absent the emails.

They do not prove that Mitvol’s environmental-damages calculations were correct.

And they do not establish that the emails caused Gazprom to obtain control of Sakhalin II.

The emails became part of the evidential environment surrounding the regulatory dispute.

That is significant enough.

There is no need to claim more.

24. Nor can the environmental case simply be dismissed as Kremlin theatre

There is another equally important boundary.

It would be wrong to argue that because the environmental campaign coincided with Gazprom’s ambitions, every environmental complaint was necessarily fictitious.

Shell itself had previously acknowledged contractor failures at sensitive river crossings.

International lenders had already raised environmental concerns.

Independent scientists had challenged aspects of the project.

And Shell’s own internal correspondence reveals genuine technical unease.

The political context therefore does not erase the environmental record.

25. Nor can the political context be erased

The opposite simplification is equally unsatisfactory.

Russian regulatory pressure intensified during the same period in which Gazprom was seeking entry into Sakhalin II.

The original asset-swap concept involved minority participation.

The final agreement gave Gazprom majority control.

Contemporaneous journalists repeatedly interpreted the environmental campaign as leverage.

Western governments expressed concern.

And Shell subsequently discussed the episode in the broader context of resource nationalism.

Those facts make it impossible to treat the environmental battle as though it unfolded inside a political vacuum. The Guardian

26. The later High Court case provides context — but not validation

Sakhalin II subsequently reached the English High Court in:

Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin).

Mr Justice Mitting dealt with a dispute concerning disclosure of UK government environmental information connected with contemplated export-credit support for the project. vLex

The case confirms the extraordinary level of governmental and environmental scrutiny surrounding Sakhalin II.

But it did not adjudicate the Bouman emails.

It did not determine Russian environmental violations.

It did not decide whether Mitvol’s claims were correct.

And it did not rule that Shell had been coerced into selling control.

The judgment is relevant institutional context.

It is not retrospective proof of the Russian case.

Documentary Findings

Established. On 18 September 2006 Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry moved to invalidate the environmental approval associated with Sakhalin II Phase 2 following intervention by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Oil & Gas Journal

Established. Sakhalin Energy publicly said the approval had been successfully defended in a Russian court on 29 August 2006 and maintained that there were no valid grounds for revocation. Oil & Gas Journal

Established. On 26 September, Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said the project could continue while an environmental investigation proceeded. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Established. Internal Shell correspondence from 2002 records technical concern about well design, seismic faults, gas plumes and schedule pressure. The correspondence itself expresses uncertainty and does not claim that catastrophic failure was inevitable. Shell2004

Established. Contemporaneous Dow Jones reporting said Hans Bouman confirmed the authenticity of his emails. Shell2004

Established. John Donovan supplied the correspondence to Oleg Mitvol in October 2006. Shell2004

Independently corroborated. Interfax subsequently reported that Mitvol had received the emails from Donovan and requested a response from Sakhalin Energy. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Established as Sakhalin Energy’s position. The company responded with technical explanations concerning platform access, well trajectories, fault risk and prior regulatory approvals. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Established as Russian allegations. Russian authorities claimed widespread environmental damage and discussed substantial compensation and possible legal proceedings. Those assertions were contested and were not adjudicated in the records examined here. Shell2004

Established. By 11 December, Reuters was reporting negotiations under which Gazprom might obtain control of Sakhalin II. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Established by Shell’s SEC filing. On 21 December, Gazprom agreed to acquire 50 per cent plus one share for $7.45 billion, reducing Shell’s stake from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent. SEC

Commentary

There is something unusual about this particular documentary chain.

It begins inside Shell.

An experienced manager looks at a proposed well design and becomes uneasy.

Another senior technical figure answers him.

The correspondence leaves the corporation.

A financial news organisation checks it.

One of the authors confirms it.

A campaigning website sends it to a foreign regulator.

The regulator asks Shell’s operating company for an explanation.

The exchange is reported by Interfax and Argus.

And all of this happens while the Russian state is threatening the project’s permits and Shell is negotiating with Gazprom.

That is not a theory.

That chain can be reconstructed from documents.

What cannot be reconstructed with equal certainty is causation.

Did the emails materially alter the Russian investigation?

Did they simply provide useful ammunition for a regulatory campaign already well under way?

Did they expose a genuine technical issue that had already been resolved?

Or did they do several of these things at once?

The archive does not yet provide a definitive answer.

That uncertainty is itself part of the historical record.

The importance of provenance

Had these emails survived only as anonymous internet material, their evidential value would have been limited.

Instead, the provenance has several layers.

The correspondence bears the names of Shell personnel.

Bouman reportedly confirmed authenticity to Dow Jones.

Sakhalin Energy gave a substantive technical response.

Interfax reported that Russia’s environmental regulator had received the material.

Mitvol publicly identified its source.

And Shell’s own later internal material shows that the Donovan website and Sakhalin stories were being monitored inside the company.

That does not prove every allegation surrounding the emails.

It does make the documentary trail unusually strong.

The permit war was therefore about more than a permit

By late 2006, several different contests had converged.

There was a legitimate environmental debate.

There was a technical engineering debate.

There was a dispute over whether project promises had been followed on the ground.

There was a dispute over project costs.

There was a geopolitical struggle over Russian energy assets.

There was a negotiation with Gazprom.

And there was an information war in which internal Shell material was no longer staying inside Shell.

On 21 December, one of those contests was resolved.

Gazprom got control.

The others did not disappear quite so neatly.

Source Record

The Sakhalin Energy statement reproduced by Oil & Gas Journal on 19 September 2006 records the Russian move against Order 600, Sakhalin Energy’s denial that legal grounds existed for revocation and its statement that the environmental approval had survived a Russian court challenge on 29 August.

Oil & Gas Journal — Russia suspends Sakhalin-2 development project, 19 September 2006

The 19 September 2006 statement from Sakhalin Energy chief executive Ian Craig records the Prosecutor General protest and the Ministry’s decision concerning Order 600.

Sakhalin Energy — Ian Craig statement on the Natural Resources Ministry action

Reuters reported on 26 September 2006 that Yuri Trutnev would allow work to continue during the environmental investigation and would defer a final permit decision.

Reuters — Russia calls time-out in campaign against Shell

Reuters reported on 17 October 2006 that Shell said approximately 97 per cent of identified September audit issues had been dealt with, while acknowledging that another audit could produce new requirements.

Reuters — Shell awaits more Sakhalin environmental claims

The 7 August 2006 Donovan email to Oleg Mitvol documents the first approach drawing the regulator’s attention to Shell-insider material concerning Sakhalin II.

Archive document — Email to Oleg Mitvol, 7 August 2006

The 17 October 2006 fax records Donovan’s offer to supply confidential information concerning Sakhalin II.

Archive document — Fax to Oleg Mitvol, 17 October 2006

The 18 October 2006 transmission contains the Bouman–Van Spronsen emails and reproduces the contemporaneous Dow Jones/MarketWatch reporting in which Bouman confirmed their authenticity.

Archive document — Shell internal emails sent to Oleg Mitvol, 18 October 2006

The preserved Interfax report of 13 November 2006 independently records that Mitvol received the correspondence from John Donovan, sought answers from Sakhalin Energy and received technical explanations concerning the Lunskoye development.

Interfax/Johnson’s Russia List — Sakhalin Energy environmental measures and Shell emails, 13 November 2006

The Argus interview with Oleg Mitvol, reproduced in the 19 November Donovan correspondence, records Mitvol identifying Donovan as the source of the internal emails and setting out his own interpretation of their significance. Those statements are Mitvol’s allegations and forecasts, not judicial findings.

Archive document — Donovan correspondence reproducing Argus interview with Oleg Mitvol, 19 November 2006

The 29 November 2006 correspondence records a further offer to supply an internal Shell presentation. No conclusion is drawn here about whether it was subsequently received or used.

Archive document — Further communication to Oleg Mitvol, 29 November 2006

Reuters’ 11 December 2006 report records the emerging proposal for Gazprom to obtain control while environmental proceedings and licence threats remained unresolved.

Reuters — Shell offers control of Sakhalin-2 to Gazprom, 11 December 2006

Shell’s 21 December 2006 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission is the principal authenticated corporate record of the ownership agreement: Gazprom would acquire 50 per cent plus one share for $7.45 billion, while Shell’s holding would fall to 27.5 per cent.

US SEC — Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi Sakhalin II protocol

The later judicial context is Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin). The High Court case concerned disclosure of UK government environmental information and does not adjudicate the Russian enforcement campaign or the internal Shell emails.

High Court — ECGD v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)

Archive disclaimer: Internal technical concern is not equated with proof of defective final design. Russian regulatory allegations are not presented as established environmental liability. Donovan correspondence is used to establish what material was transmitted and when; Donovan commentary within those communications is not treated as independent technical evidence. The documented transmission of Shell emails to Rosprirodnadzor does not establish that those documents caused permit action, environmental claims or the Gazprom transaction.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Next instalment The Sakhalin Papers LXI: The Kremlin Deal — $7.45 Billion and the Day Shell Lost Control

By December 2006 the permit war had reached its climax.

Shell faced unresolved environmental claims.

The Russian government was still disputing project costs.

Gazprom wanted a controlling stake.

And Shell had already invested billions in a development that was more than 80 per cent complete. SEC

Then the participants entered the Kremlin.

On 21 December 2006, Vladimir Putin sat with Jeroen van der Veer, Alexei Miller and representatives of Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

The environmental dispute was discussed.

The project budget was discussed.

And a transaction was announced that transformed the ownership of Sakhalin II.

Gazprom would pay $7.45 billion.

Shell would lose half of its 55 per cent stake.

Russia’s state-controlled gas company would obtain:

50 per cent plus one share.

The next file will reconstruct that day from the corporate filings, contemporaneous reporting and official records — examine what the $7.45 billion price actually represented, what Shell retained, what it surrendered, and why the distinction between a negotiated sale and a transaction concluded under extraordinary state pressure remains central to understanding the Sakhalin II story.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 27 SEPTEMBER 2026 was first posted on September 27, 2026 at 7:57 pm.
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Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (2 items)

• Trump renames AI in off-the-rails rant against ‘hoax’ concerns Trump Truth Social post likens AI skeptics to global warming and climate change warnings from environmentalists. The Independent, John Bowden, Sep 21, 2026.
• AI`s Meet-Cute With Climate Denial Just in time for Climate Week NYC, President Trump calls concerns over global warming and artificial intelligence a “hoax.” Inside Climate News, By Dan Gearino, Sep 24, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (2 items)

• Fact brief - Does wind power require backup from fossil fuels? Skeptical Science's latest climate solutions denial debunking, created in cooperation with Gigafact and Columbia Univesity's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Skeptical Science, Sue Bin Park, Sep 22, 2026.
• Coalition vows to 'take a chainsaw' to climate laws, offshore wind The Coalition would cancel offshore wind zones, scrap climate laws for heavy industry and car makers, and attempt to lift the ban on nuclear if it wins power. ABC News, Jake Evans, Sep 23, 2026.

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Every year on the fourth Sunday in September, people around the world celebrate the many values of Earth’s waterways. It’s World Water Day! We are celebrating by highlighting the incredible...

In a modern five-story building in the center of Hamburg, Germany, technicians are preparing to install several new “racks” — gray metal casings that hold computing hardware — alongside the scores that already line the narrow, dimly lit corridors of the German Climate Computing Center, or DKRZ, one of the world’s largest repositories for climate simulation data. The new equipment will add about 5 petabytes of storage capacity to the 254 petabytes of data already stored here. One petabyte of data is equivalent to the storage space needed for roughly 200 million high-resolution images.

Under normal circumstances, the DKRZ’s mission is to provide computing power and storage to the German climate science community. But these new racks will serve a different and highly sensitive purpose: They will store backup versions of climate simulations from the other side of the Atlantic. The operation aims to ensure that essential work performed by U.S. scientists for the next major U.N. climate assessment, due in 2029, cannot be meddled with or compromised by the administration of President Trump, which has slashed funding for climate research, buried scientific reports, removed references to human-caused warming from dozens of government websites, and sought to prevent satellites from collecting key climate data. 

Leaders of German science organizations publicly cite these actions as their primary motivation for creating backups. The German Research Foundation, the country’s main science funding body, believes that the Trump administration could block European access to data and research findings stored in the U.S. “The deletion of data has also become a possibility,” said the foundation’s program manager, Kathrin Winkler, “and there is a risk that [data] could be manipulated to skew findings in a desired direction.” 

Trust in U.S. science policy has fallen to a low point in Europe, and fears of losing scientific data are mounting. The U.S. government quit both the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in January, though U.S. researchers are still contributing to global climate science. To support them, the German Research Foundation in late 2025 set up a program, with a budget of $35 million, to provide a safe haven for permanently storing copies of U.S. data from public and open sources.

The DKRZ project is called CMIP7-ark — a lifeboat for the U.S. contribution to the seventh IPCC assessment. Six other projects for U.S. science datasets, with names like SHIELD and SEND (Secure Endangered Earth Data), have also received funding. Christopher Kadow, head of the data analysis division at the DKRZ, said, “We cannot simply accept that important contributions might be lost for technical or political reasons.”

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawai‘i is responsible for the oldest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. The Trump administration tried to shut down the observatory last year.
NOAA

Data collections form the foundation of all empirical science. Climate, environmental, and biodiversity research relies on countless historical and contemporary datasets. Some of these collections, such as the iconic time series of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations made at Hawai‘i’s Mauna Loa Observatory, have been ongoing for decades and are critical for tracking environmental change. (In 2025, the Trump administration tried to defund and close the observatory, but later Congress rejected its proposed cuts.)

While detailed datasets are essential for research, it is not standard procedure to back them up in alternate locations. Most scientific datasets are physically stored on hard drives or magnetic tapes at the universities or institutions where they are generated. One simple reason for this is that, until recently, the world seemed safe enough that scientists saw no need for off-site backups. Another reason is that transferring and storing such large amounts of information is complicated. Sending petabytes of data through the internet takes months, and renting faster fiber optic cables can be extremely costly. Often, the most cost-effective way to transfer large volumes of data is to put them on hard drives or far cheaper magnetic tapes and send them through the “sneakernet,” which means they are physically transported by car, plane, or ship. 

Still, the process is expensive and arduous, so most datasets have been kept in just one place. But in a world where political upheaval, cyberattacks, and armed conflicts are becoming more frequent, this practice is increasingly considered to be precarious. “If data is stored at only one site, there is a much greater risk of loss from events such as extreme weather or infrastructure failure,” said Eleanor O’Rourke, the U.K.-based director of the International Project Office of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which coordinates global climate models for the IPCC’s assessments. Climate simulations for the IPCC are now considered so critical that overseas repositories are thought necessary for all contributions.

Until recently, the idea that the U.S. science community would have to track or rescue lost datasets was unthinkable. After all, environmental data generated or funded by U.S. government agencies was paid for by taxpayers and generally remains in the public domain. Yet these datasets exist in physical forms at specific locations and require dedicated experts to maintain them, which makes them vulnerable to human interference, as well as natural disasters, technical problems like short circuits or battery explosions, and neglect. “The data repositories, digital asset management services, and preservation systems that ensure research data remains open and accessible are often overlooked — until they disappear,” data experts Jennifer Gibson and Kaitlin Thaney warned recently. 

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One example of political interference is the recent threat to 300 federally funded datasets carefully built up over decades by NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, or SEDAC. Alex de Sherbinin, the former SEDAC manager, said the center was founded to “serve as a bridge between the Earth and social-science research communities,” integrating remote sensing data with information on human population, poverty, and infrastructure.

In early April 2025, de Sherbinin was shocked to discover that SEDAC’s datasets had been completely removed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team. It took immense efforts by various institutions, quickly scraping datasets from active servers while they were still operational, to secure the information and transfer it to a new host: the Harvard Dataverse Repository. Assumptions that U.S. government agencies will store scientific data long-term “are proving tenuous at best, given the anti-science predisposition of the current administration,” de Sherbinin said.

Numerous similar projects aim to relocate or duplicate datasets within the U.S. But the U.S. is far from the only country where data is vulnerable, and political interference is not the only risk.

Several research institutions around the world, including a multidisciplinary scientific research center in Croatia and an institute for industrial engineering in Germany, have in recent years been the target of elaborate hacking operations, in which intruders block access to files and demand money to restore them. Victims of cybercrimes rarely disclose publicly which files were targeted, but it’s clear that such attacks can affect scientific data collections.

And then there’s war. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have not only caused mass civilian death and suffering but also immense damage to the country’s science. “Universities and research institutes have been targeted by Russian bombardments, and in some cases they were completely destroyed,” said Anastasiia Lutsenko, a Ukrainian researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich, whose work focuses on how her country’s science system is responding to the war. The Russians, she said, “know how much lasting harm they can inflict by attacking science.” 

Lutsenko cites the transfer of data and samples to secure locations as an important step. Even before Russia’s 2022 invasion, a German-Polish-Ukrainian collaboration helped digitize records of early meteorological observations — conducted between 1808 and 1880 at eight Ukrainian meteorological stations — and transferred them to a server at the University of Giessen, Germany. This eliminated the risk of losing valuable historical data in the war. A similar transfer took place after missiles struck near the servers holding Ukraine’s contribution to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility’s records in Kharkiv at the start of Russia’s invasion. 

The need for increased resilience — the ability to remain functional despite shocks and fully recover from them — was the focus of the American Geophysical Union, or AGU, gathering held in Berlin this March. There, nearly 100 experts, primarily from the U.S. and Europe, discussed how to respond to the Trump administration’s attacks on science. 

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The AGU represents more than 60,000 Earth and space scientists worldwide, and it has emerged as a leader in efforts to protect science and scientists from the Trump administration’s politically motivated attacks. When the administration refused to send U.S. experts to IPCC meetings in 2025, the AGU formed the U.S. Academic Alliance for the IPCC and nominated nearly 300 U.S. scientists to be authors of the IPCC’s next assessment. And in the summer of 2025, it launched its Data Resilience Project, a global initiative to rethink how science is organized.

AGU president-elect Ben Zaitchik believes that science is at an inflection point. “We have engaged in triage efforts to ensure data remains usable and accessible,” he said at the Berlin meeting. “But we clearly now have arrived at a moment where we must fundamentally reimagine data organization and maintenance for long-term viability and growth.” 

Creating backups of datasets and storing them in secure, distant locations was identified as a priority measure during the meeting, as was coordinating a global data community aimed at mitigating current and future risks. Such an effort was vital not only for scientists, an AGU spokesperson noted, “but also for engineers, public safety officials, health experts, policymakers, and a wide array of industries and communities globally,” which depend on scientific data. As a result of the Berlin meeting, a broad coalition of German national research centers was formed to offer safe storage for public domain information to scientists from the U.S. and other countries.

In addition to the DKRZ efforts, other initiatives have emerged across various fields. For example, the Senckenberg Natural History Museum, in Frankfurt, saves data from wildlife trail cameras in Ukraine and biodiversity data from war-ridden Yemen. “We want to ensure that biodiversity data remains usable even under crisis conditions,” a Senckenberg spokesperson said.

For such transfers, it is critical to store not only the data itself but also any specialized software required to read and analyze it. “We’re developing protocols and procedures for exchanging data, distributing multiple copies globally, and ensuring that the data remains analyzable indefinitely,” said Frank Oliver Glöckner, a professor of Earth systems data science at the University of Bremen and the head of Pangaea, a long-term data repository run by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and the university, both of which are preparing to integrate data from a U.S. climate research center slated for closure. 

Glöckner said he believes that President Trump “has, to a certain extent, done science a favor by making it clear how important it is to not just hoard data in one place but to truly share it with the global scientific community.”

“It would be ideal if, in the future, all climate data worldwide were connected via digital pipelines,” said Kadow, of the DKRZ. “That way, in the event of a threat, we could simply flip a switch to secure it elsewhere.” In the future, he said, this could also benefit researchers in Germany, where the AfD, an extreme far-right party that denies climate science, recently won a state election for the first time. “We don’t know what political shifts may occur in Germany,” he said. “We aren’t completely protected from risks or developments like those in the U.S. either.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why Germany is building an ark for US climate data on Sep 27, 2026.