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

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

National Emergency Briefing Film – What about the workers?

Photo by Ashley Gorringe on Unsplash

Review by Mick Holder

I attended a showing of the campaign film National Emergency Briefing in St John’s Church, Leytonstone recently. Whilst I have issues with its focus on parliamentary action and failure to address work and trade unions I’d still recommend everyone tries to attend a showing, even if you have no knowledge or plenty. It presents a very honest but equally bleak picture and the campaign around the showing of the film locally is to try and get more action on the issue of climate change, which is no bad thing.

In case you don’t know already, the film is based on an event held in Westminster Central Hall last year where experts gave their stark opinion on how far we’re in the shit already climate wise and what the future looks like. At the time we said to them their focus missed out work, workers, the role of unions etc. and we were told they were too far down the line to change, although we were welcome to join in from the floor. They subsequently haven’t picked up on the issue in the film and today’s event wouldn’t have said anything about that if I hadn’t said my piece towards the end – FBU, wildfires and floods, Unite bus workers strike over impossibly hot cab conditions etc. 

And maybe that’s where we are. Showing this film seems to have momentum so perhaps it’s down to us to attend and do our usual “What about the workers?” call. And a warning – celebrities are involved!

Today’s screening was attended by 200+, mainly a mix of people in their thirties upwards and it was reported there have been 4,000 screenings nationally so far. It is not currently available to watch online, deliberately trying to create events involving local communities rather than individuals watching in isolation at home or on their phones. Today’s session was kinda TU Ed style, watch film, break into small groups, report back etc. although I felt the activities were too touchy feely and not enough get active, and too reliant on parliament alone.

The campaign would benefit from a bit of history, not just Greenpeace and FoE but the trade union led Lucas Plan of the 70s calling for a move away from manufacturing for war to making renewable energy sources to end our reliance on fossil fuels, the 1972 book The Limits To Growth which warned us all of the problems we might face if we don’t act and which is still relevant now. I’m sure you can think of more examples. And details of how governments have used growth and de-regulation as an excuse not to act or to act in a way that weakens or removes worker and environmental protections (Grenfell, WHO air standards, many other exposure limits, shitty water etc.). And how global industry spends billions of their profits on making sure governments’ and regulators don’t do what they all know they really should all in the pursuit of profit.

Maybe the film wants to avoid the blame game. I don’t. We should call these fuckers out for what they truly are and ensure they are held to account. We also need to show the personal side of what their actions or inactions mean to us, our families and friends and people around the world, many who will probably suffer far more than we will, at least in the near future.

I think the film is being made available to local groups for free and would encourage people to consider this. Just make sure there’s someone on the panel who knows their stuff about work, trade unions and a bit of analysis too.

A further contribution we can make at any local showings is to complement the focus on lobbying MPs with organising – set up a local campaigning network where none exists, help coordinate existing groups where they do. To create a just transition we need organised forces pushing for it on the ground, as well as pressuring MPs to make the right decisions.

The Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union group has produced an excellent 13 minute version specifically to be shown in union branches. GJA strongly urges all supporters to get this shown in their union branch, to coincide with the COP in November if possible, but any time soon if not. A link to this is here.

We also have this draft motion that could help focus discussion. 

The individual sections of the National emergency briefing are available here

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The post National Emergency Briefing Film – What about the workers? first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

Useful Tips on the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) for Relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) – (2026 edition)

The kit is an accessible tool for CSIPM participants and Coordination Committee members to find their way through the CFS and the CSIPM. We want to unpack these spaces for everyone carrying out the struggle at the local level!

Download the kit  and share it widely across your constituencies and sub-regions.

The post CSIPM Welcome Kit appeared first on CSIPM.

By KAY MATTHEWS

Making a movie about the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire is not for the weak of heart. Untangling the tension between those who suffered so much destruction and those, namely the US Forest Service, that caused that suffering, requires courage and tact. Fortunately, a talented filmmaker named Hillary Bachelder has both, and her film, “Burn, Scar,” is an achingly fair and honest assessment of what happened. The first showing in New Mexico will be at the Santa Fe Film Festival, October 15. Starting Friday, October 30, the film will show in Las Vegas at the Indigo Theater, 5 pm and 7:45 pm with multiple showings throughout the week. Tickets are available at Indigo Theater.

In April of 2022 a prescribed fire set by the Forest Service near Hermit’s Peak in Mora County jumped its perimeter boundary. Soon after, a previously prescribed burn in a nearby canyon that had smoldered under the winter snows erupted into a fire that joined the fire near Hermit’s Peak. In total, what became known as the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire burned 341,471 acres and destroyed 903 structures in Mora, San Miguel, and Taos counties.

Before I continue with this review, I have a disclaimer. I contributed some of the video footage and photos used in the film and know many of the people who are featured and interviewed, including Antonio “Ike” DeVargas, about whom I wrote a book. Hopefully that adds to, rather than detracts from, the review.

This film rests on the shoulders of the narrators Bachelder chose to tell the story. It begins in 2022, when the fires erupted, and ends in 2025, when Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)money finally compensates many of those who lost their homes and livelihoods.

Here are the protagonists:

• Ernie is a handsome cattle rancher and acequia mayordomo who simmers with anger over the impacts of the fire and the negligence of the Forest Service.
• Martin, a gentle man, works to rebuild his grandparents’ house and fence his cows (whom he names), waiting for FEMA reimbursements while he goes into debt.
• Dennis is the Santa Fe National Forest Fire Ecologist who takes responsibility for the fire but is adamant that fire will always be part of the landscape and needs to be managed
• Angie is the District Ranger at Canjilon and works with the people of Rio Arriba County to integrate thinning and prescribed fire into the community after the fire
• Antonia is an Albuquerque lawyer who comes back to her el norte home to help everyone file their claims with FEMA for compensation
• Moises is a Rio Arriba County Commissioner who opposes the proposed thinning and prescribed burning on the land near his home in Canjilon
• Ike is the longtime activist who founded La Raza Unida Party in Rio Arriba County and the small logging company La Companía de Ocho.

These people take us through story as the fire erupts and spreads to the communities. The film’s footage of the blaze is unsettling, as acres and acres of trees are scorched and homes burned to the ground. The Forest Service is omnipresent, holding uncomfortable meetings with community members. At one of those on the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District the district ranger says, “We take full responsibility” for the fires and when Dennis apologizes, he’s asked why anyone should trust the Forest Service. He answers, “Because the alternatives aren’t very good.” At a meeting on my district, the Camino Real, the district ranger is confronted by a hostile audience, one of whom says, “We don’t want fire and we don’t agree with our government.” The ranger tells her the Forest Service is obligated to do what is needed to protect her community.

Three months after the fire, 90 percent contained, Antonia Roybal Mack enters the narrative, evacuating her grandmother’s house for fear of flooding as the rains have arrived and the floods caused by the burn scar begin. The film shows water rising to the doorstep of homes, roads washed away, and acequias filled with mud and debris. Antonia becomes a stabilizing figure in the film with her lawyerly competence and understanding of the emotions of those who have lost so much. The US Senate appropriates the FEMA budget to support the fire victims. Antonia: “It’s my job to represent people against FEMA. There is an enormous amount of distrust of the federal government.”

Five months after the fire started it’s 100 percent contained. Dennis is profiled as a lifelong fire fighter who works his way up into fuels and fire ecology to dismantle the Smokey Bear mythology that all forest fires need to be extinguished. One hundred years of this policy is what has left the forests overgrown, diseased, and prone to massive fires. Dennis is one of my favorite figures in the film: obviously very sincere in his acceptance of responsibility but also a little pugnacious in his determination to pursue policy that he believes is essential to forest management. His language is blunt and his hurt is heavy.

Ernie’s hurt is also a large component of the film. The shots of him at his acequia meeting—held outside—are painful as he fields questions from his fellow parciantes trying to parse FEMA regulations. They ask about what will happen when the acequias flood next year and the year after that during the monsoons. Will FEMA be back to help them then? It’s a revealing moment when a FEMA representative shows up to try to explain how to log on to the portal to begin the process and Bachelder films only his back. It’s also telling that there is only one parciante younger than Ernie (who looks to be in his thirties or early forties) who takes over Ernie’s mayordomo position.

One year after the fire Martin is living in a FEMA trailer with a generator his only source of heat, at $30 a night for gas. He’s selling wood to made a little money while waiting for FEMA to reimburse him for all the money he’s spent fixing the house and his road. He ends up having to sell his cows as he can’t afford to borrow any more. Although his life is more difficult than Ernie’s, he seems less angry, maybe just more resigned, in the quotidian grind of the life he’s been dealt.

Moises and Ike appear in the film in juxtaposition. While their values aligned for many years, they were estranged by the time the film was made. They both speak about the loss of the land grants to unscrupulous speculators like attorney Thomas Catron and eventually the government, who Ike says his grandfather referred to as “Los Americanos.” They both were in the front lines in the 1960s and 70s Chicano movement. Moises participated in the raid by Reies Lopez Tijerina on the Rio Arriba County Courthouse and was, with Ike, an active member of La Raza Unida that brought down Emilio Naranjo, the despotic ruler of Rio Arriba County. Bachelder includes footage of Ike from the Danny Lyon film “Little Boy” in La Raza protests and at home in Servilleta Plaza with his young son, Antonio. Ike was the founder of La Companía de Ocho, a small logging company, and fought many battles with the Forest Service, that favored corporate logging, and urban environmentalists, who were opposed to any logging on public lands. Sam Hitt, founder of Forest Guardians, who went head-to-head with Ike throughout the 1990s, is filmed opposing a 2024 Santa Fe Watershed restoration project in a meeting where Dennis has this to say: “We know what works but none of that shit matters without public buy in.”

Ike and Moises’s assessments of the fire and its aftermath reveal their divergent paths, however. Moises thinks the thinning project near Canjion cut too many trees and he doesn’t want to see any prescribed burning. Angie, the district ranger, whose lovely green eyes are captured by the camera’s closeups, hopes to change his mind. She’s trying to implement new policies, like the leñero mayordomo projects from the east side of the Carson that have successfully recruited community people as sawyers to cut their own small allotments in restoration projects. But Moises pushes the Rio Arriba County Commission to block her efforts. He bluntly says, “I think all them people who started these fires should be accused of crimes.” Filmed at home, Angie agonizes over what happened during the fire but stays true to the science she knows is needed to protect the forests in the future. “Were we broken before, yeah, we were broken before, but perhaps in this new world we’re in there will be a remaking.”

It takes me a minute to realize it’s my voice asking Ike a question back in the 1990s after the environmentalists’ lawsuits shut down his logging company: “Do you still think the Forest Service is primarily responsible for mismanagement of the forests in northern New Mexico.” He answers in the affirmative. But the film then fast forwards to an interview just before he died in 2024 where he provides a measured analysis of the relationship between the communities and the Forest Service today: the land grants are not going to be given back to the people and the Forest Service has the ability to manage the forests with the communities foremost in mind.

The movie ends three years after the fire, but I won’t write a wrap-up and spoil it for those who haven’t seen the film. What I can say is that Bachelder has beautifully crafted it to reflect the emotional and moral complexity of this amazing film. I haven’t used the term beautiful before, but that word describes both the aesthetics of the film—the way Bachelder zooms in with facial close-ups to emphasize emotionally charged moments—and the grace with which every opinion, argument, and complaint is granted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the oil blockade cripples Cuba’s farms and food supply, the island is becoming a stark preview of what happens when fossil-fuel dependent agriculture collides with geopolitical and climate instability, and a powerful illustration of why an agroecological transition is becoming increasingly necessary.

In recent months, scenes from Cuba have become increasingly stark as access to energy, food, and water has become a daily struggle for most. The immediate trigger is fuel scarcity resulting from the de facto oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration since January 2026. But conditions on the island have been deteriorating for years, exacerbated by the decades-long blockade by the United States coupled with domestic structural challenges. Cuba, like most countries, depends heavily on imported oil to power its electricity grid, transport goods, and sustain its food system.

For ordinary Cubans, the consequences are dire. The state rationing system, once a pillar of food security, now covers only a small fraction of household needs. Market alternatives exist, but inflation has pushed them beyond the reach of many households. The average monthly wage is roughly US$20; a carton of eggs can cost half that. Food insecurity and malnutrition are no longer isolated concerns. They are becoming widespread.

Domestic food production has fallen for years. Staples such as rice, maize, and beans remain well below national demand. Farmers face acute shortages of diesel, fertilizer, animal feed, and spare parts. The consequences ripple across the food chain: land goes unploughed, irrigation systems sit idle, harvests are delayed, transport networks seize up, and food spoils before reaching consumers.

Today’s crisis is not a temporary disruption. It is part of a structural polycrisis in which energy scarcity, economic contraction, climate instability, and demographic decline reinforce one another. Cuba’s food system is not simply experiencing a bad moment. It is confronting the limits of fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture in an era of permanent instability.

Many proposed solutions—import more food, revive export-oriented industrial agriculture, restore fuel flows—remain trapped within the same agricultural paradigm that exposes it to crisis. They offer relief, but not resilience.

But Cuba’s story is not only one of crisis. It is also one of adaptation and resilience—and of a path not fully taken.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Cuba abruptly lost access to fuel, fertilizers, and imported food. In response, the country embarked on an ambitious agroecological transformation.

Land was redistributed to cooperatives and family farmers who now manage more than 70 percent of agricultural land. Urban gardens spread through cities. Farmer-to-farmer networks trained more than 200,000 farming families in agroecological methods.

For a time, Cuba became a global symbol of what post-fossil-fuel agriculture might look like.

However, the transition remained incomplete.

As economic conditions improved intermittently, policymakers often shifted back toward conventional industrial agriculture. Agroecology was never fully institutionalized as the foundation of the food system. Instead, it was treated as an emergency substitute: embraced in crisis, sidelined in recovery.

That cyclical approach left Cuba with an unfinished transformation—and a food system still deeply vulnerable to external shocks.

Today, the constraints facing all types of farmers are immense. Beyond fuel shortages, they lack tools, seeds, equipment, refrigeration, processing facilities, and reliable transportation. Credit is scarce. Decades of outmigration have weakened the social fabric of rural areas. Bureaucratic hurdles remain high, and a centralized economy, coupled with state monopolies, leads to inefficiencies and stifles innovation. An estimated 40 percent of food produced in Cuba is lost before reaching consumers due to failures in harvesting, storage, transport, and processing.

And yet the productive potential remains considerable.

Critics often dismiss agroecology as idealistic or insufficiently productive. Yet the evidence increasingly points the other way. Global governance institutions now recognize agroecology as a comprehensive solution that goes beyond organic farming to redesign food systems around biodiversity, local knowledge, human health, and democratic governance, aiming to build resilience, equity, and local control rather than simply growing food differently.

Diversified agroecological farms in Cuba can produce around 7 tons of nutritious food per hectare annually—enough to meet the caloric and protein needs of roughly eight people. Scaling such systems across 200,000 family farms—covering just over two million hectares of the more than six million hectares of arable land—could enable Cuba to meet its national food requirements, with potential surpluses for tourism and export.

Recent reforms suggest renewed support for local agroecological food systems. Cuba’s 2022 Food Sovereignty Law and 2025 Agroecology Decree provide a framework for decentralizing food governance and supporting municipal food planning. But implementation remains uneven. After decades of centralized administration, many local governments lack the capacity and institutional culture needed to manage participatory, territorial food systems.

In June 2026, the government approved a package of 176 economic measures that open much of the economy to private actors. In July, it followed with a new Agricultural and Forestry Land Law that allows land rights to be inherited and transferred and opens idle state land to private businesses and foreign investors. Other new regulations give cooperatives the right to import inputs, export directly, set their own prices, form second-tier cooperatives, and partner with foreign investors. Decree-Law 161/2026 ends mandatory state intermediaries, lets supply and demand set prices, and creates an Agricultural Bank to finance the sector.

For cooperatives and family farmers, these changes could bring autonomy, fairer prices, access to credit, and secure land tenure. Second-tier cooperatives could pool resources for shared infrastructure, credit, and markets. But none of these measures explicitly prioritize agroecology. Without safeguards, they could concentrate land and capital in the hands of larger commercial players and pull production toward export and tourism markets instead of local food needs.

If agroecology is to move beyond rhetoric, it will require sustained investment in seed systems, irrigation systems, decentralized biofertilizer production, small- and medium-scale storage and processing facilities, transportation infrastructure, and renewable energy (solar, biodigesters, and wind turbines).

It will also require supporting the social infrastructure of transformation—farmer training, cooperative management, peer-learning networks, participatory governance, and local enterprises. And a rebalancing of roles across public institutions, new non-state actors, and civil society—each of which has a part to play in rebuilding a more resilient food system.

Funding that transition will require more than state spending or donor aid. Cuba must diversify its financing ecosystem – drawing on diaspora investment, impact capital, justice-oriented funds, climate finance, and local development banking alongside public and multilateral funds. But attracting that investment will require clearer rules, less bureaucracy, and more predictable economic governance. And of course, an end to the debilitating web of unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US for more than 60 years.

Done well, such investment could create rural jobs, reduce food waste, strengthen local economies, lower import dependence, and improve climate resilience—all while keeping wealth circulating within communities rather than flowing outward.

The lesson is clear. In a world of tightening constraints, resilience will not come from securing more oil and fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides. It will come from needing less of it.

For Cuba, that means embracing a transition already underway within its own agricultural traditions: toward agroecology, toward local production, and ultimately toward food sovereignty grounded in the strength of local ecosystems and communities.

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Photo courtesy of Leidy Casimiro

The post Op-Ed | Blockade Against Cuba Exposes the Fragility of the Global Food System appeared first on Food Tank.

Concept Note and Programme 

Ahead of CFS 54 Plenary Session, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) for relations with the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is pleased to invite you to the closing of the  CSIPM Forum 2026. 

• Time and date: 18 October, 2026 at 16.00 CEST 
• Where: Università Roma Tre. Aula Magna, Dipartimento di Architettura. (Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4, 00155, Roma)
• Modality: In-person 
• RSVP at cso4cfs@gmail.com

Why it is relevant 

Wars, occupations, violence, exploitation, the concentration of corporate power and climate disasters are tearing food systems apart. This is when multilateral institutions are needed most: they should be where governments cooperate, where rules are upheld and where power is held accountable guided by the principles of the United Nations, human rights and the 2030 Agenda.

Multilateralism rests on a principle: States are the duty-bearers for human rights, and their obligations apply to all. Today those obligations are being bypassed. Rules are applied selectively and double standards go unchallenged, while corporate power, including that of big tech, gains influence over public decisions.

What to expect

The session will bring governments, UN institutions and CSIPM organisations into dialogue on these questions. The first panel looks at the state of multilateral food governance, and the second at what the CFS should take up next. The session closes with the CSIPM’s key messages to the CFS 54 Plenary.

Consult the programme 

The post Human Rights, Not Rule of Might: Centring Grassroots Voices in Food Governance – CSIPM Forum 2026 Public Session appeared first on CSIPM.

 

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 11 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-084 The Sakhalin Papers LXXIV: The Field Washington Targeted — Shell, Gazprom and the Sanctions That Threatened Their LNG Expansion On 18 June 2015, Ben van Beurden and Alexey Miller signed agreements intended to transform Shell’s relationship with Gazprom into a much broader strategic partnership. Central to their ambitions was a third LNG production train at Sakhalin II, supplied with additional gas from the Russian-controlled Sakhalin III project. Seven weeks later, on 7 August, the United States imposed export restrictions specifically targeting the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field — one of the most important potential sources of that additional gas. The timing exposed an extraordinary contradiction: while Shell and Gazprom were seeking to deepen their commercial relationship, Washington was restricting access to the technology needed to develop resources central to their expansion plans.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-084

Collection: The Sakhalin Papers

Principal authenticated records: Gazprom corporate announcements of 18 June 2015 concerning strategic cooperation, Sakhalin II expansion and European gas transmission infrastructure; US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, final rule published 7 August 2015, Federal Register document 2015-19274, 80 FR 47402; Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2014, filed with the SEC on 12 March 2015.

Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, 18–19 June and 7–10 August 2015; Bloomberg, 7 August 2015; New Europe, 7 August 2015; contemporaneous reports preserved in the Donovan Shell archive.

Judicial context: Court of Justice of the European Union, PJSC Rosneft Oil Company v HM Treasury, Case C-72/15, judgment of 28 March 2017. The judgment concerns the validity and interpretation of EU sanctions measures, not Shell’s conduct or the separate US export-control designation examined here.

Evidence standard: Official corporate announcements establish what the companies signed and publicly proposed. The US Federal Register establishes the legal effect of the August restrictions. Reported proposals for asset exchanges are distinguished from completed transactions. Predictions concerning commercial consequences are attributed to contemporary analysts. No sanctions violation or unlawful activity by Shell is alleged or established.

Introduction: Seven weeks between ambition and obstruction

The previous instalment, The Shell Leaks Files — 10 October 2026, examined the extraordinary position in which Shell found itself during 2014.

Western sanctions had already forced the company to suspend certain Russian shale-exploration activities.

Yet Shell continued to discuss expanding Sakhalin II with Gazprom.

The existing LNG plant remained operational.

Shell retained its minority interest.

And the proposed third production train remained a potentially attractive investment.

By June 2015, Shell and Gazprom were prepared to formalise their ambitions.

The agreements signed at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum went considerably beyond maintaining an established LNG project.

They contemplated wider cooperation across the gas industry.

They raised the possibility of exchanging assets.

They advanced preparations for an additional Sakhalin LNG train.

And, through a separate memorandum signed the same day, Shell became involved in plans for substantial new Russian gas-export infrastructure to Europe.

The strategic significance was unmistakable.

Shell was positioning itself as an increasingly important international partner of Russia’s state-controlled gas company.

But the expansion depended upon resources that Shell did not control.

Those resources lay within Sakhalin III.

And in August 2015, Washington intervened.

The US government did not merely impose another general restriction on Russian companies.

It placed a specific offshore oil and gas field on its Entity List.

The field was Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, also known as South Kirinsky.

The decision had direct implications for the ambitions announced in June.

The primary documents allow us to reconstruct how this confrontation developed.

1. The central corporate record: 18 June 2015

On 18 June 2015, Gazprom issued an official announcement entitled:

“Gazprom and Shell sign several strategic documents.”

The announcement identifies Alexey Miller, chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee, and Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, as the signatories.

The first document was an Agreement of Strategic Cooperation.

According to Gazprom, it provided for developing the partnership across the gas industry, from exploration and production through processing and marketing.

It also contemplated a possible exchange of assets.

Gazprom described the agreement as creating opportunities to expand the companies’ joint project portfolio.

The second document concerned Sakhalin II.

Miller and van Beurden signed a memorandum addressing implementation of the proposed third LNG production train.

Gazprom presented this as an important advance towards the project’s investment phase.

But the announcement also made clear that preparations for a final investment decision remained necessary.

The memorandum established principles for the companies’ cooperation and addressed the design schedule and further project-development steps.

It did not announce that construction had already been irrevocably authorised.

This distinction matters because contemporary headlines sometimes described the companies as having agreed to build the third train.

The authenticated record is more precise.

They had advanced the project and expressed a commitment to pursuing it.

The final investment decision still lay ahead.

Primary source: Gazprom — Gazprom and Shell sign several strategic documents, 18 June 2015

2. A decisive provision: Gazprom would provide Sakhalin III gas

The June announcement contains a particularly important provision.

Gazprom stated that the additional gas needed to operate the third LNG train at full capacity would come from Sakhalin III.

This was not an incidental detail.

It linked two separate projects with different ownership and commercial arrangements.

Sakhalin II was operated by Sakhalin Energy Investment Company.

Its shareholders were:

• Gazprom: 50 per cent plus one share.
• Shell: 27.5 per cent minus one share.
• Mitsui: 12.5 per cent.
• Mitsubishi: 10 per cent.

Sakhalin III, by contrast, included offshore resources held under licences controlled by Gazprom.

Shell did not automatically possess an ownership interest in those resources merely because it was a shareholder in Sakhalin II.

Consequently, the proposed expansion depended upon arrangements between the two projects.

Gazprom would have to make additional gas available.

Commercial terms would have to be agreed.

Infrastructure and processing arrangements would have to accommodate the increased supply.

And the additional resources would have to be developed.

The June memorandum identified Sakhalin III as the intended source.

It did not, however, publicly demonstrate that every resource-allocation, financing or production-development question had been resolved.

That distinction would become particularly important two months later. Gazprom

3. Why South Kirinsky mattered

The Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field lay in the Sea of Okhotsk, offshore Sakhalin Island.

It formed part of Gazprom’s Sakhalin III development programme.

Gazprom’s wider Sakhalin III interests included the Kirinsky block, containing several gas and condensate fields.

The neighbouring Kirinskoye field had already demonstrated the technical complexity of offshore development in the region.

In October 2013, Gazprom announced the successful testing of Russia’s first subsea production facility at Kirinskoye.

The development involved offshore wells, subsea infrastructure and an onshore processing complex.

The equipment had to operate in difficult marine conditions, including periods of extensive sea ice.

Gazprom subsequently identified Yuzhno-Kirinskoye and other nearby fields as potential contributors to the wider production system.

These were not resources that could be brought into production simply by signing a memorandum.

They required significant investment and specialised technology.

Gazprom’s own project description confirms the importance of advanced subsea systems to the Sakhalin III programme. Gazprom

The scale of Yuzhno-Kirinskoye was substantial.

Contemporary Bloomberg reporting cited estimated gas resources of approximately 637 billion cubic metres, together with approximately 97 million tonnes of oil and condensate.

Reuters subsequently reported broadly comparable figures.

Those were reported estimates, not a guarantee that every identified resource could be produced economically or within the original development timetable.

Nevertheless, the potential was considerable.

Gas from Sakhalin III could support regional energy infrastructure and, potentially, expansion of LNG exports through Sakhalin II. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

That made the field strategically important to Gazprom.

It also made the field relevant to Shell’s LNG ambitions.

4. Reuters identifies the larger strategic relationship

The day after the June signing ceremony, Reuters published an important interview with Alexey Miller.

Reported by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Denis Pinchuk on 19 June 2015, the interview presented the Shell relationship as something much more ambitious than a single LNG project.

Miller discussed the prospect of a global strategic alliance.

Possible asset exchanges featured prominently.

He also linked the relationship to Shell’s proposed acquisition of BG Group.

That transaction, announced earlier in April 2015, would substantially increase Shell’s global LNG portfolio if completed.

Miller regarded Shell’s expansion as creating additional opportunities for cooperation.

Reuters also reported that Gazprom expected the companies’ relationship to include Sakhalin LNG expansion and potentially wider international activities.

The report is valuable because it records Miller explaining the strategic purpose behind the official agreements.

Gazprom was seeking more than technical assistance at Sakhalin.

It wanted an international partner with substantial experience in production, LNG marketing and access to global markets.

Shell offered precisely those capabilities.

For Shell, the relationship offered access to Russian gas resources and the possibility of developing further projects.

The prospective exchange of assets was especially significant.

But the evidence must not be overstated.

The June agreement provided for possible asset exchanges. It did not establish that a particular exchange had been completed.

Reuters treated the wider alliance as a developing commercial strategy rather than a finished transaction. Business Standard

Contemporaneous source: Reuters — Gazprom building global alliance with expanded Shell, 19 June 2015

5. Another June agreement: the European dimension

Something else happened on 18 June 2015.

During the same St Petersburg forum, Gazprom, Shell, E.ON and OMV signed a separate Memorandum of Intent concerning additional gas-transmission infrastructure across the Baltic Sea.

The proposal envisaged two further offshore pipeline strings providing direct supplies of Russian gas to European consumers.

The planned additional capacity was approximately 55 billion cubic metres annually.

The project would subsequently become known as Nord Stream 2.

Gazprom’s official announcement identifies van Beurden as one of the signatories.

It also records Shell’s commercial justification for supporting new infrastructure.

Van Beurden argued that natural gas would remain important to Europe’s energy mix and that declining European production created a need for new supply arrangements. Gazprom

This is a significant part of the documentary chronology.

The Sakhalin partnership was no longer the only major initiative under discussion.

Shell and Gazprom were pursuing opportunities at opposite ends of Russia.

Sakhalin offered LNG exports towards Asian markets.

Additional Baltic pipelines offered the prospect of transporting more Russian gas directly to Western Europe.

These were separate projects.

They involved different infrastructure, commercial arrangements and regulatory questions.

But they formed part of the wider strategic relationship described by Miller.

The political context was unavoidable.

Russia had annexed Crimea in 2014.

Western sanctions were already in force.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine continued.

Yet major Western energy companies were still entering agreements for possible new Russian energy infrastructure.

The companies presented their decisions in commercial terms.

The Russian government had obvious reasons to welcome continued Western participation.

The June documents establish the corporate decisions.

They do not establish that Shell endorsed Russian government policy.

6. July 2015: Shell explores an interest in Sakhalin III

The strategic cooperation agreement raised an obvious question.

What assets might Shell and Gazprom exchange?

One possibility discussed in contemporary reporting involved Shell obtaining an interest in Sakhalin III.

This would potentially give Shell greater involvement in the resources intended to support Sakhalin II expansion.

That possibility was commercially logical.

Shell already possessed LNG expertise and a stake in the existing liquefaction plant.

Gazprom controlled additional offshore gas resources.

An arrangement linking the two could offer advantages to both companies.

Bloomberg reported in early August that van Beurden had recently discussed possible Shell participation in Yuzhno-Kirinskoye through an asset exchange.

The report did not establish that Shell had already acquired an interest.

Indeed, the uncertainty surrounding the proposed exchange was central to the story.

The companies were still considering how the wider strategic agreement might be implemented. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

A separate report published by New Europe on 7 August 2015, preserved in the Donovan archive, used more definite language about a proposed exchange involving Sakhalin III.

However, the formal corporate documents examined for this instalment do not establish that a completed transfer of ownership had occurred.

The safer documentary conclusion is that Shell and Gazprom were exploring possible asset arrangements, including Shell participation in Sakhalin III.

That distinction between negotiations and completed transactions must be preserved.

Contemporaneous archive source: New Europe reporting preserved on 7 August 2015

Then came the American decision.

7. Washington targets a specific offshore field

On 7 August 2015, the United States Department of Commerce published a final rule entitled:

“Russian Sanctions: Addition to the Entity List To Prevent Violations of Russian Industry Sector Sanctions.”

The issuing agency was the Bureau of Industry and Security, commonly known as BIS.

The official reference is:

Federal Register document 2015-19274.

80 FR 47402.

Effective date: 7 August 2015.

The rule added one specified Russian oil and gas field to the Entity List:

Yuzhno-Kirinskoye Field, in the Sea of Okhotsk.

This is the principal authenticated government document for the present instalment.

It establishes precisely what Washington did.

The US government concluded that exports, re-exports or transfers to the field of items subject to the Export Administration Regulations presented an unacceptable risk of supporting activities covered by Russian energy-sector restrictions.

The government therefore imposed a specific licensing requirement.

The decision was not simply an announcement of political disapproval.

It was a legally operative export-control measure.

Primary legal record: US Federal Register — Yuzhno-Kirinskoye Entity List designation, 7 August 2015

8. The unusual feature: a field rather than a company

The Entity List normally brings to mind named companies, organisations, individuals or other identifiable parties.

The August 2015 decision was unusual because the designated entry identified a particular oil and gas field.

The location was the subject of the control.

This mattered because the restrictions were directed at activities associated with developing that resource.

It was not necessary for Washington to prohibit all transactions involving Gazprom.

Nor was it necessary to shut down Sakhalin II.

The US authorities could instead restrict access to items subject to American export controls destined for a particular field.

The approach was targeted.

The government identified a location presenting a risk of supporting restricted Russian energy-development activities.

By imposing the licensing requirement at field level, it sought to prevent such items being supplied to that location without permission.

Contemporary legal analysis described the measure as unusually far-reaching.

International law firms explained that the designation would significantly complicate access to relevant technology.

The restriction applied not merely to equipment manufactured in the United States but to all items subject to the EAR, a category that can include certain foreign-made items and technology falling within US export-control jurisdiction.

The exact application depended upon the item and transaction.

It was not a worldwide prohibition on every product, person or commercial activity associated with Sakhalin III. Dechert

That distinction is important.

9. What the American rule actually prohibited

The Federal Register text is unusually explicit.

Exports, re-exports and in-country transfers of items subject to the EAR to the designated field required a BIS licence.

The rule established a presumption of denial for licence applications.

It also stated that no licence exceptions were available for the field.

This created a formidable obstacle for companies seeking to supply relevant controlled items.

However, the requirement was not legally identical to an absolute prohibition without any possibility of authorisation.

Licence applications could be made.

The government had specified that such applications would normally be denied.

That difference should be retained in any accurate account.

Nor did the rule directly prohibit all sales of LNG produced at the existing Sakhalin II plant.

It did not confiscate Shell’s shareholding in Sakhalin Energy.

It did not establish that Shell had committed an offence.

And it did not automatically terminate the June strategic cooperation agreement.

It restricted specified exports, re-exports and transfers connected with the designated field.

The potential consequences were nevertheless substantial.

Offshore gas development depends upon complex equipment and technology.

If essential equipment could not lawfully be supplied, development schedules and investment assumptions could be affected.

The US government had therefore created a legal obstacle at precisely the point where Gazprom and Shell were exploring ways to develop additional resources for their LNG ambitions. Federal Register

10. Why Washington cited oil reserves

One of the most revealing aspects of the August designation is the justification.

Yuzhno-Kirinskoye was widely discussed in commercial reporting as a gas and condensate field.

The proposed Sakhalin II expansion concerned LNG.

Yet the US government specifically referred to the field’s reported substantial oil reserves.

The distinction was legally important.

The relevant Russian energy-sector restrictions were particularly concerned with specified oil-related activities, including deepwater projects with the potential to produce oil.

The Federal Register explained that the field was being designated because of the reported oil reserves.

The government considered that providing items subject to the EAR could support restricted deepwater exploration or production activities.

The text referred to Russian deepwater locations exceeding 500 feet.

That is approximately 152 metres.

Yuzhno-Kirinskoye was an offshore development in which water depths and advanced subsea technology were relevant.

The government therefore treated the potential for oil production as sufficient to justify the broader licensing requirement at that location.

This is a significant point.

The commercial ambition concerned gas supplies for LNG.

The US export-control decision relied upon the field’s potential to support restricted oil-development activity.

The result affected access to items needed for development of a field that Gazprom regarded as important for gas production.

A gas-centred commercial project had encountered an export-control restriction justified partly by the presence of oil. Federal Register

That was the sanctions paradox.

11. Reuters: the Shell–Gazprom alliance could be in jeopardy

On 10 August 2015, Reuters published an important report by Denis Pinchuk and Katya Golubkova.

Its central conclusion was that the new US restrictions could threaten Shell’s developing strategic alliance with Gazprom.

The report examined the connection between Yuzhno-Kirinskoye and Sakhalin II expansion.

It also discussed Shell’s possible interest in acquiring an interest in Sakhalin III through an asset exchange.

Reuters quoted Alexander Kornilov, an energy analyst at Alfa Bank in Moscow.

Kornilov regarded the restrictions as potentially serious for Gazprom’s offshore development and LNG plans.

He argued that developing the field without international partners and technology would be extremely difficult.

This was an analyst’s assessment.

It was not an official finding that the project had become permanently impossible.

Nor did it establish that Shell had decided to withdraw.

Nevertheless, the assessment identified the practical commercial problem.

The June agreements contemplated further cooperation involving resources and technology.

The August restrictions made access to some of that technology substantially more difficult.

A development project could remain technically and commercially desirable while becoming harder to implement legally.

Reuters’ report is preserved in the Donovan archive.

Contemporaneous source: Reuters — US sanctions put Gazprom–Shell alliance plans in jeopardy, 10 August 2015

12. Shell responds: sanctions compliance, but no retreat

The contemporary record also preserves Shell’s response.

Bloomberg reported on 7 August 2015 that Shell had issued an emailed statement concerning the new restrictions.

Shell said it was engaging with the relevant authorities and taking steps to comply with applicable sanctions.

The company also reaffirmed its commitment to operating in Russia and maintaining its relationships with Russian partners.

Reuters subsequently reported the same general position.

This is important evidence.

Shell was not publicly rejecting the American restrictions.

It was not declaring that it would supply prohibited technology regardless of the law.

It acknowledged the need to comply.

But neither was it announcing an abandonment of Russia.

The company’s position remained consistent with its approach during 2014.

Maintain established lawful operations.

Assess the implications of new restrictions.

Preserve commercial relationships where possible.

Continue exploring permissible opportunities.

Shell’s statements therefore support a narrower conclusion than either of two competing interpretations.

They do not demonstrate defiance of sanctions.

They also do not demonstrate a decision to sever relations with Gazprom.

They demonstrate an intention to preserve the partnership while responding to the restrictions. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Contemporaneous archive source: Bloomberg — US puts Russian gas field off limits as sanctions tighten, 7 August 2015

13. The Russian government objects

Reuters also reported the reaction from Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticised the American decision.

He argued that additional sanctions damaged relations between Russia and the United States.

Gazprom declined to comment on the designation.

The diplomatic response was predictable.

Russia regarded Western sanctions as politically motivated restrictions on its economic development.

The United States presented its measures as part of its response to Russian actions in Ukraine.

The two governments disagreed fundamentally about the justification for the restrictions.

But the legal consequences did not depend upon resolving that political dispute.

Companies dealing with items subject to US export controls had to comply with the applicable US rules.

The commercial implications extended well beyond American companies.

International energy projects involve equipment, software, services and technology from multiple jurisdictions.

A European company could encounter US export-control requirements where the relevant items or transactions fell within American jurisdiction.

The designation therefore had potential consequences for companies operating far beyond the United States. Yahoo

That included any prospective partner seeking to support development at Yuzhno-Kirinskoye using covered items.

14. The distinction between Sakhalin II and Sakhalin III

This is where the documentary record requires particular precision.

Sakhalin II and Sakhalin III were not interchangeable.

Sakhalin II was an established producing operation with a functioning LNG plant.

Its controlling shareholder was Gazprom.

Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi retained minority interests.

Sakhalin III was a separate development programme involving Gazprom-controlled offshore resources.

The third Sakhalin II LNG train was intended to receive additional gas from Sakhalin III.

The August 2015 designation targeted Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, a field within Sakhalin III.

It did not designate the entire Sakhalin II LNG complex.

It did not automatically prohibit existing Sakhalin II LNG exports.

Nor did it establish that every component of the proposed third train was subject to the same licensing requirements.

The significance lay in the potential dependency.

If additional LNG capacity required gas from Sakhalin III, and developing important Sakhalin III resources required technology now subject to restrictive licensing, the expansion could become more difficult.

That is the causal connection supported by the evidence.

It is a connection between proposed gas supplies, field development and export controls.

It should not be expanded into an unsupported claim that the United States had directly banned Sakhalin II’s third LNG train.

The available government record does not establish that.

15. The unresolved question of an asset swap

The June strategic agreement contemplated possible asset exchanges between Gazprom and Shell.

Reuters and other contemporary publications reported that an interest in Sakhalin III could form part of such arrangements.

That possibility had considerable commercial importance.

Shell could potentially obtain upstream exposure to additional gas resources.

Gazprom might acquire an interest in other Shell assets.

Such arrangements could strengthen the companies’ wider relationship.

But the August designation complicated the prospects.

Any transaction would have to be assessed against applicable sanctions and export-control rules.

The commercial value of an asset could also be affected if development required technology that was difficult to obtain.

It would therefore be reasonable to expect the designation to influence negotiations.

But the evidence does not establish the precise effect upon any confidential discussions.

Nor does it establish that Shell had already agreed a definitive asset exchange involving Yuzhno-Kirinskoye before the designation.

That is an important evidential limitation.

The public record supports the existence of discussions and proposals.

It does not permit us to reconstruct every negotiating position or commercial consequence.

16. The judicial context: sanctions were legally contested

The European sanctions framework was also the subject of litigation.

The most important subsequent judicial record is the Court of Justice of the European Union’s judgment of 28 March 2017 in:

PJSC Rosneft Oil Company v HM Treasury and Others, Case C-72/15.

The proceedings arose from a reference by the High Court of Justice in England and Wales.

The case concerned the validity and interpretation of EU restrictive measures introduced following Russia’s actions destabilising Ukraine.

The Court examined issues involving capital-market restrictions, financial assistance and specified oil-sector activities.

It upheld the contested EU measures against the relevant challenges.

The judgment illustrates the legal significance of precisely defining the scope of sanctions.

It also confirms that restrictions affecting Russian energy development were capable of detailed judicial examination. Publications Office of the EU

But the limits of the judgment are equally important.

Shell was not the defendant.

The proceedings did not concern the June 2015 Shell–Gazprom agreements.

The Court did not determine whether Shell’s proposed Sakhalin expansion was lawful.

And the judgment did not adjudicate the separate US Commerce Department designation of Yuzhno-Kirinskoye.

The Rosneft case is included as legal context.

It must not be presented as a judicial finding against Shell.

Judicial source: Court of Justice of the European Union — Rosneft v HM Treasury, Case C-72/15

17. The Donovan archive preserves the contemporary warnings

One of the benefits of the independent Shell archive is that it preserves the progression of reporting as events unfolded.

The relevant sequence includes:

18 June 2015: Reuters reported the Shell–Gazprom agreement concerning Sakhalin II expansion.

19 June 2015: Reuters reported Miller’s ambition to build a global strategic partnership with Shell.

7 August 2015: New Europe reported discussions about exchanging assets for an interest in Sakhalin III.

7 August 2015: The US Commerce Department imposed the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye export-control restrictions.

8 August 2015: The Donovan archive reproduced Bloomberg reporting on the restrictions and their potential consequences.

10 August 2015: The archive preserved Reuters’ examination of the danger to the Gazprom–Shell alliance.

These records are useful because they capture the issue as it was understood at the time.

They do not benefit from hindsight.

They show optimism, uncertainty and growing concern developing over a remarkably short period.

Within seven weeks of the June agreement, the strategic relationship was already encountering a serious new obstacle.

The chronology is independently supported by Gazprom’s official announcements and the US Federal Register.

The archive preserves how the development was reported and interpreted contemporaneously. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Documentary Findings Established by authenticated corporate records

On 18 June 2015, Ben van Beurden and Alexey Miller signed an Agreement of Strategic Cooperation.

The agreement contemplated expanded cooperation across the gas industry, including possible asset exchanges.

The executives also signed a memorandum advancing the proposed third LNG production train at Sakhalin II.

Gazprom publicly identified Sakhalin III as the intended source of additional gas needed to operate the proposed train at full capacity.

The June memorandum addressed further development work and preparations for a final investment decision.

It did not establish that the final investment decision had already been taken.

On the same day, Shell and other European companies signed a separate memorandum concerning additional Russian gas-export infrastructure across the Baltic Sea.

These matters are established by Gazprom’s official announcements. Gazprom

Established by the US government

On 7 August 2015, the Bureau of Industry and Security added Yuzhno-Kirinskoye to the Entity List.

The measure required a licence for exports, re-exports and in-country transfers to the field of all items subject to the EAR.

Licence applications were subject to a presumption of denial.

No licence exceptions were available for the listed field.

The government cited reported substantial oil reserves and the risk of supporting restricted deepwater Russian oil and gas activities.

The rule did not constitute a comprehensive prohibition on all commercial activity involving Shell, Gazprom or Sakhalin II.

These conclusions are established by Federal Register document 2015-19274. Federal Register

Established by contemporaneous reporting

Reuters reported that the June agreements formed part of Gazprom’s ambition to create a wider strategic partnership with Shell.

Bloomberg reported Shell’s interest in possible participation in Yuzhno-Kirinskoye through an asset exchange.

Reuters reported that the August restrictions could jeopardise those plans.

Analysts warned that the restrictions could substantially complicate development of the field and expansion of Sakhalin II.

Shell publicly stated that it would comply with applicable sanctions while maintaining its commitment to working in Russia.

These reports establish what was publicly reported and stated at the time.

They do not establish the content of every private negotiation. Business Standard

Not established

The documents do not establish that Shell violated US export-control law.

They do not establish that Shell supplied prohibited technology to Yuzhno-Kirinskoye.

They do not establish that the June 2015 agreements were themselves unlawful.

They do not establish that Shell had completed an asset exchange involving Sakhalin III.

They do not establish that the proposed third LNG train had received final construction authorisation.

They do not establish that the US restrictions automatically prohibited the operation of Sakhalin II.

They do not establish that Gazprom could no longer develop Yuzhno-Kirinskoye under any circumstances.

They do not establish that Shell endorsed Russia’s annexation of Crimea or subsequent actions in Ukraine.

And they do not establish that the August restrictions brought the Shell–Gazprom strategic relationship to an end.

The surviving records support a more precise conclusion.

The restrictions created a substantial new legal and technological obstacle to the proposed development.

Commentary: Shell’s Russian Partnership Reaches Another Turning Point

The events of June to August 2015 reveal a recurring feature of Shell’s relationship with Russia.

Commercial ambition repeatedly encountered political reality.

The history stretches back considerably further than the 2014 sanctions crisis.

In 2006, Shell had been forced into difficult negotiations over the future of Sakhalin II.

The Russian authorities applied intense regulatory pressure during a period of controversy over the project’s environmental performance and rising costs.

Gazprom subsequently acquired majority control.

Shell was reduced to a minority shareholder.

That restructuring fundamentally altered the balance of power within the project.

Yet Shell remained.

The company continued supplying technical expertise.

Sakhalin II commenced LNG exports in 2009.

And by 2013–14, Shell was once again encouraging Gazprom to expand.

By June 2015, the relationship had developed into something more ambitious.

The two companies were contemplating broader cooperation, possible asset exchanges and further LNG investment.

Shell was also participating in discussions concerning additional Russian gas-export infrastructure to Europe.

For Gazprom, this was commercially attractive.

Shell possessed global LNG expertise, international market relationships and substantial technical capabilities.

For Shell, Gazprom controlled resources that could support expansion of an already valuable investment.

But this created an obvious vulnerability.

The more dependent Shell became upon developing Gazprom-controlled resources, the more exposed it became to political and legal restrictions affecting those resources.

The August 2015 designation demonstrated that vulnerability with unusual clarity.

Washington did not need to force Shell to sell its existing Sakhalin II interest.

It did not need to prohibit every LNG shipment.

Instead, the United States restricted access to covered items destined for a specific field that could supply the proposed expansion.

The distinction was legally narrow but commercially consequential.

An operating LNG plant and a future gas-development project were different things.

Shell could continue participating in one while encountering serious restrictions affecting the other.

This was the problem confronting the company.

Shell wanted more gas for Sakhalin II.

Gazprom controlled the prospective additional resources.

Developing those resources required sophisticated technology.

Washington was restricting access to that technology.

The resulting tension was not easily resolved by corporate diplomacy.

The June agreements could express commercial commitment.

They could establish project-development procedures.

They could identify possible future transactions.

But they could not remove the legal requirements imposed by the United States.

Nor could they eliminate the risks associated with investing in Russia during an expanding international confrontation.

The documentary evidence also reveals why simplistic interpretations of Shell’s conduct are inadequate.

The company was not necessarily ignoring sanctions merely because it continued negotiating with Gazprom.

Nor was it necessarily withdrawing from Russia merely because sanctions had forced it to suspend particular activities.

The corporate record shows an attempt to preserve existing value while pursuing additional opportunities where legally permissible.

That was a commercial strategy.

Whether it was sufficiently cautious, politically responsible or ultimately beneficial to shareholders is a separate matter.

The history of Sakhalin II provides reason to examine those questions closely.

Shell had already experienced one major confrontation in which Russian political and regulatory power reshaped its investment.

It was now confronting another situation in which government decisions, this time from Washington, threatened the commercial assumptions behind a proposed expansion.

The company remained determined to maintain its Russian relationships.

But the strategic environment was increasingly difficult.

And the consequences were beginning to extend beyond Sakhalin.

For while the United States was restricting access to technology at Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, Shell and Gazprom were advancing another major project much closer to Europe’s political and economic centre.

That project would ultimately become one of the most controversial energy-infrastructure developments in modern European history.

Its name was Nord Stream 2.

Principal Documentary Sources

1. Gazprom — 18 June 2015

Gazprom and Shell sign several strategic documents.

The central authenticated corporate record for the June strategic cooperation agreement, the Sakhalin II third-train memorandum and the stated intention to use additional Sakhalin III gas.

Read Gazprom’s official 18 June announcement

2. Gazprom — 18 June 2015

Gazprom, E.ON, Shell and OMV agree upon developing gas transmission capacities to deliver Russian gas to Europe.

Official record of the separate memorandum concerning additional Baltic Sea pipeline infrastructure.

Gazprom’s European gas-transmission announcement

3. US Department of Commerce — 7 August 2015

Russian Sanctions: Addition to the Entity List To Prevent Violations of Russian Industry Sector Sanctions.

Federal Register document 2015-19274, 80 FR 47402.

The definitive legal source for the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye designation, licensing requirements, presumption of denial and absence of licence exceptions.

Read the US Federal Register rule

4. Reuters — 18 June 2015

Gazprom, Shell agree to expand Sakhalin-2 project.

Contemporaneous account preserved in the Donovan archive.

Reuters report preserved on 18 June 2015

5. Reuters — 19 June 2015

Exclusive: Gazprom building global alliance with expanded Shell.

Interview with Alexey Miller examining the proposed strategic partnership, LNG expansion, asset exchanges and European gas infrastructure.

Reuters interview with Alexey Miller

6. New Europe — 7 August 2015

Contemporaneous reporting about a possible Shell–Gazprom asset exchange involving Sakhalin III, preserved in the Donovan archive.

Read the archived New Europe report

7. Bloomberg — 7 August 2015

US Puts Russian Gas Field Off Limits as Sanctions Tighten.

Contemporaneous reporting of the American decision, prospective implications for Shell and the company’s sanctions-compliance statement.

Bloomberg report preserved in the Shell archive

8. Reuters — 10 August 2015

US Sanctions Put Gazprom–Shell Alliance Plans in Jeopardy.

Detailed contemporary assessment of the effects upon Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, Sakhalin II expansion and proposed asset exchanges.

Reuters report preserved in the Donovan archive

9. Gazprom — Sakhalin III project record

Corporate information concerning the Kirinsky block, offshore production technology and the development of the wider Sakhalin gas production centre.

Gazprom: Sakhalin III

10. Royal Dutch Shell plc — Annual Report and Form 20-F 2014

Filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on 12 March 2015.

The authenticated Shell reporting record for its pre-existing Russian investments, operations and exposure to sanctions.

Shell’s 2014 Form 20-F filing record

11. Court of Justice of the European Union — 28 March 2017

PJSC Rosneft Oil Company v HM Treasury and Others, Case C-72/15.

Subsequent judicial examination of the EU sanctions framework. Included for legal context only.

Official EU publication of the Rosneft judgment

Archive disclaimer: This instalment distinguishes authenticated corporate announcements, US government regulations, subsequent judicial material, contemporaneous journalism and editorial interpretation.

Gazprom’s announcements establish what the company publicly reported and the scope of the documents signed. They do not disclose every private negotiation or establish that proposed transactions were completed.

The US Federal Register establishes the export-control restrictions applicable to Yuzhno-Kirinskoye from 7 August 2015. Those restrictions must not be confused with a comprehensive prohibition on all Shell operations in Russia.

No sanctions violation, unlawful technology transfer or other wrongdoing by Shell is alleged or established in the material examined.

Site-wide disclaimer also applies.

NEXT: The Baltic Agreement — Shell Joins Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 Project as Sanctions Tighten

On 4 September 2015, less than a month after the United States imposed the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye restrictions, Ben van Beurden joined Alexey Miller and executives of four other European energy companies at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

There they signed an agreement concerning construction of Nord Stream 2.

The project envisaged two additional offshore gas pipelines across the Baltic Sea, providing capacity for approximately 55 billion cubic metres of Russian gas annually.

The proposed ownership structure gave Gazprom 51 per cent of the project company.

Shell was expected to hold 10 per cent, alongside other European partners.

Gazprom’s official announcement identified van Beurden as a signatory and recorded Shell’s argument that Europe’s declining domestic gas production justified additional import infrastructure.

This was a major development.

While Washington was attempting to restrict future Russian energy-development capabilities, Shell and other Western companies were advancing plans for infrastructure designed to increase Russian gas supplies to Europe.

The September agreement was a proposal for investment and construction, not evidence that the pipelines had already been built or that the proposed shareholdings ultimately took effect. Gazprom

It nevertheless marked another important expansion of Shell’s relationship with Gazprom.

And the timing raises questions that deserve close examination.

Why were major European energy companies prepared to deepen their involvement in Russian gas infrastructure during an escalating sanctions crisis?

How did Shell justify the project commercially?

What were the implications for Ukraine’s role as a transit route for Russian gas?

And how did Gazprom’s growing relationships with Western energy companies fit into the wider geopolitical confrontation?

The next Shell Leaks File — SLF-2007-085 — will examine the 4 September 2015 Nord Stream 2 agreement, the participating companies, the commercial arguments advanced by Shell and Gazprom, and the strategic implications of constructing new Russian gas-export infrastructure while Western sanctions were intensifying.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 11 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 11, 2026 at 8:32 pm.
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SeaShare is working to transform donations from the fishing industry into meaningful nourishment for food banks across the United States. They are the only nonprofit dedicated solely to putting fresh seafood on the tables of families in need.

Through a nationwide network of fishers, processors, and distribution partners, donated seafood is helping to close the protein gap at food banks across the country. Donations span salmon and halibut to Alaska pollock, Pacific white shrimp, rockfish, catfish, and tilapia.

In all stages of life, from pregnancy to childhood to adulthood, there is strong evidence for health benefits of consuming seafood, reports the World Health Organization. Fish and other seafood can be excellent sources of protein, vitamins, and micronutrients. Seafood consumption during pregnancy is linked to improved birth outcomes, and adults who eat seafood regularly face lower risks of cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

A study in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics finds that the nutritional quality of donated food parcels in food banks is inconsistent. Food available at points of access like food banks often falls short of national dietary recommendations across developed countries, including the U.S.

“Protein can be expensive, and seafood is one of the more expensive forms of protein,” SeaShare’s Executive Director Hannah Lindoff tells Food Tank. “In general, protein makes up only about 2 percent of donations to food banks and is in huge demand.”

Since its founding 31 years ago, SeaShare has delivered more than 270 million seafood servings to food banks and feeding centers across the country. The organization grew out of the pollock industry in Alaska, where fishers chose to donate bycatch—which refers to fish that cannot be legally sold—rather than let it go to waste.

Relationship building and tax incentives have since encouraged regular donations of first-run, marketable seafood from the fishing and processing industry. Today, bycatch makes up just 8 percent of SeaShare’s total donations.

The nonprofit also works to ensure culturally relevant foods reach the right communities. Lindoff points to northern Washington as an example. “We have some surimi flake coming in so we reached out to an agency that serves a Korean community services center,” she says, “so we know that this product is going to people who know how to work with it and have a real love for the item.”

Seafood is obviously is highly perishable, requiring either canning or refrigerated transportation. SeaShare acts as a connector between fishers, processors, and food banks, ensuring donations move efficiently from source to consumer. In the contiguous U.S., SeaShare operates along established shipping routes, leveraging its partner Feeding America’s network of food banks to find distribution near the site of donation.

Nicole Candon, Director of Brand & Social Impact at Oddisea SuperFrozen, understands that distribution complexity. Oddisea SuperFrozen is a U.S. importer and distributor of seafood and a SeaShare partner. In 2025, they donated approximately 38,000 seafood servings through the partnership. Some of the seafood the company imports, though safe for consumption and high quality, cannot be sold commercially, leaving the organization in need of a responsible distribution channel.

SeaShare identifies appropriate food bank partners for the business and arranges direct pickups from Oddisea’s warehouse. “From there, the product moves through the food bank’s distribution network and is delivered to local communities,” Candon tells Food Tank. “Because seafood is so rare, our product was usually fully distributed within days of pickup.”

In Alaska, one of SeaShare’s key service areas, those distribution logistics become considerably more challenging. At times, SeaShare donates to highly isolated communities accessible only by boat.

“If we have a 30-pound box of salmon heading to an elder feeding program on an island with 65 residents, that donation is moving well outside of normal shipping lanes,” says Lindoff. “We rely on good partners at the Alaska seafood plants and within the air or barge freight companies who take the time to do the right thing and make sure our elders get this fish.”

Lindoff tells Food Tank she has been moved to tears as she speaks with food bank managers who report being “overcome” by the impact of SeaShare’s donations. She says she’s happy to be part of the solution.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of SeaShare

The post SeaShare Is Closing the Protein Gap in America’s Food Banks appeared first on Food Tank.

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 4, 2026 thru Sat, October 10, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (5 items)

• Climate Fraud 101: Big Oil's Climate Deception Explained in 101 Documents, 1957-2026 The Center for Climate Integrity's 'Climate Fraud 101' documents seven decades of costly fossil fuel industry deception about human-caused climate change and climate change impacts. Center for Climate Integrity, Eva Carpenter, Davis Allen, Megan Matthews, Kert Davies, Sep 30, 2026.
• Trump Mocked Over 'Biggest Ice Cube' Claim During Texas Climate Rant The president did not specify which ice measurement he meant, while National Snow and Ice Data Center figures do not show a record-high Arctic extent. IBT, James RJ Florentino, Oct 02, 2026.
• Opinion: I used to believe climate change was a hoax 'My experience shows why local politicians need to push back against climate denialism.'' The Tyee, Erin Blondeau, Oct 05, 2026.
• New Documents Add to Evidence in Climate Deception Case Against ExxonMobil Court filings by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office include previously undisclosed documents, revealing new details about internal deliberations at the oil giant. Inside Climate News, By Nicholas Kusnetz, Oct 07, 2026.
• Inside the web of pro-oil and gas groups shaping Canada`s climate change narrative New research by Greenpeace Canada lays out a web of pro-oil-and-gas groups working together to influence public opinion on climate change The Narwhal , Carl Meyer, Oct 09, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (4 items)

• Chevron Gave $150K to Bay Area Group Accused of Using AI to Fight Heat Pump Rule The group claimed victory after regulators recommended delaying landmark rules that would eventually phase out gas water heaters in 2.8 million homes. DeSmog, Miranda Green, Oct 5, 2026.
• The American Livestock Industry`s Main Lobbying Group Treated Climate Change as a PR Problem New research has revealed more examples of the National Cattlemen’s Association’s efforts to downplay and deny the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. Inside Climate News, Georgina Gustin, Oct 07, 2026.
• Who`s telling you climate change is no big deal? A new report traces the financial connections behind conservative media’s latest attack on climate science. HEATED, Emily Atkin, Oct 08, 2026.
• To Block Solar Energy Projects, One Community Lumped Them in With Junkyards and Adult Bookstores Heated opposition to energy modernization via photovoltaic and wind generation systems is fanned by ample misinformation. Inside Climate News, By Dan Gearino, Oct 08, 2026.

Miscellaneous (4 items)

• 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 27, 2026 thru Sat, October 3, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler & Doug Bostrom, Oct 04, 2026.
• Revealed: the methane mega-leaks from UN climate summit host Turkey Exclusive: Cop31 leader calling for global curbs on climate-heating gas has landfills producing some of world’s worst plumes The Guardian, Damian Carrington and Ruth Michaelson and Ayça Aldatmaz, Oct 05, 2026.
• Did the hot summer make more people worry about climate change? The Conversation, Lorraine Whitmarsh & Bella Zanin, Oct 06, 2026.
• An Influential Voice in the Climate Debate Has Died at 66 Joe Romm was a prolific writer who never hesitated to take on climate change deniers and the fossil-fuel industry — or even ostensible allies. New York Times, Clay Risen, Oct 06, 2026.

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (4 items)

• Climate leaders push for more solar energy by 2030 Prominent climate leaders have called on governments, businesses, institutions and the public to make a push for solar power before the decade is out, repowering the world with cheap, clean energy. Is that possible? DW, Sarah Steffen, Oct 02, 2026.
• The world without solar and wind? Clean energy does not simply “add to” global energy use; it displaces fossil sources that would otherwise get built. The Climate Brink, Zeke Hausfather, Oct 05, 2026.
• Scientists who put faith in technology less likely to take climate action ‘Techno-optimism’ may lead to reliance on unproven solutions at expense of societal changes needed The Guardian, Matthew Taylor, Oct 07, 2026.
• Hoping for a `new normal` climate is pointless. We must learn to adapt Three researchers urge clear-eyed honesty in coming to grips with the aftermath of our climate blunder The Conversation, James Hopeward, Andrew Lowe, Melissa Nursey-Bray, Oct 08, 2026.

Climate Law and Justice (3 items)

• Supreme Court to Tackle Preemption Issues in Corporate Climate Accountability Litigation Background on Suncor with an overview of the preemption issues raised by the fossil fuel companies, potential outcomes of the Suncor hearing, and implications for other climate cases. Climate Law Blog, Margaret Barry, Oct 01, 2026.
• Supreme Court's new term kicks off with blockbuster climate change case A new Supreme Court term begins Monday with arguments in a blockbuster case about the reach of state power. NPR, Carrie Johnson, Oct 05, 2026.
• US supreme court hears big oil`s bid to block climate damage lawsuits How court will lean is unclear amid Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil’s attempt to stop lawsuits at state level The Guardian, Hilary Beaumont, Oct 05, 2026.

Climate Change Impacts (2 items)

• Global review reveals major blind spots in our understanding of climate change impacts on Mediterranean ecosystems A new global review of observed climate change impacts on plant communities reveals major gaps in where and how we monitor some of the world's most climate-vulnerable ecosystems. Phys.org, University of Cape Town, Oct 06, 2026.
• World`s largest penguin colony suffers `enormous population crash` Chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski Island in Antarctica down by two-thirds since 2011, probably due to climate crisis The Guardian, Jonathan Watts, Oct 07, 2026.

Climate Education and Communication (2 items)

• As the planet warms, cities like Bangkok could be increasingly inundated by deadly floods In the long-term, extreme floods will undoubtedly strike Bangkok again due to a combination of climate, geography and urbanisation. The Conversation, Kimberley Reid, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Oct 06, 2026.
• Only about half of U.S. teens can correctly identify the causes of climate change Teens who reported hearing some or a lot about climate change from their teachers were more likely to answer the questions correctly than those who had not. Yale Climate Connections, YCC Team, Oct 09, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (2 items)

• The bipartisan energy bill tearing the climate movement apart A long-awaited permitting reform proposal would make renewables easier to build, but at a potential cost to communities and the environment. Grist, Austin Corona, Oct 08, 2026.
• Tories overstate net zero cost by nearly £500bn in apparent spreadsheet error Shadow prime minister Badenoch’s flagship conference policy document cites £957bn estimate, twice the total in climate advisers’ data. The Guardian, Peter Walker, Oct 09, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (2 items)

• After Outcry, Monitors the Trump Administration Tried to Scrap Return to Sea Under pressure from Congress, a network of ocean monitors that provides vital data to meteorologists, climate scientists, oceanographers and the fishing industry is being restored. NYT, Eric Niiler, Oct 03, 2026.
• Skeptical Science New Research for Week #41 2026 A weekly survey of freshly published academic, government and NGO research dealing with matters of anthropogenic climate change and how we can best deal with it. Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Oct 08, 2026.

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!

NEU sets a Just Transition framework for workplace organising, campaigning and bargaining

The NEU has just done a massive service to the whole climate movement.

Its Model Just Transition Framework for Schools is not simply a statement of principles but an organising tool for union Reps and activists to use in their workplace.

Schools are a particular kind of workplace, but the approach could be used more widely by other unions if recast appropriately for each sector.

In setting out a checklist of actions that schools can take – under three headings, leadership, workplace, impact and opportunities –  it establishes a baseline for what is already being done, and a set of demands for further action where a school falls short.

It helps that the proposals in the checklists are often backed by the existing DFE “Net Zero Strategy”, introduced under pressure from the mass student strikes before COVID  very positive proposals like every school having a climate action plan, a sustainability lead and the option of joining up into the National Education Nature Park. However, all of this was left to schools discretion which, in the context of a climate emergency is a bit like setting off the fire alarm and saying that leaving the building is voluntary. 

This framework can be used by Reps, but most effectively done where school union members discuss and agree it in a union group, and where there is a drive by union Districts to coordinate use of the framework across a whole Local Authority area and through Multi Academy Trusts, with a Committee member responsible for driving it.

The emphasis on having “an inclusive, formally recognised, just transition group that gives voice to staff from all areas and roles” and “an active student eco club/group or nature club/group for

younger children and the opportunity for student voice to develop green policies” and schools using their “role as a community educator to drive change and climate awareness and action in its local community and with local businesses and stakeholders” makes this a tool for the wider social mobilisation we need.

A Just Transition will not be handed to us on a plate. We will have to fight for it. Where there is a national Jobs Transition Commission, as in Scotland or the North of Ireland, Just Transition work at the grassroots will add heft to their recommendations. Where there isn’t, as in England and Wales it will point up the need for them, as well as building the full scale social mobilisation we will need to make it a reality.

This is particularly the case because success in reducing a school’s carbon footprint, as with any other workplace, will depend on investment; for example to replace gas heating systems and Air Con with reversible heat pumps. So that can’t help but become a campaign for resourcing from central government, so each mobilisation at local level has to feed into a coordinated national campaign for that investment.

This framework is a terrific lever to that end.

Paul Atkin NEU Climate Change Network

 

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The post NEU sets a Just Transition framework for workplace organising, campaigning and bargaining first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

It’s an early May afternoon, and Charlie Barrett has parked his pickup in a pullout along a county road a few hundred feet from the Black River in southern New Mexico, just a mile from where it empties into the Pecos River. 

He has stopped to set up a video camera that detects heat and gasses invisible to the eye to check for emissions at a nearby oil and gas operation. 

Stepping out of the truck, Barrett finds the pullout muddy and dotted with puddles — an anomaly during an ongoing drought. A gray chunk of salt the size of a medicine ball sits near a mud puddle flecked with shimmering, white crystals.

“Unfortunately this is pretty common,” he said. “It’s also quite dangerous.” It appeared that someone had dumped oilfield wastewater — also known as produced water — at the pullout. The extremely saline and toxic byproduct of oil and gas production carries a mix of petroleum compounds and oilfield chemicals. Produced water can be radioactive, too. Barrett said he worries that people would unwittingly drive through the muck or pull off the road and walk through it. 

All day, every day, hundreds of semi trucks haul the toxic produced water from well sites to disposal stations along the highways and backroads of this far corner of New Mexico. That water is an unwanted byproduct of oil and gas development. More than three barrels of wastewater come out of the ground for every barrel of extracted oil, on average in New Mexico. As fossil fuel production has skyrocketed in the Permian Basin, the amount of produced water has followed. In addition, the water-to-oil ratio increases as wells and oilfields age — a process known as “watering out.” 

Charlie Barrett, a thermographer with Oilfield Witness, points out a chunk of salt that likely fell off of a truck carrying oilfield wastewater near Malaga, New Mexico. Jerry Redfern / Capital & Main

New Mexico state rules ban produced water use for anything outside the oilfield. This has led to a parallel industry devoted to gathering, transporting and reinjecting produced water deep underground. That, in turn, has led to a rise in seismic activity in the region, as well as dramatic blowouts that spew toxic water when injection wells fail.

Barrett works for industry watchdog Oilfield Witness as a thermographer, using a thermal camera to measure gaseous emissions from oilfield equipment. As he set up to record, produced water trucks rumbled by under a cloudless sky. 

Barrett began filming. “Oh, man, that’s fucking terrible,” he said. On its small screen, in wavy, candy-colored hues, the camera revealed the heat signatures of three active flares near a house. “Got a person’s home here and then this mess … all producing CO2 and methane and other volatile organic compounds, blowing right into their home,” he said, looking through the viewfinder. “Jesus, man. It’s ridiculous.”

When he looked at the footage later on a bigger screen, he found another lit flare in the video, in addition to the first three. One shot — four flares. This despite the fact that New Mexico has banned nearly all flaring since 2022. 

Companies burn off — or “flare” — natural gas for a few reasons, including: it doesn’t meet specifications; it is over pressurized in a pipeline; or it’s required for equipment maintenance. Though better for the climate than venting unburned gas into the atmosphere, flaring still produces carbon dioxide and other toxic pollutants. 

Barrett documents emissions coming from nearby oil and wastewater storage tanks on an oil well site near Loving. Jerry Redfern / Capital & Main

Later, Barrett sat on a small boulder along a quiet bend in the Pecos River, talking about his work. The river gurgled; dragonflies hovered, and the grasses rustled as more oilfield trucks rumbled over a nearby bridge, a reminder that Barrett was sitting in one of the most prolific fossil fuel basins on the planet. 

“It sucks,” he said. “It’s a beautiful river in the middle of a hellscape.” 

Several months earlier, the last time Barrett visited this spot, he found salt deposits covering the ground between the bridge and the riverbank. “I mean, the whole road was flooded over,” he said. “We couldn’t confirm one way or another if that was an actual produced water spill,” he added, but there are few other possibilities. 

Such a spill would represent another environmental shock for this troubled river. The irony: The river needs more water. U.S. Geological Survey data going back nearly 40 years shows the annual snowpack slowly but steadily declining in the mountains around the Pecos River’s headwaters. River flow measurements in the upriver town of Pecos show the same. 

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As climate change heats and dries New Mexico, and the Pecos River runs ever lower, one of the biggest drivers of that change sits atop the river’s banks, just feet from where Barrett sits — 75,000 square miles of oil and gas wells across 55 counties in New Mexico and Texas: the vast Permian Basin. 

Water and geology

The Pecos River, favorite of Looney Tunes character Yosemite Sam and the historic demarcation line of the Wild West, starts among some of New Mexico’s highest mountains east of Santa Fe and runs south for more than 500 miles before entering Texas at New Mexico’s lowest point. 

Its headwaters rush untamed through miles of steep canyons and pine-covered slopes, garnering it a National Wild and Scenic River designation. Its waters nourish farms and ranches across the center of New Mexico. But where it exits the state, the Pecos looks more like a tightly managed creek — a conveyance delivering carefully tallied water through the middle of the Permian Basin, the country’s most productive oil and gas region. 

The environmental group American Rivers has twice named the Pecos one of the country’s most endangered rivers: once in 2024, along with New Mexico’s other waterways, and in 2021 all on its own.

Both the river and the Permian Basin are natural features of a landscape transmogrified by the human desire for energy from fossil fuels. 

Over the last century, people have drilled tens of thousands of wells, stitched the basin with pipes and released carbon trapped tens of millions of years ago, all to power cars and jets and buildings. That released carbon changed the chemistry of the atmosphere, trapping heat that warms the planet and dries New Mexico. 

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Meanwhile, on the Pecos, as on other rivers across the state, there is a greater demand for less and less water year after year. Last winter’s snow bust only added to the pressure.  

“It is totally terrifying in a lot of ways,” said Hannah Riseley-White, the director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. Her job is to make sure that the state meets its obligations to all of the groups that have a stake in river water.

“Everyone this spring got tired of me at the beginning of every meeting screen-sharing the snowpack figures for all of the basins that we manage,” she said. “It fell off the cliff. It wasn’t just record breaking. It was beyond anything that we could have imagined in terms of snowpack.”

The previous winter wasn’t much better. Neither are the long-term forecasts. Riseley-White said she expects a 25% to 30% decrease in river water by 2070.

“So the biggest challenge that the Pecos faces is just aridification due to climate change,” she said.

The percentages come from New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s 50-Year Water Action Plan, which lays out how global warming will shrink New Mexico’s water supplies in coming decades. It also proposes how to conserve existing supplies and create new water sources in a very dry state. That includes treating oilfield wastewater — the stuff Barrett believes he found on the roadside — to make it clean enough that the state will allow it to be used outside the oilfield for industrial and other, broader uses. 

A string of oil wells lines the Pecos River south of Loving. There are 380 oil and gas wells within a half-mile of the river in New Mexico. Aerial photography made possible by LightHawk. Jerry Redfern / Capital & Main

“The industry’s actually advocating for repurposing produced water and pumping it into this river,” Barrett said, while sitting beside the Pecos. 

To date, the legal maneuvering to make that happen has been unsuccessful. A recent push to change state rules and allow the broad use of treated wastewater ended when Lujan Grisham appeared to have influenced a rulemaking body’s deliberations. Another push to change state rules is underway, but no deadlines have been set. State environmental groups strongly oppose the idea, arguing that it’s not possible to be 100% sure that all toxic chemicals are removed from the water.

Meanwhile, over the border, the Texas branch of the Sierra Club has tallied five proposals to discharge treated produced water into the Texas portion of the Pecos River watershed, though none have yet been approved. 

“Do I think [treated] produced water will solve all of our problems in the Pecos? No,” Riseley-White said. “But thinking about it as one of the many sort of tools in the toolbox I think makes sense.”

She added: “Part of coming up with creative solutions is going to necessarily require looking at all of the options, and that’s certainly one of them. And I think technology is there to clean water to various standards. It’s just a question of whether financially the incentives are there.”

Other dangers

Endangered animals live along the Pecos River, including the dunes sagebrush lizard and the Texas hornshell mussel. The lesser prairie chicken was part of that group until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally removed its protections under the Endangered Species Act in early 2026, despite its declining population.

“There’s going to be just increasing challenges in ensuring that there’s sufficient water for those species, just like for the other users that depend on it,” Riseley-White said. One successful example: While working with the hornshell on a tributary of the Pecos, “landowners recognized that if there was water in the Black [River] for the hornshell, that meant that there was water there for them, too,” she said.

The latest challenges to endangered animals’ survival comes from Washington. In early July, the Department of the Interior rolled back the definition of “harm” to mean only directly injuring or killing endangered species. Noise and habitat destruction would no longer be considered threats to an endangered species’ well-being. 

Read Next A New Mexico town is running dry. An immigration detention center is its biggest water customer. Martha Pskowski, Inside Climate News

In late July, the department rescinded the so-called “blanket rule” that covered threatened species with many of the same protections afforded endangered species. It also imposed consideration of the economic cost of protecting plants and animals — i.e. the additional costs to oil and gas production.

Taken together, the two changes undo historic protections for plants and animals across the country, including those that call the Pecos River watershed home. Of the thousands of oil and gas wells that pierce the ground in New Mexico’s share of the Permian Basin, 380 are within a half mile of the river. Another 11 injection wells — used to dispose of produced water — lie within that same stretch. 

“The sound pollution and light pollution also affect this river ecosystem,” Barrett said. He studied ecology and wildlife management and previously worked for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas A&M Forest Service as a staff ecologist. He said the oilfield disturbance “drives a lot of species away from this ecosystem, which can lead to extirpation, which is regional extinction.”

Despite the enormous challenges, Riseley-White said she remains optimistic.

“My hope in the Pecos is that as we face these challenges, we can get all of the different interests at the table and find solutions that make sense to everybody,” she said.

“I think it’s challenging, but I think it’s definitely possible,” she said.

Copyright 2026 Capital & Main

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In New Mexico, a river runs through ‘the middle of a hellscape’ on Oct 11, 2026.

CRA Meeting

The next CRA meeting of the month will be on Zoom, October 16 at 5pm Pacific Time. The agenda and link will be sent to the mail list. If you need the link, email admin@climaterailalliance.org.

Caltrain, the San Francisco – San Jose – Gilroy commuter rail agency tried a new radical approach to declining ridership. When commuter rail service began in the US, well over 160 years ago, the majority of suburban dwellers traveled into the central city in the morning and left in the evening, Monday through Friday. Commuter rail service was structured for exactly those people. A very large percentage of people traveling to or from suburban areas are not traveling for a 9-5 job in the central city. Some people see the response to the decline as less service. Caltrain took the opposite approach.

On Friday, September 25, SeaPort air published a full page press release/advertisement in “businesswire:” ““Billions in New Trains, Same Slow Route: Boeing Field Air Service SeaPort Airlines is Making New Amtrak Trains Obsolete.”” Here is our response to that propaganda piece.

The UP-NS merger application is live at Surface Transportation Board. CRA opposes this merger. There are many ways in which this merger will have a bad outcome. Wall Street activist investors will be thrilled, however. Our colleagues at Solutionary Rail and Public Rail Now have an ongoing campaign that allows comments on the merger to be made anonymously to Surface Transportation Board.

Amtrak is exploring a corporate restructuring, intending to improve service. There is detailed information on Amtrak’s website. Deadline for feedback is Oct. 30, 2026.

This coming election day, Colorado will be voting an a ballot measure to provide a dedicated funding source for rail passenger service. In a Trains.com article, former Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Amit Bose and former US Department of Transportation General Counsel John Putnam promote the Colorado program as model for the next generation of passenger rail. A successful dedicated measure depends upon demonstrating that the proposed program will work. Colorado has done the homework with successful light rail and commuter service in the Denver region, laying solid groundwork for this next step.

The 2027 Washington State Legislative Session is about to begin. CRA, along with the other members of the Rail Can’t Wait Coalition have developed our Legislative Priorities for Washington, the list of things that rail transportation needs that we would like legislators to fund and enable.

The New Cascades Airo sets started service between Vancouver BC and Eugene OR on October 30. Trains will be introduced as they arrive from testing. Right now, you can see and ride them on Trains 503 and 508 between Seattle and Eugene and trains 516 and 519 between Portland and Vancouver BC.

CRA joined Solutionary Rail, Duwamish River Community Coalition, Reconnect South Park, and Georgetown Community Council in a comment letter responding to the 2026 Washington State draft Freight System Plan. The plan was effectively a plan for trucking. It contained almost no reference to rail at all, about which we commented at length.

Gualala Redwood Timber’s 375-acre Noce Timber Harvest Plan (THP 1-26-00147-SON) is located in northern Sonoma County, east of the South Fork Gualala River and north of Annapolis Road, near Noce Road. The South Fork Gualala River, Wheatfield Fork of the Gualala River, and Buckeye Creek receive drainage from the proposed timber harvest plan.

Noce Timber Harvest Plan documents

Submitted on October 7, 2026

Noce THP Section 1 – [5 MB, 10 pages] Legal description: Cover pages, signatures.

Noce THP Section 2 – [49 MB, 111 pages] Operations: Silviculture, yarding, erosion hazard rating, winter operations, roads & landings, watercourse & lake protections, alternative watercourse & lake protections (in lieu of standard rules), biological resources, maps.

Noce THP Section 3 – [18 MB, 37 pages] Supporting materials: General site description, analysis of alternatives, variable retention, discussion and justification of use of ground based equipment on unstable areas, seasonal road construction, alternative watercourse and lake protection practices, instream activities requiring CDFW approval.

Noce THP Section 4 – [81 MB, 158 pages] Cumulative Impacts: Past, present and future projects, assessment of cumulative watershed effects, soil productivity, biological resources, recreational, visual, traffic, greenhouse gas impacts, wildfire risks.

Noce THP Section 5 – [155 MB, 239 pages] Attachments: Including soil erosion hazards, Erosion Control Plan, roadwork, stream reports, botanical surveys, Northern Spotted Owl information.

Noce THP Section 6 – [1 MB, 1 page] Archeological information: (confidential)

All documents regarding this logging plan are available in the new CalTREES system.

Unfortunately, CalTREES is not easy to use, so FoGR has compiled some
basic instructions for use of CalTREES to help you navigate the system.

To download additional documents for this logging plan,
if you want to follow the back & forth as agencies ask questions and the RPF replies,
visit the Noce THP page on the CalTREES website.

Below are instructions on how to submit comments during the public comment period.

To submit your comments on a logging plan, email your comments to: santarosapubliccomment@fire.ca.gov
or send your comments via U.S. Mail to:

Forest Practice
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
135 Ridgway Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

In the subject line of your email message, or at the top of your letter,
be sure to reference the THP number and name, for example:
THP 1-26-00147-SON “Noce”

Editor’s Note: I’m reposting this article, with permission, from New Mexico Water Advocates by Gillian Gonda, a board member of the Advocates. She tells the sad story of the water situation in Placitas, where she grew up. I’ve known Gillian since she was a kid: I lived in Placitas for 20 years, as an irrigator in the village and then as a well owner in the Tunnel Springs area where we had one well go dry. We’re experiencing this crisis all over New Mexico. La Jicarita will soon publish an article about the situation in the Upper, Middle, and Lower Rio Grande by Water Advocates Director Norm Gaume. 

The Double Life of Las Acequias de Placitas

October 7, 2026 Gillian GondaClimate Impact, Culture and Community

Irrigation season has long ended in the small village of Placitas, New Mexico, cut prematurely due to lack of water. Now its residents think about what might happen this winter—and what will happen next summer.

In Placitas, that question carries a distinct weight because the Placitas acequia leads an unusual double life. 

I grew up in Placitas and used to help irrigate as a child, watering the many fruit trees on our property using the village acequia system. Obviously much more than a ditch, an acequia is a communal water sharing system that binds a community, generates goodwill, communication among neighbors, and care of the whole. As a young girl, I didn’t really know anything about that, but I loved watching the water come down the ditches—sometimes I’d race it, watch it pool into the trees, and divert it from this ditch to that one. I ran around chasing water and eating whatever fresh fruit I could find. I also didn’t know that this water was doing more than giving me all the apricots I could eat.

Las Acequias de Placitas is one of only two or three hybrid acequia/domestic water systems in the state. It is fed by springs from the Sandia Mountains and is primarily an acequia for irrigation, but roughly 175 homes in the village also rely directly on the same springs and a piping network for their household water.

Leading a double life means carrying double the burden when drought strikes.

Due to a dry 2025-26 winter and very little snowpack—affecting all of the state, because aridification is here—the mountain springs on the north side of the Sandias that feed Las Acequias did not replenish enough. That is why the irrigation season had to end early, and why water had to be turned off daily for the village from 9 PM to 4 AM and again from 1 to 4 PM so the tanks could replenish. No joke. When there’s no water, there’s no water.

Managing a dual-purpose system like this is a LOT. There are only a few people on the board, and they have to track overuse, illegal use, and lack of payment, as well as constant communication during times of restriction. For a small community, it can certainly be a challenge. Learn more about this unique acequia from its current leadership in this video produced by Placitas resident and student Elliott Wessely that captures both the mechanics of the acequia and its vital role as a living tradition built on cooperation, shared responsibility, and community resilience in the face of ongoing drought. 

The author’s mother preparing for irrigation earlier this year.

Rain did finally arrive, bringing a lot of moisture all at once. The deluge arrived a tad too late for most of the fruit trees, but it was appreciated nonetheless. Any drop that touches this dry dirt matters. 

Were we ready?

Did we catch enough of that rainwater in barrels and cisterns to help supplement our watering, so we aren’t putting as much burden on a domestic system already stretched thin? In New Mexico, paying attention to how and when you use water NOW (and reducing your use when possible) will help prepare you for restrictions that aren’t a question of if, but when, as the residents of Placitas well know. Yet relying on individual actions and living year-to-year on the hope of a wet winter is not a solid plan. Hope can support us as we build resiliency, but hope is not water management.

What places like Placitas—and communities across our entire basin—desperately need is real, proactive water planning, focused on mitigating current and growing water scarcity statewide, at both the regional and state levels. We need our state agencies and regional water planning councils (once formed) to have the resources, hydrologic data, and funding in place so communities aren’t left scrambling in the dry years. When a system that feeds both orchards and kitchen sinks runs low, we shouldn’t have to guess what comes next. Having the resources and framework to know how to respond beforehand is how we protect our drinking water, agricultural water, and our culture.

Now, with the ditches still damp from recent rain, Placitas residents turn to the high crest of the Sandias. We wonder what this winter will bring, hoping for the best while knowing all too well what happens if the peaks stay bare. As lawmakers prepare for the upcoming legislative session, that hope turns toward the Roundhouse—that our leaders will finally step up and do the right thing by fully funding our state water planning efforts.

Gillian Gonda is a New Mexico Water Advocates board member and Apricot lover currently living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 10 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-083 The Sakhalin Papers LXXIII: The Sanctions Paradox — Shell and Gazprom Plan More LNG While Shell Suspends Russian Shale Exploration On 30 September 2014, just eighteen days after Washington introduced expanded restrictions on Russian energy technology, Ben van Beurden met Gazprom chairman Alexey Miller at Gazprom’s headquarters. The Russian company’s official announcement welcomed the prospect of increasing LNG production at Sakhalin II. But Shell’s subsequent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission reveals a crucial distinction: during the same year, Western sanctions had already caused Shell to suspend separate Russian shale-exploration activities. The documentary record exposes how Shell attempted to preserve one major Russian investment while restrictions were bringing other parts of its Russian portfolio to a halt.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-083

Collection: The Sakhalin Papers

Principal authenticated records: Gazprom corporate announcement of 30 September 2014; Gazprom–Shell memorandum-roadmap of 23 February 2014; Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2014, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 12 March 2015; Gazprom corporate records concerning Sakhalin III.

Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, 30 September 2013; Argus Media, 1 October 2014; LNG Industry, 1 October 2014; Reuters and Interfax reporting on Shell’s Russian operations during September 2014.

Government and judicial records: US Treasury sanctions announcements of 16 July and 12 September 2014; EU Council Regulation 833/2014; Court of Justice of the European Union, Rosneft v HM Treasury, Case C-72/15, judgment of 28 March 2017.

Evidence standard: Corporate announcements establish meetings and publicly expressed intentions, not undisclosed negotiations or final investment decisions. Shell’s SEC filing provides authenticated retrospective evidence of how sanctions affected its operations in 2014. Contemporary industry interpretations are attributed to their publishers. The subsequent European judgment is used to explain the legal framework, not to imply wrongdoing by Shell.

Introduction: The September meeting

The previous instalment, SLF-2007-082, established that Shell’s commercial relationship with Gazprom survived the first major escalation of Western sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

On 23 May 2014, Ben van Beurden and Alexey Miller had met at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

They discussed the possibility of expanding Sakhalin II, Russia’s first liquefied natural gas project.

By September, circumstances had deteriorated significantly.

The destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine had further damaged relations between Russia and the West.

Washington had imposed additional restrictions on Russian financial institutions and energy companies.

The European Union had introduced its own sectoral sanctions.

And on 12 September, the United States had expanded measures restricting technology and services associated with certain Russian oil-development activities.

Yet eighteen days later, Shell’s chief executive was meeting Gazprom’s chairman again.

This time, there was a particularly revealing detail in the official announcement.

Gazprom did not merely say that the companies intended to maintain their existing relationship.

It publicly welcomed the prospect of increasing LNG production.

The meeting occurred against a background in which parts of Shell’s wider Russian exploration portfolio were becoming subject to restrictions.

The documentary record therefore presents two developments that must be understood together.

One Shell venture was being positioned for expansion.

Other Shell activities were being suspended because of sanctions.

There was no inherent legal contradiction between those positions.

But their coexistence reveals the increasingly complicated commercial landscape Shell was navigating.

1. The primary document: 30 September 2014

The central record is a Gazprom corporate announcement published at 18:15 on 30 September 2014.

Its headline was:

“Gazprom and Shell approve Sakhalin II potential capacity creep.”

The announcement identifies a working meeting at Gazprom’s headquarters between Alexey Miller, chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee, and Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell.

Gazprom stated that the executives discussed current and future bilateral cooperation, concentrating particularly on LNG production at Sakhalin II.

The announcement described both companies positively assessing their joint efforts and recognising substantial potential to increase LNG output.

It also recalled the February 2014 memorandum-roadmap covering engineering preparations for a proposed third LNG train.

The document is preserved on Gazprom’s official website.

Gazprom: 30 September 2014 meeting announcement

This is important primary evidence.

It authenticates the meeting, identifies the participants and records the subjects Gazprom publicly acknowledged discussing.

But there are limitations.

The announcement does not disclose the full conversation.

It contains no transcript of the executives’ private exchanges.

It does not identify an approved project budget.

It does not announce a final investment decision.

And it does not say that the third LNG train had received every necessary construction approval.

Those distinctions are particularly important because Gazprom’s headline could easily be mistaken for evidence of a completed investment decision.

It was not.

2. What did “capacity creep” actually mean?

Gazprom’s choice of terminology deserves attention.

In LNG operations, capacity creep generally refers to incremental increases in production capability achieved through improvements to an existing facility.

Such improvements might involve equipment modifications, debottlenecking or operational optimisation.

That is different from constructing an entirely new LNG production train.

Sakhalin II already possessed two operating trains at Prigorodnoye.

Their original combined design capacity was approximately 9.6 million tonnes of LNG annually.

Gazprom’s own figures showed that the plant had exceeded that capacity.

In 2013, Sakhalin II produced approximately 10.8 million tonnes of LNG.

The original plant was therefore already performing beyond its nominal design specification.

Gazprom’s September announcement used the language of increasing capacity while also referring to the proposed third train.

The two possibilities should not be confused.

Further optimisation of the existing plant could provide incremental production gains.

A third train represented a substantially larger investment requiring additional gas, engineering, construction and financing.

The September announcement established enthusiasm for greater LNG production.

It did not, by itself, establish which specific expansion measures had received final approval. Gazprom

3. The third train was still the larger ambition

The proposal for a third LNG train was not new.

On 23 February 2014, van Beurden and Miller had signed a memorandum-roadmap in Sochi.

That document provided for the preparation of front-end engineering and design documentation.

FEED is a significant stage in major industrial-project development.

It establishes the technical design basis, refines cost estimates and supports subsequent investment decisions.

But completing or commissioning FEED is not the same as authorising construction.

Nor does it guarantee that a project will proceed.

Gazprom had publicly welcomed the prospect of increasing LNG supplies to Asia.

Van Beurden had emphasised Sakhalin II’s role as a reliable LNG supplier to the Asia-Pacific market.

Both companies had strong commercial incentives.

Sakhalin II already possessed an operating plant, export infrastructure, customers and an established production history.

Expanding an existing complex could potentially be more attractive than developing an entirely new LNG project.

But a third train required something that the two existing trains did not necessarily have available in sufficient quantities:

additional gas reserves capable of sustaining decades of increased LNG production.

That question would become central to the expansion debate.

Gazprom: February 2014 third-train roadmap

4. Argus identifies the sanctions connection

A particularly useful contemporary report appeared on 1 October 2014.

Industry publication Argus Media reported the previous day’s meeting under the headline:

“Gazprom backs Sakhalin 2 LNG expansion.”

Argus connected the renewed attention to Sakhalin II with the difficulties sanctions were creating for Gazprom’s proposed Vladivostok LNG project.

The report discussed a prospective third Sakhalin train of approximately 5 million tonnes annually.

It also raised the possibility that restrictions on access to US technology could strengthen Gazprom’s incentive to rely upon Shell’s LNG technology and experience.

This is an important contemporary interpretation.

It suggests that Western sanctions could have had differing effects across Gazprom’s project portfolio.

They might impede one proposed development while making another, involving an established Western partner and an existing operating complex, comparatively attractive.

But this remains Argus’s industry analysis.

The article does not establish that Gazprom’s internal management formally cancelled or redirected a project because of sanctions.

Nor does it prove that Shell supplied technology in violation of restrictions.

The report also discussed the need for additional gas supplies from the South Kirinsky area of Sakhalin III.

And it indicated that a final investment decision remained a future event.

That last detail is essential.

On 1 October 2014, the third train was still an investment proposal, not an approved construction project.

Argus Media: Gazprom backs Sakhalin 2 LNG expansion, 1 October 2014

The LNG Industry publication independently reported the Miller–van Beurden meeting on the same date, confirming the emphasis on increasing LNG production.

LNG Industry: Gazprom and Shell discuss Sakhalin LNG expansion

5. The missing gas: why Sakhalin III mattered

Sakhalin II was an established producing project.

Sakhalin III was a separate group of exploration and development licences controlled by Gazprom.

That distinction is fundamental.

Sakhalin II’s existing production came primarily from the Piltun-Astokhskoye and Lunskoye fields.

Gazprom’s Sakhalin III interests included the Kirinsky block and fields such as Kirinskoye and Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, also known as South Kirinsky.

These resources were potentially important because expansion of the LNG plant required reliable additional feed gas.

The problem had been publicly discussed before the 2014 political crisis.

On 30 September 2013, Reuters reported that Olivier Lazare, then head of Shell’s Russian operations, had urged Gazprom to move more quickly on LNG expansion.

Lazare warned that delays could cause the partners to miss favourable Asian LNG market opportunities.

Reuters identified the availability and allocation of additional gas as a significant obstacle.

Potential supplies from Sakhalin III were already under consideration.

But Gazprom had other plans for its gas resources, including domestic supply and wider eastern Russian infrastructure.

The issue was therefore not simply whether gas existed.

It was whether sufficient gas could be commercially and contractually committed to Sakhalin II.

The Reuters report was preserved contemporaneously in the Donovan archive.

Reuters: Shell warns Gazprom of price risks as LNG expansion delayed, 30 September 2013

This provides important continuity.

The disagreement over expansion did not originate with Western sanctions.

The underlying commercial and resource-allocation problem existed earlier.

Sanctions subsequently complicated the environment in which that problem had to be resolved.

6. Gazprom had already demonstrated the technology challenges

Gazprom’s own October 2013 announcement concerning the Kirinskoye field illustrates the technical complexity of developing additional offshore gas resources.

The company described the testing of Russia’s first subsea production facility at Kirinskoye.

The field was located approximately 28 kilometres offshore in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Its development required subsea equipment operating beneath waters subject to severe seasonal conditions.

Gazprom described a subsea production system installed at approximately 90 metres depth.

The company’s announcement also identified the wider Kirinsky block and ongoing exploration at Yuzhno-Kirinskoye.

The projected design output of Kirinskoye was approximately 5.5 billion cubic metres of gas annually.

That figure must not be confused with an approved gas supply to Sakhalin II.

Gazprom’s announcement described a producing-field development and the wider regional gas infrastructure.

It did not establish that the field’s production had been contractually allocated to Shell’s proposed third LNG train.

Nevertheless, the record demonstrates why offshore technology, infrastructure and resource allocation were significant issues.

The additional gas did not merely need to be found.

It had to be developed, produced, transported and made commercially available.

Gazprom: Kirinskoye subsea production facility, 23 October 2013

7. Shell’s own SEC filing reveals what sanctions had already stopped

The most important new evidence in this instalment comes from Shell itself.

On 12 March 2015, Royal Dutch Shell plc filed its Annual Report and Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2014 with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is an authenticated corporate filing.

It was published after the events examined here, but it reports Shell’s operations during 2014.

In the Russia section of its Upstream review, Shell confirmed that sanctions had affected its activities.

The company stated:

“As a result of EU and US sanctions prohibiting defined oil and gas activities in Russia, in 2014 we paused our liquids-rich shales exploration activities”

Shell identified the relevant operations as activities being undertaken through Salym and Khanty-Mansiysk Petroleum Alliance V.O.F.

This is unusually significant.

It is not a newspaper’s interpretation of an anonymous source.

It is not an allegation from an activist or campaign organisation.

It is Shell’s own statement in a document filed with a securities regulator.

It establishes that the 2014 restrictions had actual operational consequences for parts of Shell’s Russian portfolio.

Those consequences should not be exaggerated.

Shell did not say in this passage that sanctions had required it to close Sakhalin II.

It did not say that all its Russian exploration activities had ceased.

It identified particular liquids-rich shale-exploration activities that had been paused.

The distinction is precisely what makes the record valuable. SEC

8. The contrast with Sakhalin II

Elsewhere in the same annual report, Shell recorded its continuing position in Sakhalin II.

The company confirmed that it held a 27.5 per cent interest.

It described Sakhalin II as an integrated oil and gas project.

According to Shell’s own figures, the project produced approximately 320,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2014, measured on the project’s total production basis.

The company also confirmed that LNG output exceeded 10 million tonnes.

In its list of operating liquefaction plants, Shell recorded Sakhalin LNG at Prigorodnoye with a capacity of 9.6 million tonnes annually.

The proposed third train was not listed among Shell’s LNG plants under construction in that report.

These figures support several conclusions.

First, Sakhalin II remained operational throughout the sanctions crisis of 2014.

Second, Shell continued to hold a substantial minority interest.

Third, the existing LNG operation had not been shut down by the sanctions measures discussed here.

Fourth, the third train remained a prospective development rather than an operating facility or an identified construction project.

Most importantly, the same SEC filing that confirmed the suspension of Russian shale exploration also confirmed the continuation of Sakhalin II production.

That is the central documentary contrast.

Shell was suspending some Russian activities while maintaining others. SEC

9. Why the legal distinction mattered

The restrictions introduced in 2014 were not a comprehensive prohibition on all Russian energy trade.

They were targeted measures.

Some concerned access to financing.

Others restricted particular goods, services and technologies associated with designated Russian energy companies or specified categories of oil development.

On 12 September 2014, the US Treasury expanded sectoral sanctions affecting Russian energy activities.

Its Directive 4 addressed certain deepwater, Arctic offshore and shale projects with the potential to produce oil.

The restrictions were concerned with the application of specified technology, goods and services to those projects.

The measures therefore distinguished between different activities.

An existing LNG plant processing gas from established fields was not automatically equivalent to a new shale-oil exploration project.

Nor was every transaction involving Gazprom legally identical to every transaction involving Gazprom Neft or another Russian company.

Company identity, ownership, project location, activity, technology, financing arrangements and applicable jurisdiction all mattered.

This helps explain how Shell could lawfully continue certain operations while suspending others.

It is also important to distinguish a project’s exposure to sanctions-related commercial difficulties from the narrower question of whether a particular transaction was legally prohibited.

An expansion project might become harder to finance or equip without every element of the project being expressly banned.

The relevant restrictions must be assessed according to their precise terms.

The evidence examined here does not establish a Shell sanctions violation. EUR-Lex

10. The later court record confirms the importance of those distinctions

A subsequent judgment provides authoritative legal context.

On 28 March 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in:

PJSC Rosneft Oil Company v HM Treasury and Others, Case C-72/15.

The proceedings arose from a reference by the High Court of Justice in England and Wales.

The case concerned the validity and interpretation of EU restrictive measures introduced in response to Russia’s actions destabilising Ukraine.

The Court considered the legal basis and scope of the measures, including restrictions affecting capital markets and particular oil-sector activities.

Its judgment upheld the contested measures against the relevant validity challenges.

The proceedings illustrate why the precise wording and coverage of the sanctions regime were legally important.

They also demonstrate that the restrictions were subject to judicial scrutiny.

But the judgment must not be misrepresented.

Shell was not the defendant in the Rosneft case.

The Court did not investigate the September 2014 Shell–Gazprom meeting.

It did not decide whether Shell’s proposed Sakhalin expansion complied with every applicable sanctions requirement.

And it made no finding that Shell breached the restrictions.

The judgment is relevant as an authoritative explanation of the legal framework within which international energy companies had to operate.

Court of Justice of the European Union: Rosneft v HM Treasury, Case C-72/15

11. The strategic value of an established LNG plant

Why was Sakhalin II so important to Shell?

The commercial evidence provides a straightforward explanation.

Sakhalin II had already passed through the most difficult stages of development.

The offshore fields were producing.

The pipelines and onshore infrastructure were operating.

The LNG plant had been commissioned in 2009.

Export deliveries had been established.

The project had customers in Asian energy markets.

It was generating substantial production volumes.

That distinguished it from prospective projects requiring entirely new infrastructure and uncertain future capital investment.

Shell’s existing minority interest was therefore commercially valuable.

It also represented decades of technical work and investment.

The history of the project had been difficult.

The original production-sharing agreement dated from the 1990s.

The project had encountered substantial environmental controversy, cost escalation and regulatory pressure.

And in 2006–07, Shell had surrendered majority control when Gazprom acquired its controlling interest.

Those events have been documented in earlier Shell Leaks Files.

Yet by 2014, Shell was once again seeking to expand the partnership.

There was a commercial logic to that decision.

Gazprom controlled the project.

Gazprom controlled potentially relevant additional resources.

Shell retained important LNG technology, experience and international market expertise.

Neither company could independently achieve everything it wanted through the existing venture.

Commercial cooperation remained valuable despite political tensions.

That observation does not justify or condemn the relationship.

It explains why it endured.

12. Gazprom’s position was equally complicated

Gazprom also faced competing incentives.

The company wanted to strengthen Russia’s position in Asian gas markets.

China had agreed to major long-term pipeline gas purchases earlier in 2014.

Russia was investing in eastern gas infrastructure.

Gazprom was developing fields around Sakhalin and elsewhere in eastern Siberia.

It was also considering competing LNG opportunities.

But Western sanctions increased the difficulty of obtaining certain technologies and financing.

Against that background, an established LNG complex already operating with Shell’s involvement had obvious attractions.

Argus’s October 2014 interpretation that the sanctions difficulties surrounding Vladivostok LNG increased interest in Sakhalin II was therefore commercially plausible.

However, it remains important to distinguish the reporter’s analysis from an authenticated Gazprom investment decision.

The September meeting record does not state that Gazprom formally selected Sakhalin II expansion as a replacement for Vladivostok LNG.

Nor does it establish that the company had resolved the additional gas-supply problem.

Gazprom’s own announcement was narrower.

It confirmed that both companies saw substantial potential to increase LNG production.

The distinction between recognising potential and approving construction is fundamental.

13. The ownership structure still shaped every decision

The September 2014 corporate announcement repeated Sakhalin Energy’s ownership structure.

Gazprom held 50 per cent plus one share.

Shell held 27.5 per cent minus one share.

Mitsui held 12.5 per cent.

Mitsubishi held 10 per cent.

That arrangement dated from the restructuring completed in 2007.

Before the change, Shell had held a majority interest.

Afterwards, Gazprom became the controlling shareholder.

This remained a defining feature of the company’s Russian business.

Shell could promote expansion.

It could propose technology.

It could bring commercial expertise and experience.

It could participate in engineering studies.

But it could not unilaterally determine the future of Sakhalin Energy.

Nor could it independently allocate Gazprom-controlled Sakhalin III gas reserves to the project.

The proposed third train therefore depended upon decisions extending beyond Shell’s control.

In the absence of a final investment decision, the September meeting should be understood as part of an ongoing negotiation and project-development process.

It was not evidence that every major obstacle had been overcome.

14. What Shell’s annual report tells shareholders

Shell’s 2014 Form 20-F contains another relevant passage.

In its risk disclosures, the company explicitly warned investors about trade controls and sanctions.

Shell described the increasing number and scope of such restrictions and explained that breaches could expose companies and employees to significant penalties.

It specifically referred to additional EU and US restrictions directed at defined oil and gas activities in Russia during 2014.

The document therefore shows that Shell was not presenting sanctions as an irrelevant political issue.

The company recognised them as a material category of operational and legal risk.

There is an important difference, however, between acknowledging sanctions risk and abandoning investments.

Shell’s disclosures indicate that management was responding selectively according to the activities involved.

Shale exploration was paused where the restrictions affected it.

Sakhalin II continued operating.

Proposed LNG expansion remained the subject of discussion.

Taken together, the records describe a company attempting to preserve its Russian commercial interests within an increasingly restrictive legal environment.

That is a more accurate conclusion than suggesting that Shell ignored sanctions altogether. SEC

15. The significance of the 30 September meeting

The meeting was important for three reasons.

First, it demonstrated commercial continuity.

Shell and Gazprom remained actively engaged at the highest executive level despite the escalation of Western sanctions.

Second, it confirmed that Sakhalin II expansion remained a subject of mutual interest.

The proposed increase in LNG production had not disappeared from the agenda.

Third, it occurred during a period in which Shell’s wider Russian portfolio was already being affected by sanctions.

The company’s later SEC filing confirms that some exploration activities were paused during 2014.

This places the September meeting in a more precise historical context.

It was neither an ordinary commercial meeting conducted in politically uncomplicated circumstances nor evidence that Shell had defied the law.

It was a meeting between two longstanding commercial partners attempting to preserve opportunities while the legal and political environment around them was changing.

The outcome remained uncertain.

The additional gas resources had not yet been definitively secured for the proposed third train.

The necessary investment decisions had not all been taken.

And the future scope of Western sanctions remained difficult to predict.

Documentary Findings Established by authenticated corporate records

30 September 2014: Gazprom chairman Alexey Miller and Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden met at Gazprom’s headquarters.

Gazprom’s official announcement confirms that they discussed current and future cooperation, particularly LNG production at Sakhalin II.

Gazprom publicly identified potential to increase LNG production.

The announcement recalled the February 2014 memorandum-roadmap concerning preparation of engineering documentation for a proposed third train.

Sakhalin Energy remained majority-controlled by Gazprom, with Shell retaining approximately 27.5 per cent.

Royal Dutch Shell’s 2014 Form 20-F confirms that Sakhalin II continued operating and produced more than 10 million tonnes of LNG during the year.

Most significantly, the same filing confirms that Shell paused certain Russian liquids-rich shale-exploration activities in 2014 because of EU and US sanctions. Gazprom

Established by contemporaneous reporting

Reuters reported in September 2013 that Shell wanted Gazprom to accelerate Sakhalin II expansion and that additional gas supplies were a central obstacle.

Argus reported on 1 October 2014 that sanctions-related difficulties affecting another proposed Gazprom LNG development were increasing the attraction of Sakhalin II expansion.

Argus also identified South Kirinsky as potentially important to the proposed additional train.

LNG Industry independently confirmed the 30 September meeting and the emphasis on increasing LNG production.

These reports provide valuable commercial context but do not establish undisclosed internal decisions by Gazprom or Shell. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Established by government and judicial records

US and EU restrictions introduced during 2014 affected specified categories of financing, technology and energy development.

They did not automatically prohibit every existing Russian LNG operation.

The Court of Justice of the European Union subsequently examined the validity and interpretation of relevant restrictive measures in the Rosneft proceedings.

That judgment provides legal context but contains no finding of wrongdoing by Shell. EUR-Lex

Not established

The documents do not establish that Shell violated US or EU sanctions.

They do not establish that Shell provided prohibited technology to Gazprom.

They do not establish that the September meeting resulted in a final investment decision.

They do not establish that construction of the third LNG train was authorised in September 2014.

They do not establish that the additional Sakhalin III gas required for expansion had been secured.

They do not establish that Gazprom abandoned Vladivostok LNG solely because of sanctions.

They do not establish that Shell endorsed Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

And they do not establish that Shell’s continued participation in Sakhalin II was itself prohibited by the sanctions framework in force at the time.

Commentary: The Difference Between Staying and Expanding

The most revealing feature of the September 2014 record is the contrast between what Shell was prepared to stop and what it was still prepared to pursue.

Shell’s annual report confirms that sanctions caused the company to pause certain Russian shale-exploration activities.

Yet Gazprom’s official announcement records that Shell’s chief executive was still discussing the prospect of expanding Sakhalin II.

That contrast reveals a strategy shaped by commercial value and legal distinction.

Sakhalin II was already operating.

It had substantial infrastructure.

It had established export customers.

It was producing large volumes of LNG.

Shell retained a valuable minority interest.

The company had strong reasons to preserve those assets.

New shale exploration presented different legal and commercial circumstances.

Some of those activities fell within restrictions introduced in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Shell’s filing confirms that the restrictions had consequences.

But the Sakhalin II relationship survived.

The arrangement illustrates an important feature of economic sanctions.

Their effect is not necessarily uniform.

Targeted restrictions can make one activity legally impossible while leaving another permissible.

They can increase the commercial attractiveness of existing infrastructure even while restricting investment in new projects.

They can constrain technology transfer without immediately stopping production from an established facility.

They can also create uncertainty that delays investment decisions even where the underlying activity is not expressly prohibited.

All those distinctions were relevant to Shell’s Russian interests in 2014.

There is, however, another historical dimension.

Shell had already experienced the consequences of dependence upon Russian political and regulatory decisions.

The 2006 confrontation over Sakhalin II had culminated in the company relinquishing majority control.

By 2014, Gazprom held that control.

Shell therefore entered the sanctions crisis not as the dominant shareholder of an independently controlled project but as a minority participant in a venture controlled by Russia’s state gas company.

That relationship limited Shell’s freedom of action.

It also provided access to an established LNG operation that the company clearly regarded as valuable.

The irony is difficult to overlook.

In 2006, Shell found itself under intense pressure over the future of Sakhalin II.

In 2014, with Russia again at the centre of an international confrontation, Shell was pressing to make the same project larger.

The documentary record does not establish that this strategy was unlawful.

Nor does it establish that it was commercially irrational.

It establishes something more historically revealing.

Shell was prepared to continue investing management attention and project-development effort in cooperation with Gazprom even as sanctions were forcing it to suspend other Russian activities.

Its relationship with the Russian state energy sector had survived the confrontation of 2006–07.

It was now surviving the first year of the Ukraine sanctions crisis.

But a more difficult question remained.

A third LNG train could not operate on diplomatic goodwill and engineering experience alone.

It needed gas.

And the prospective gas supplies lay increasingly close to the activities and technologies that Western sanctions were targeting.

That problem was not resolved by the September meeting.

It was waiting immediately ahead.

Principal Documentary Sources

1. Gazprom — 30 September 2014

Official announcement confirming the meeting between Alexey Miller and Ben van Beurden and the potential for increasing LNG production at Sakhalin II.

Gazprom and Shell approve Sakhalin II potential capacity creep

2. Royal Dutch Shell plc — Annual Report and Form 20-F 2014

Filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 12 March 2015.

The central Shell-authored source for this instalment. Relevant passages include the Russia section of the Upstream review, the table of operating LNG facilities and the risk-factor disclosures concerning sanctions.

Royal Dutch Shell plc: 2014 Form 20-F, SEC filing

3. Gazprom — 23 February 2014

Official memorandum-roadmap concerning preparation of engineering documentation for Sakhalin II’s proposed third LNG train.

Gazprom and Shell sign roadmap for third Sakhalin II LNG train

4. Reuters — 30 September 2013

Contemporaneous reporting of Shell’s concerns that delays in expanding Sakhalin II could result in missed market opportunities.

Preserved in the Donovan archive.

Shell warns Gazprom of price risks as LNG expansion delayed

5. Argus Media — 1 October 2014

Industry reporting examining the September meeting, sanctions-related pressure on Gazprom’s LNG ambitions and the potential role of South Kirinsky gas.

Gazprom backs Sakhalin 2 LNG expansion

6. LNG Industry — 1 October 2014

Independent contemporaneous report confirming the September meeting and the companies’ stated interest in increasing LNG production.

Gazprom and Shell discuss LNG production at Sakhalin

7. Gazprom — 23 October 2013

Official announcement detailing the Kirinskoye subsea development and the wider Sakhalin III resource base.

Russia’s first subsea production facility tested at Kirinskoye

8. US Department of the Treasury — 12 September 2014

Official announcement introducing expanded restrictions affecting specified Russian energy activities.

US Treasury: Expanded Russia sanctions, September 2014

9. European Union — Regulation 833/2014

The legal framework for EU sectoral restrictions concerning Russia’s actions destabilising Ukraine, including subsequent amendments.

Council Regulation 833/2014

10. Court of Justice of the European Union — 28 March 2017

PJSC Rosneft Oil Company v HM Treasury and Others, Case C-72/15.

Official judicial record concerning the validity and interpretation of EU sanctions measures adopted in 2014.

CJEU judgment: Rosneft v HM Treasury

Archive disclaimer: This instalment distinguishes authenticated corporate records, government restrictions, subsequent judicial findings, contemporaneous journalism and editorial interpretation. Shell’s 2014 Annual Report and Form 20-F is treated as the company’s authenticated account of its operations, not as independent verification of every management judgment. Gazprom’s announcements establish the company’s published position rather than the complete content of confidential negotiations.

No sanctions violation by Shell is alleged or established in the material examined here.

Site-wide disclaimer also applies.

NEXT: The Gas Behind the Third Train — South Kirinsky, Shell’s 2015 Agreement and the Field Washington Targeted

The September 2014 meeting left one essential question unresolved.

Where would the additional gas come from?

Gazprom controlled substantial resources within Sakhalin III.

Shell wanted to expand LNG production at the existing Sakhalin II complex.

But bringing those resources into production required further investment, specialised technology and regulatory approval.

The following year would produce two important developments.

On 18 June 2015, Gazprom and Shell signed agreements that advanced their strategic relationship and the proposed third Sakhalin II LNG train.

Then, on 7 August 2015, the US Department of Commerce took an extraordinary step.

It placed the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye oil and gas field itself on the Entity List, requiring licences for exports, re-exports and transfers of items subject to US Export Administration Regulations to that field.

The US government cited concerns about the field’s substantial oil reserves and the risk of supporting restricted deepwater energy development. Justia

This was no longer merely a general restriction affecting Russian energy companies.

It was a measure directed at a specific offshore field whose gas resources had been discussed in connection with the proposed LNG expansion.

The next Shell Leaks File will examine the June 2015 agreements, the role of South Kirinsky and the August 2015 US restrictions — tracing how the gas resource behind Shell and Gazprom’s expansion ambitions became the subject of a remarkable sanctions decision.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 10 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 10, 2026 at 8:09 pm.
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African Union Calls for Support for Climate-Resilient Seeds

The African Union is calling for greater investment in affordable, high-quality, climate-resilient seeds as countries across the continent confront drought, floods, rising temperatures, and growing food insecurity.

But there’s an important distinction here. Innovation shouldn’t mean telling farmers that everything they’ve been doing is wrong and handing them a new technology. Farmers already hold extraordinary knowledge about their crops, their soils, and their communities.

The best innovation happens when researchers, policymakers, businesses, and farmers work together—combining that knowledge with new tools and making sure farmers actually have access to them. Because the goal isn’t technology for technology’s sake. It’s helping farmers grow food, earn a living, nourish their communities, and become more resilient in a climate that is changing faster than any of us would like.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Arthur Medeiros, Wikimedia Commons

The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: Medically Tailored Groceries, Dryland Forests, Climate-Resilient Seeds appeared first on Food Tank.

Niku Argane’s farm sits on a steep hillside in central Ethiopia’s semi-mountainous Gurage Zone, where years of flooding have carved deep gullies through the land. Soil that once produced enough barley and potatoes to feed his wife and four children — and left a surplus to sell in the market — has eroded, while drought has made what land remains harder to cultivate.

“We have never stopped farming, but our production declined because of land degradation,” the 32-year-old said from his farm in Ambele Kebele.

Over the last century, Ethiopia nearly eradicated its forests as trees were cleared for farming, grazing, and fuel. The loss of tree cover and tree roots allowed wind and rain to wash away fertile topsoil and contributed to declining crop yields. That vulnerability is now being compounded by climate change. Ethiopia is among the countries most vulnerable to its effects: Heavier downpours are sluicing away depleted soils and triggering landslides, while more intense droughts, combined with the loss of shade that trees once provided, rapidly dry out the land.

Land degradation costs the country an estimated $4.3 billion a year through smaller harvests and lost income to farmers, which also means there is less food to eat. With more than 100 million Ethiopians dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, the consequences reach far beyond the environment. Climate shocks and crop losses are among the biggest drivers of acute hunger; in 2024, 15.8 million Ethiopians were estimated to need food assistance, roughly 12 percent of the population.

Volunteers plant seedlings on the outskirts of Addis Ababa as part of a nationwide tree-planting drive in early August. Freddie Clayton

Now the country is trying to reverse this trajectory. Argane planted 80 tree seedlings on his farmland and another 50 in a communal area — a small contribution to a vastly larger effort. In just the last seven years, tens of millions of Ethiopians have planted more than 47 billion seedlings across the country in one of the world’s largest environmental restoration campaigns. Volunteers for the program, which aims to plant 50 billion seedlings by 2030, are planting trees to rebuild native forests and integrating them into farmland. In the process, they are sequestering carbon to help protect future generations from ever more extreme weather.

Such programs often fall short, but Ethiopians are finding hope in the scale of their ambitions. “Reforestation is one of the most difficult things you can imagine,” said Aad Kessler, a researcher at the Netherlands’ Wageningen University. “It almost always fails, but this is so big that even if 30 percent of the trees survive, it’s still huge.”

In the early 20th century, forests covered an estimated 35 to 40 percent of Ethiopia. Its highlands were greener, with forests spanning much of the country’s cool, fertile uplands. But as populations grew and settlements spread, trees were cleared for agriculture, pasture, fuel, and construction. As soils lost their fertility, cultivation moved onto increasingly marginal land, including steep slopes, where tillage and the loss of protective vegetation led to the erosion of fertile topsoil, which washed into rivers and reservoirs. By 1989, forest cover was estimated at less than 3 percent, while Ethiopia’s highlands were losing around 1 billion metric tons of topsoil every year. 

After the devastating droughts and famines of the 1970s and 1980s, Ethiopia’s government and international donor organizations began investing heavily in soil and water conservation, excluding livestock from worn-out land, planting trees across the country, and building terraces and check dams — small, low barriers of rocks and logs placed across gullies — to slow the flow of rainwater. By the 2000s, restoration programs were being implemented at increasing scale.

Local women load seedlings from the Mekalu nursery in Adua, Ethiopia. Brent Stirton/Getty Images

The government supercharged that effort in 2019 by turning tree-planting into a nationwide campaign with a scheme known as the Green Legacy Initiative, which mobilized millions of individuals and groups, including farmers, public servants, schools, and religious organizations, and distributed free seedlings across the country. In 2024, the government established the Green Legacy and Landscape Restoration Special Fund, committing 0.5 percent to 1 percent of the annual federal budget — roughly $73 million to $145 million — to restoring landscapes. It was an unusually large commitment for a low-income country, and the program’s success and ambition, according to development experts, contributed to the selection of Ethiopia as the host of next year’s U.N. climate conference — a prestigious honor that will help the nation showcase its greening efforts.

In August, 26.6 million Ethiopians planted 800 million tree seedlings in a single day, according to government figures, beating the previous year’s tally of 714.7 million. One of the volunteers, Yeshihareg Teferi, traveled at sunrise from her home in Addis Ababa to Tulu Dimtu so she could hunch in the rain to dig holes in the mud. It was Teferi’s fifth year participating in the annual event. Previously she’d planted indigenous species, including African wild olive and African fern pine. This time, she chose juniper. “We have a responsibility to ensure future generations inherit a green and fertile environment, rather than barren land,” she said.

There are already signs the work is having an impact.

The government reports that national forest cover rose from 17.2 percent in 2019 to 23.6 percent in 2023, while studies of restored areas have found substantial reductions in soil erosion. Between 2013 and 2023, the annual deforestation rate fell from more than 350 square miles to around 100 square miles. 

Such efforts can also benefit wildlife. In Abijata-Shalla National Park, in the Ethiopian highlands, workers replanted degraded areas and built terraces and contour bunds (small earthen ridges that run across hillsides to slow runoff and allow water to soak into the soil). As trees and native grasses returned, more water infiltrated into the ground, and water levels on lakes in the park began to rise, said Kumera Wakjira, director-general of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority. More water spurred the return of fish and fish-eating birds like cormorants and African darters. Grant’s gazelles and wild dogs are also expanding into areas where they were previously scarce, Wakjira said.

Read Next The Great Plains face a surprising threat: Too many trees Bekah Stolhandske McNeel

But planted trees are not guaranteed to survive. A 2022 study of 176 reforestation projects in Asia found that around half of planted trees did not live five years. And trees alone do not make a forest, said Endalkachew Wolde-Meskel, a soil scientist and senior researcher at the Center for International Forestry Research: That process usually requires the regeneration of grasses and other vegetation, in addition to soil- and water-conservation measures and management by local communities. “The objective is not really ‘plant trees,’” he said. “It is to restore the functioning of the entire landscape.” 

Emiru Birhane Hizikias, an Ethiopian restoration ecologist at Norway’s Nord University, said it was a “blessing, politically speaking,” to have the prime minister lead on tree planting but that the scale of the Green Legacy Initiative had outpaced the systems needed to make it work effectively on the ground. Too often, he said, the focus is on getting huge numbers of seedlings into the earth rather than ensuring their survival. You can’t expect a baby to grow if you don’t care for it, he said, but “that’s how plantation in Ethiopia is being done.” 

Abreham Berta Aneseyee, an environmental scientist at Ethiopia’s Wolkite University and an adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture, disputes that characterization, saying the planting campaign is accompanied by practical advice from government experts in forestry and farming. The experts go from farm to farm, advising smallholders on how to plant and care for different types of seedlings, he said, including how deeply to place them in soil and how to conserve soil with structures like bunds. They also advise farmers on managing forests and protecting trees rather than cutting them down. 

A 2026 study of more than 44,500 seedlings planted in southern Ethiopia under the Green Legacy Initiative in 2023 found that about 80 percent had survived, with rates significantly higher among older seedlings, wet-season plantings, and seedlings whose planters had received training in best “plantation practices.” In Humbo and Boloso Sore districts in Ethiopia’s southwestern Wolaita Zone, the Green Legacy Initiative has been layered onto longer-running efforts to sustainably manage land, with communities building check dams to stabilize gullies, digging half-moon ditches to trap water and let it soak into the soil, and planting trees alongside grasses and other vegetation.

Ethiopia’s approach has few direct parallels in Africa for its combination of political leadership, funding, public mobilization, and scale, said Kessler of Wageningen University. He compared the effort with China’s restoration of the Loess Plateau, one of the world’s most highly eroded regions. In the 1990s, China launched major restoration efforts on the plateau, including a World Bank-backed watershed rehabilitation project and, starting in 1999, the Grain for Green program, which paid farmers to restrict cultivation and plant trees, shrubs, and grasses. By 2016, more than 11,500 square miles of rain-fed cropland had been converted to more dense forest or grassland, contributing to a 25 percent increase in vegetative cover in a decade.

Read Next The deadly experiment that could save the American elm Tik Root

The comparison has limits, though. China paid farmers to take degraded slopes out of cultivation, while millions of Ethiopian smallholders still depend on the land for food and livelihoods. But Kessler said the two efforts shared a fundamental approach: “Do it massively, and then see where you end up.”

Kessler’s work, which includes a government-backed field project in Ethiopia, takes a more participatory approach, involving farmers and communities in decisions about what to restore and how. “Of course it is better [than top-down action],” he said, “but it takes more time.”

Even as Ethiopia invests in rebuilding forests and soils, climate change is altering the conditions landscapes must withstand. In the arid pastoral regions of Afar and Somali, the Green Legacy Initiative focuses on drought-tolerant species, but it is unclear whether the trees planted today will be able to withstand the conditions they face decades from now.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects more frequent and intense rainfall in East Africa as global temperatures rise. In July 2024, exceptionally heavy rainfall in Ethiopia’s Geze Gofa district, in the southern highlands, triggered two landslides that killed at least 257 people. Recent studies also suggest that climate change is making El Niños more frequent and severe, with consequences for East Africa. This summer, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network linked El Niño to “historically poor” summer rains in parts of Ethiopia, leaving some areas with their driest June and July on record. 

For some farmers, the changing climate has already complicated the most basic requirement of restoration: getting seedlings to survive their first season. Belayneh Mamo, 65, a farmer from Ethiopia’s northern and drought-prone Amhara region, relies on July rainfall for his teff, sorghum, maize, and wheat for bulgur. He also receives government-provided coffee, neem, and gesho seeds, but was unable to plant any crop until August, when the season’s first rains arrived. 

“In previous years, September was a period when crops were already developing and food such as bulgur and maize were becoming available for consumption,” he said. “The delays affected the seedlings we plant, our crops, and the availability of animal feed.”

On Argane’s hillside in the Gurage Zone, however, signs of restoration are already visible. Since 2019, he has planted grass, fodder, fenugreek, and fruit trees along the edges of his fields, helping to hold soil in place while providing feed for the four cows, six goats, and three sheep that he keeps for milk and meat. His barley harvest has risen from about 1,800 pounds per acre to roughly 3,200, while the trees and grasses have reduced erosion and slowed the flow of water across his land during heavy rains.

“Restoring degraded land isn’t just about protecting the environment,” Argane said. “It’s also about making life better for my family and community.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Fifty billion seedlings: Can Ethiopia replant its ravaged forests? on Oct 10, 2026.

Why prosecutors are targeting Shell: An unprecedented intervention by public prosecutors

10 October 2026

Brazilian federal prosecutors have launched an unprecedented lawsuit against Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary, seeking approximately $108 million in compensation for the catastrophic 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul. The case could become an important test of whether an oil multinational can be required to compensate victims of a climate-related disaster according to its alleged contribution to historical global greenhouse gas emissions.

Shell has become the target of a potentially landmark climate lawsuit in Brazil.

On Friday, 9 October 2026, Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público Federal, or MPF), working alongside the environmental organisation Instituto Preservar, brought civil proceedings against Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary over the devastating floods that struck southern Brazil in April and May 2024.

The prosecutors are seeking more than 541 million Brazilian reais, approximately US$108 million, in compensation.

The legal argument is potentially far more significant than the monetary demand.

The prosecutors contend that Shell should bear a proportionate share of the damage caused by the floods because of the company’s historical and continuing contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the case described by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the claim attributes approximately 2% of historical global greenhouse gas emissions to Shell’s contribution to global warming.

That figure is part of the claimants’ case. It has not been established as a finding by the Brazilian court.

Nevertheless, the proceedings represent a striking development in the international effort to hold major fossil-fuel companies financially accountable for climate-related damage.

A catastrophe that devastated southern Brazil

The floods that overwhelmed Rio Grande do Sul in 2024 were among the worst natural disasters in modern Brazilian history.

Extraordinary rainfall inundated communities, destroyed homes, damaged infrastructure and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Nearly 200 people died.

Approximately half a million people were displaced.

The destruction extended across residential neighbourhoods, agricultural communities, businesses, transport networks and public facilities.

Porto Alegre, the state capital, became one of the most recognisable images of the disaster as floodwaters submerged streets and buildings.

The scale of the devastation is important to understanding the litigation.

This is not a conventional environmental case involving an oil spill, contaminated site or industrial accident directly attributable to a particular Shell installation.

Instead, prosecutors are attempting to establish responsibility for a disaster associated with the wider consequences of global climate change.

The claim therefore reaches beyond Shell’s immediate operations in Brazil.

It concerns the historical emissions associated with the multinational oil and gas business.

Why prosecutors are targeting Shell

According to the court documents examined by AFP, Brazilian prosecutors argue that Shell’s historical and continuing greenhouse gas emissions, associated with fossil-fuel exploration, production and sales, have contributed to the warming of the planet.

Their case seeks to translate that alleged contribution into a financial responsibility for the consequences of an extreme weather disaster.

The argument is that major fossil-fuel producers should not be insulated from climate-damage claims merely because the resulting harm occurs far from their production facilities.

The proceedings reportedly seek compensation for both collective material damage and collective moral damage.

French-language AFP reporting describes two components of approximately 270 million reais each, together accounting for the reported total of roughly 541 million reais.

The distinction is important.

The prosecutors are not seeking a conventional regulatory fine.

They are pursuing civil compensation for alleged damage resulting from climate change.

The underlying proposition is that the costs of climate-related disasters should not necessarily be borne entirely by governments, taxpayers, insurers and victims.

Instead, the claimants argue that companies whose emissions have contributed to global warming should share those costs.

An unprecedented intervention by public prosecutors

One of the most important features of the case is the identity of the claimant.

Climate litigation against multinational energy companies is no longer unusual.

Environmental organisations, affected communities and individual claimants have brought proceedings in several countries.

But this Brazilian action is different.

It has been initiated by a national public prosecution authority.

Maria Antonia Tigre, director of global climate litigation at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told AFP that this was the first case in which a national prosecutor had sued a major oil company over a climate disaster.

That assessment gives the proceedings international significance.

It suggests that climate-damage litigation may be expanding from private civil claims into cases brought directly by public authorities exercising environmental enforcement and public-interest responsibilities.

If other prosecutors adopt comparable approaches, major fossil-fuel producers could face a wider range of climate-related civil claims.

Whether the Brazilian action succeeds remains uncertain.

But its initiation is itself a development worth recording.

The central legal question: can climate damage be apportioned?

The Brazilian case raises a difficult question.

Climate change results from greenhouse gas emissions accumulated over long periods and originating from numerous countries, industries, businesses and individuals.

How, then, can a court assign legal responsibility for a particular flood to one company?

The Brazilian prosecutors’ proposed answer is proportional responsibility.

Rather than arguing that Shell alone caused the disaster, they seek to attribute a share of responsibility based on the company’s alleged contribution to historical emissions.

The reported figure is 2%.

The legal theory is significant because it attempts to bridge the gap between scientific attribution and legal liability.

Climate science can assess how human-induced warming influences the probability or severity of certain extreme weather events.

Historical emissions research can also estimate contributions associated with major fossil-fuel producers.

But establishing that climate change contributed to an event is not necessarily the same as proving that a particular defendant is legally liable for a specified proportion of the resulting losses.

A court must consider the applicable legal standards, evidence of causation, the defendant’s conduct, the quantification of damages and any available defences.

These are substantial legal obstacles.

The Brazilian claimants will need to persuade the court that their proposed approach satisfies Brazilian law.

The German precedent: a warning, but not a victory for claimants

The Brazilian proceedings arrive against a background of important developments in European climate litigation.

One of the most closely watched cases involved Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya and German energy company RWE.

Lliuya sought to establish that RWE should contribute towards measures addressing flood risks affecting his community in Peru.

In 2025, a German court rejected his individual compensation claim.

However, the judgment was widely regarded as significant because it recognised, in principle, the possibility of civil liability for climate-related damage attributable to major emitters.

The distinction is essential.

The German court did not order RWE to pay compensation.

Nor did it establish that every major emitter is automatically liable for a fixed percentage of climate damage.

Nevertheless, the litigation demonstrated that courts may be prepared to examine proportional climate liability as a legally arguable proposition.

Brazilian prosecutors are now pursuing a related approach, although under a different legal system and in materially different circumstances.

Shell already faces climate-damage litigation in Britain

The Brazilian lawsuit is not the only climate-damage claim confronting Shell.

AFP also draws attention to proceedings in the United Kingdom brought by people affected by Typhoon Odette, known internationally as Typhoon Rai, which devastated parts of the Philippines in December 2021.

Those claimants are pursuing Shell in connection with alleged contributions to climate change and the damage they suffered.

The existence of these proceedings illustrates how climate litigation is developing beyond cases seeking reductions in future emissions.

An increasingly important strand seeks financial redress for damage allegedly associated with emissions produced or enabled by major fossil-fuel companies.

Other claims have been brought against energy and industrial companies in connection with flooding in Pakistan and rising sea levels affecting an Indonesian island community.

The cases involve different defendants, legal systems and factual circumstances.

Their outcomes cannot be assumed to be interchangeable.

But together they demonstrate a developing international strategy: using civil liability to pursue compensation for climate-related losses.

What has Shell said?

At the time of AFP’s initial reporting, Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary had not provided an immediate response to the news agency’s request for comment.

That should not be interpreted as an admission.

The lawsuit contains allegations that Shell is entitled to contest.

The company may dispute the proposed emissions attribution, the alleged causal connection with the floods, the legal basis for proportional liability, the amount of compensation sought or the appropriate defendant.

The publicly reported information does not yet establish the full scope of Shell’s defence.

Nor does the filing of the lawsuit mean that a Brazilian court has accepted the prosecutors’ allegations.

The case is at an early stage.

A reliable assessment of its prospects will require examination of the originating court documents, the applicable legal provisions and Shell’s response.

Why this case matters to Shell shareholders

The immediate financial demand of approximately $108 million is not, by itself, a sum likely to threaten Shell’s financial viability.

The broader implications could be considerably more significant.

If courts begin accepting the principle that major fossil-fuel producers can be required to contribute proportionately to climate-disaster compensation, the resulting financial exposure could extend far beyond any individual case.

Extreme weather events can cause enormous losses.

Potential claims may involve destroyed infrastructure, damaged property, agricultural losses, business interruption, displacement and wider social harm.

For shareholders, the important issue is therefore not simply the amount demanded in Brazil.

It is whether the case advances a legal theory capable of being applied in other jurisdictions.

A single unsuccessful lawsuit may have limited financial consequences.

A successful precedent, however, could encourage further litigation and affect the assessment of long-term legal and financial risks associated with fossil-fuel production.

At present, such consequences remain possibilities rather than established liabilities.

The wider contradiction in Shell’s position

There is also a striking contrast between this development and Shell’s recent financial disclosures.

On 7 October, Shell reported that its indicative refining margin had risen sharply to $42 per barrel.

That disclosure was examined in our recent article:

Shell’s Latest SEC Filing Reveals the Contradictions of Its Energy Transition: Refining Profits, Carbon Costs and Biogas Write-Downs

Three days later, Shell finds itself at the centre of another important climate-related legal development.

The contrast is revealing.

The company’s established oil and gas activities continue to generate substantial commercial opportunities.

At the same time, the long-term environmental consequences associated with fossil-fuel emissions are becoming the subject of increasingly ambitious legal claims.

That tension is likely to remain an important consideration for investors assessing Shell’s future.

A new chapter for the independent Shell archive

The Brazilian proceedings deserve a permanent place in the independent historical record of Shell-related litigation.

The case is distinctive in several respects.

It involves federal prosecutors rather than only private claimants.

It seeks compensation for a specific, catastrophic weather event.

It advances a theory of proportional responsibility based on historical greenhouse gas emissions.

And it targets Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary while drawing on allegations concerning the wider group’s contribution to global warming.

For the purposes of The Shell Leaks Files and the broader Shell litigation archive, the case should be recorded as a newly filed civil climate-damages action.

The reported compensation demand is approximately 541 million reais, equivalent to around $108 million.

The alleged emissions contribution is 2%.

Neither the claimed damages nor the asserted attribution has yet been judicially established.

The exact court, case number and procedural timetable should be added once independently verified.

These distinctions are important because the value of a historical archive depends on separating allegations, documentary evidence and judicial findings.

Conclusion: a potentially historic test of climate responsibility

Brazil’s lawsuit against Shell could become an important test of how the law responds to the financial consequences of climate change.

The prosecutors are advancing a proposition that would have seemed highly ambitious only a few years ago.

They argue that a major fossil-fuel producer should contribute financially to the damage caused by a catastrophic flood because of its historical contribution to global warming.

Shell has not been found liable.

The prosecutors have not yet proved their case.

And substantial questions remain about causation, attribution and the application of Brazilian environmental law.

Nevertheless, the significance of the proceedings should not be underestimated.

For decades, major oil companies have generated revenues from the extraction, production and sale of fossil fuels.

The emerging legal question is whether those companies can also be required to contribute to the costs of climate-related disasters.

Brazilian federal prosecutors have now placed that question directly before a court in proceedings against Shell.

The outcome may matter far beyond Brazil.

Sources

1. Agence France-Presse, 10 October 2026 — Brazil prosecutors sue Shell for $108 million over deadly 2024 floods
2. UOL / AFP, 9 October 2026 — Brazilian prosecutors seek more than R$541 million from Shell
3. Correio do Povo — Federal prosecutors bring Shell flood claim
4. Columbia University — Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
5. Shell plc — Third Quarter 2026 Update Note

Editorial note: This article reports allegations in newly filed civil proceedings. Shell’s liability has not been established. The precise court docket, pleadings and any subsequent company response remain to be independently verified.

The most important aspect of this story is the involvement of Brazil’s federal prosecutors. That gives the case a significance beyond the $108 million demand and makes it particularly relevant to the Shell litigation archive.

AFP +2

 

I can also prepare a strong accompanying editorial image showing the 2024 Brazilian floods, Shell and the new climate lawsuit.

Shell Faces Historic $108 Million Climate Lawsuit in Brazil Over Floods That Killed Nearly 200 People was first posted on October 10, 2026 at 9:29 am.
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The anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the three-year, U.S-funded Gazan genocide it ignited marks the birth of a dark new world where "the unthinkable has become banal," where many thousands of damaged Palestinian children - homeless, toy-less, traumatized, unschooled, with mournful questions about a lost world - have been given only "tents, hunger, and rubble as answers." Zohran Mamdani on the arduous, unfulfilled task before us: "There must be room to mourn every single life."

Precisely one year into what over 100 human rights organizations around the world call "a ceasefire in name only," Gaza remains "Ground Zero" in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In the last three years, Israeli strikes have killed at least 74,254 people, including over 21,500 children, and wounded 175,000 more, killing or wounding more than 1 in 10 of Gaza's pre-war population; health officials estimate tens of thousands more dead remain buried beneath Gaza's 61 million tons of rubble. Since the start of the so-called ceasefire on Oct.10 of last year, at least 1,470 more Palestinians have been killed, including nearly one child a day. No hospital is fully functional, over 1.4 million Palestinians face crisis-level hunger and most Gazan families remain trapped in a devastating cycle of loss, grief, deprivation and uncertainty.

Reports seeping out from a still-mostly-blockaded Gaza describe "entire worlds wiped out" - extended families, neighborhoods, over 80% of all buildings, resulting in nearly 1.9 million Palestinians displaced. Gaza's missing, or last seen detained, handcuffed, tortured, naked, haunt those who survive: "We don't know whether to mourn them or wait for them." During occasional prisoner swaps, Israel hands over images or remains of decomposing bodies of detainees, many handcuffed, blindfolded, missing limbs, clearly tortured. Parents scroll or search through them, all that's left of a long-missing son: "How did I become a mother who hopes to find her child among mutilated corpses? My dream was to hug him. Now I pray simply to bury him."

Others relive brutality they withstood: fires, bombings, multiple evacuations, sights, smells, sounds of phosphorous bombs, drones, tanks; the terror of running to an outhouse fast enough not to "be sniped," as bombs fall the uneasy sleep close enough to outside walls that, if buildings fall, neighbors can dig them out or at least bury them, the first up-close sight of Israeli soldiers swathed in armor, looking "invincible." The orders to strip to underwear, blindfolded, tightly handcuffed behind backs; kneeling on ground of broken glass and rubble; insults, beatings, cold relieved only when their own warm welcome blood from punches runs over them. Trying to pray or sleep, hallucinating "between life and death," when blankets, speaking, changing position is forbidden: "Everything was forbidden except breathing and swift death."

Palestinian detaineePhoto by Activestills

And always there are the children, Gaza's "lost generation," roughly 700,000 students left behind by three years of war and deliberate “scholasticide" that have destroyed 95% of their schools, turned the rest into shelters for the displaced, killed over 20,000 students and 1,000 teachers, seen books burned for fuel for warmth or cooking. At the start of a new school year, the UN and its partners have set up over 500 tent sites - no desks, chairs, books, water, ovens in summer, freezing in winter - to serve up to 100,000 hungry, shell-shocked students struggling to focus in an attempted return to a "normal life" they can't imagine, who've grown up falling asleep to the sound of bombs, "their entire existence one of life amid rubble, tents, stones and sand," writes Tareq Hajjaj of kids often too young to remember what a home or school was.

Hajjaj fled for Cairo in 2024 so his only child wouldn't "grow up believing the whole world looked like Gaza." He left behind 15 nieces and nephews whose "expectations for ordinary life" he's seen shrink; on one video call, a six-year-old nephew saw him sitting on a sofa and asked how he fit it in his tent, and they dream only of a bigger, dryer tent. In the occupied West Bank, residents likewise endure new Israeli gates that turn villages into "an effective cage," Bedouin families are expelled, settlers steal land, livestock, homes, olive groves harvested by Palestinian generations past. This is not a Palestinian "superhuman capacity" for resilience, Hajjaj argues, but "the ordinary human behavior of people who have no other choice, who are left alone to their fate." To cope, they dismiss the hardship with “aadi,” Arabic for normal -"it is what it is" - but "there is nothing normal about it."

Many Gazans are still surviving on a fraction of the food aid they need.Getty Image

In a deeply complicit America that contributed over $30 billion to the enduring carnage, the truth of what our blood money has wrought slowly seeps out. Last month, the New York Film Festival premiered NAZA, the Guardian-produced documentary by two Israeli filmmakers that offers a grim "Window Into Systems of Mass Killings" in a Gaza where rabid Zionists argued there are "no innocent people." NAZA, the Hebrew acronym for civilian deaths as high as 500 for one legit target, presents damning testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers, faces obscured from Israeli retribution, who veer from naming their genocidal acts to rationalizing them through performative nods toward their guilt - a longtime form of Israeli sort-of-moral-reckoning with state violence known as "shooting and crying" that critics dub "addiction to the mediated obscene." The film will stream for free in November on The Guardian website.

This week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani proffered a more heartfelt, equitable reckoning with what remains "a moral tear in the universe" by attending a peace vigil and press conference to commemorate the grim anniversary. As expected, he caught flak from both sides when he called out both Hamas' “horrific war crimes” - he's a Muslim "traitor" - and Israel's “devastating, ongoing genocide” - he's an "anti-Semite." Calmly, he noted, he "signed up for this," and will continue to insist on it, citing the need to equally mourn and extend human rights to the over 1,100 Israelis killed and 74,000 Palestinians subsequently killed. "This is part of what it means to believe in a sense of humanity, " he said. "We need not choose between which death we will mourn and which we will ignore, and we must reckon with the fact that all of it is to be opposed.”

A ceasefire in name only: The mother of 8-year-old Amal al-Mughayir mourns her death in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis last month.Photo by Doaa Albaz

Further glad proof of that reckoning was the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to “Navi” Pillay, 85, South African jurist, former U.N. human rights chief and member of the ICC who has led decades-long fights seeking accountability for apartheid, wartime rape and most recently the Gaza genocide. The Nobel committee cited Pillay's “exceptional courage”; noting her last report naming Gaza a genocide, she responded, "Why would you need courage to speak the truth?" Fittingly, Pillay learned of the award while at Germany's Nuremberg Forum, where Nazis went on trial in 1945: "I was sitting here minding my own business, listening to the panel present their research, because you’re always learning.” When colleagues applauded her, Pillay won the Internet by slyly adding, "Thank you so much. If you clap a little more, I may share this prize with President Trump."

Last year, Pillay was also awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. She dedicated it to “all the survivors of international crimes” and to “defenders of international justice (who) ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign.” Joining her righteous fight is Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza and winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Recently, per Zeteo, Toha wrote A Letter of Sympathy to the President of the United States after he saw posts online mocking Trump when he was seen wincing at the “deafening sound" of a military flyover for his autocrat bestie Chinese President Xi. "I didn’t like the tone of many of those posts,” Toha wrote. "I don't blame you for such a reaction/ I have reacted like this, and worse, hundred of times..."

To wit:
"My parents, wife, kids, and siblings have too.
So all of us now
know how
that sound feels.

In 2008, I was 16
on the roof of our house in Beit Lahia,
standing with my father, watching his pigeons in their coop,
when an Israeli, U.S.-made F-16
flew low, like a shaving machine,
before razing a neighborhood.

I panicked at its piercing shriek,

but also at the sight of the missiles

mounted beneath its wings.

But Mr. President, all of us, except you, know
the screech of a missile
or the blast of an explosion.
Do you know what’s louder than the screech and the blast?

The voice of a mother in Jabalia Camp,
begging me on October 31, 2023,
to search for the bodies of her husband and children
under the rubble
not just of her house,
but of the entire neighborhood.

The desperate pleas of 5-year-old Hind Rajab
from her uncle’s car in January 2024,
and the 335 bullets fired at her
before, during, and after the call.

The trickle of tears on the cheek of a father
who returned with no bread for his kids in a tent
in Khan Younis, and the screams of an infant
whose mother’s breast had dried up.

The heartbeat of 18-year-old Ahed
as her uncle, Dr. Hani Bseiso,
amputated her leg on a kitchen table,

without anesthesia.

It was dark!

The grinding footsteps of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyya
as he walked toward the tank in his white coat.

I can hear the sound of his disappearance.

And I can still hear and hear more!

But do you know what will be much louder than all?

The sound of the gavel
in the court of justice."