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• About three in 10 U.S. drivers think there’s nothing wrong with speeding, according to a AAA poll. The reality is, there’s plenty wrong with it, like the fact that it kills people. Nearly a third of traffic deaths involve excessive speeds. (Jalopnik)
• Miriam Pinski argues that one reason transit projects take so long and cost so much is because we ask them to do too much — beautify the neighborhood, save the environment, create jobs, etc. — when the most important thing is to create a reliable system people will choose to ride (Works in Progress). Meanwhile, Reece Martin went into even greater depth about the same topic (The Transit Brief).
• The Federal Railway Administration is loosening a lot of train safety regulations. (Trains)
• The California legislature sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill cutting red tape for high-speed rail. (EIN Presswire)
• Maryland’s $22 billion, six-year transportation budget includes just $100 million for Red Line planning (Daily Record). Meanwhile, an audit found that the state failed to collect more than $800 million in tolls (Maryland Matters).
• West Virginia groups asked a federal court for an injunction to stop the last phase of the Corridor H freeway project. (WDTV)
• The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy opposes Florida’s plan to use federal funds for EV chargers for flying taxis instead.
• Pittsburgh is replacing its 30-year-old light rail cars. (WTAE)
• Portland is considering offering city government employees free transit passes while Interstate 5 is closed for construction. (Willamette Week)
• Colorado has become a national leader on clean transportation, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
• Governing magazine honored Randy Clarke as one of its public officials of the year for revitalizing the D.C. Metro.
• Riders on Charlotte’s Gold Line now have to request a stop when they want to get off the light rail train. (Queen City News)
• The European Union wants member states to make the default urban speed limit 30 kilometers per hour, or about 20 miles per hour (Euro Cities). Birmingham, England has already beat them to the punch (BBC).
• Piggybacking on the discourse Streetsblog NYC stirred up over bike helmets, Belgium has made them mandatory for scooters that go over 20 kph. (Zag Daily)

Agriculture’s climate emissions are rising but fully funding conservation can slow them Anthony Lacey September 2, 2026 Anne Schechinger, M.S. September 2, 2026 Overview

• Agriculture produces around 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the sector’s emissions are rising.
• Under current policies, that 10% could jump to between 18% and 41% by 2050.
• The next farm bill should prioritize and fully fund regenerative agriculture practices to stop the sector from becoming the largest source of emissions.

Agriculture could become the nation’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2050.

Most other sectors of the economy, especially transportation and electricity, are expected to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions dramatically in the coming decades. That decline is mostly due to voluntary industry efforts and changing technology.

Agriculture’s climate pollution is driven overwhelmingly by nitrous oxide and methane. Nitrous oxide accounts for 52% of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, while methane accounts for another 46%. And the sector’s emissions keep rising – they’re projected to go up a quarter of a percent every year through mid-century.

That should be a wake-up call for Congress. 

Agricultural conservation practices – like riparian forest buffers, tree establishment, diversified crop rotations and nutrient management – can help reduce climate emissions or store carbon, so agriculture doesn’t become the biggest source of emissions. 

These practices also have other benefits, such as reducing air pollution and protecting waterways. 

But the billions of dollars both the House and Senate farm bills propose to cut from federal conservation programs would make it harder for farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Congress, through the farm bill, should maintain conservation program funding, and prioritize the money for regenerative practices, instead of continuing to send so much money to structural practices that bring little, if any, climate emissions reductions. 

Agriculture’s growing share of emissions

Agriculture is responsible for at least 10% of annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. When combined with emissions from fertilizer production, the sector’s share is even higher.

Climate models show that if the sector’s emissions increase slightly while emissions from other sectors fall, as projected, agriculture’s share of U.S. emissions will grow.

Agriculture ranks fourth among U.S. economic sectors for greenhouse gas emissions, behind transportation, industry and electricity and ahead of buildings and “other” sources.

But that ranking is unlikely to last.

Under policies in place today, agriculture’s share of emissions is expected to almost double by 2050, from 10% to 18%. Agriculture would move up to being the third largest greenhouse-gas-producing sector, after industry and transportation.

But the U.S. has previously made international climate commitments, including through the Paris Agreement, that have led to federal rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gases from most other sectors, including industry and transportation. 

Even though the Trump administration – in both the first and second terms – withdrew from the Paris climate pact, the industry and transportation sectors are still rapidly reducing their emissions.

There are no broad federal greenhouse gas rules in place to force cuts in agriculture’s emissions. As industry, transportation and other sectors lower their overall emissions, agriculture’s share rises – unless the sector also acts to cut emissions. 

Under the scenario in which the U.S. reduces total emissions to levels agreed on in the Paris Agreement, the agriculture sector would make up 41% of total U.S. emissions in 2050. In this scenario, agriculture would be the economic sector producing the most greenhouse gas emissions, because the other sectors would severely cut their emissions. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. U.S. emissions by economic sector in 2026, and predicted emissions in 2050 under two scenarios

Image

Source: EWG, using data from Energy Innovation’s Energy Policy Simulator.

Agriculture must reduce its emissions to avoid becoming the No. 1 source of U.S. climate emissions. (See Figure 2.) Scientists warn that if emissions from agriculture don’t go down, the worst impacts of the climate crisis will be inescapable.

Figure 2. If the U.S. follows its international commitments in other sectors, agriculture could top 40% of emissions by 2050

Image

Source: EWG, using data from Energy Innovation’s Energy Policy Simulator.

Nitrous oxide and methane are agriculture’s main climate emissions

Agricultural soil management is the main driver of the sector’s nitrous oxide emissions, particularly the widespread use of fertilizer on crops like corn. Microbes in soil turn nitrogen from fertilizer and manure into nitrous oxide.

Even though nitrous oxide makes up a small share of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, it is a potent greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide stays in the atmosphere for over 100 years and has a global warming potential 273 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Global nitrous oxide emissions grew by 40% between 1980 and 2020, and they are expected to increase another 30% between 2020 and 2050. Corn production makes up over half of all nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture.

Nitrous oxide does not just contribute to climate change; it also depletes the ozone layer. And ammonia nitrous oxides can form with other compounds to create particulate matter, with exposure leading to premature deaths. 

Methane makes up the second largest share of greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. agriculture. Most agricultural methane emissions come from livestock. Enteric fermentation from beef and dairy cattle – their natural digestion process – accounts for about 25% of total U.S. methane emissions. 

Manure management also contributes to both methane and nitrous oxide emissions, making up 9% of total U.S. methane emissions and 4% of total nitrous oxide emissions. 

Methane does not stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide, but it has a global warming potential 28 times that of carbon dioxide over 100 years. 

Regenerative agriculture practices can reduce emissions

Conservation practices implemented on farm fields can help to lower agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A 2022 report from the Boston Consulting Group and the Walton Family Foundation found that practice changes could slash greenhouse gas emissions from farming by almost 22%. 

The report showed emissions could go down as a result of changes in fertilizer applications, tillage practices, grazing management, the use of cover crops, livestock feed additives, soil amendments and the targeted use of trees, among other practices. 

EWG found in a 2025 analysis that many conservation practices can reduce farming’s greenhouse gas emissions. Even if they are adopted on only a small number of acres, they can have a big climate impact. 

The conservation practices applied to Midwest corn acres that would most lower climate emissions are riparian forest buffers, tree or shrub establishment, hedgerow planting and windbreak establishment.

Other practices, including no-tillage, cover crops, and diversifying crops so there is a conservation crop rotation, would also reduce climate emissions. 

But federal conservation program funding needs to be prioritized for practices that help farmers reduce climate emissions and adapt to extreme weather conditions tied to intensifying climate change. 

EWG has identified a list of regenerative agriculture practices that decrease a farm’s greenhouse gas emissions and increase climate resilience. 

Farmers can receive funding to implement these regenerative practices from the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, one of the largest federal conservation programs. 

But EQIP spending must be reformed. In 2025, only $660.9 million from EQIP, or 39% of all payments from the program, went to farmers for practices on EWG’s regenerative practice list. Only four of the top 10 paid practices were regenerative: cover crops, brush management, forest stand improvement, and pasture and hay planting. 

Prioritizing funding

Six of the 10 most funded practices that were not regenerative were structural, building or equipment practices, which together received $427.1 million. These are practices like irrigation pipelines and animal waste storage facilities, which rarely benefit the climate.

Farmers collected hardly any money for some of the conservation practices that are the best at reducing emissions. Two practices that would generate substantial emissions reductions on Midwest corn acres – riparian forest buffer and hedgerow planting – received only $423,000 and $735,000 from EQIP nationally in 2025, respectively. 

More conservation funding must be prioritized for regenerative practices that have climate benefits. Adoption of more of these practices could slow the growth of agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions so the sector does not produce the largest share of U.S. emissions by 2050.

The versions of the farm bill proposed by the House and Senate cut conservation spending by billions of dollars, including reducing funding for EQIP. 

If these cuts were to go into effect, they would hurt farmers and the climate. 

NSW is looking at tariff reform to encourage big gas users to switch to heat storage.

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Transgrid might be able to claw back some of the more than $1 billion in cost blowouts it has incurred on Project EnergyConnect, but probably not through a re-do of its revenue determination, says AER.

The post Regulator “not satisfied” with Transgrid’s plan to recover transmission cost blowouts, but doesn’t rule it out appeared first on Renew Economy.

A groundbreaking compressed air energy storage project that promises to provide up to eight hours of storage for the blackout prone Broken Hill grid has the green light from the market operator.

The post “Complex and innovative:” Compressed air energy storage project cleared to support blackout-prone grid appeared first on Renew Economy.

Keep It In The Ground August Report Tamarack Sulfide Copper Mine Meeting – Blaine, MN (August 14, 2026) A public meeting on the proposed Tamarack sulfide copper mine was held in Blaine, Minnesota. Upon entering, attendees were greeted by eight tables staffed by mining company representatives, positioned next to a tray of lemon-and-cucumber water, cookies, […]

The high-profile murders in July by ICE agents of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo (52 years old) in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero (25 years old) in Maine six days later have added to the growing list of shootings by immigration officials. There have been 41 shootings by ICE and CBP officials since the start of Trump’s second term, in which 11 people have been killed.

This is a direct result of Trump’s terrifying escalation of his mass deportation agenda.

In the face of growing scrutiny, the Trump administration had signaled that it would pause ICE traffic stops. But it quickly reversed that and gave the green light to murder with impunity. Instead of being held accountable for its lethal actions, ICE, a brutal and racist agency, has been rewarded with billions of dollars in federal funding.

The removal of TPS status, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June, has now put thousands of Haitians in peril.

Trump will not relent: his attack on migrant workers is the centerpiece of his authoritarian project. It’s the way he divides and conquers the multiracial, multinational working class.

He aims to keep us fighting among ourselves while he cuts taxes for the rich, guts social programs for workers and jacks up funding for imperialist wars. Only working-class resistance can stop this reign of terror.

The current violence is integral to the very nature of the border regime and police. The ruling class divides the working class globally to pit workers against each other. And they maintain migrant workers as a cheap labor force without democratic and union rights.

In the midst of deep social crises, the attacks are only getting worse. ICE continues to escalate its assault on immigrants. Both capitalist parties—the Democrats and Republicans—created ICE and have used it to ramp up arrests, detentions, and deportations.

They also bankrolled the massive expansion and militarization of police forces across the country and have used them against workers and disproportionately against people of color, especially Black people, with impunity. And as the murder of Corey Ruiz last month, an unhoused 38-year-old Black man from Madison, WI, brutally shows, the police continue to kill Black people at nearly three times the rate of white people.

The police are part of the same regime of class rule. They break strikes. They repress protests. They target radical movements of workers and the oppressed. They serve and protect the ruling class. ICE and the police collaborate in enforcing the existing class and racial order.

The Democrats have long been just as guilty as the Republicans, not only paving the way for the right wing but actively increasing border militarization, deportations and funding for the police.

Now Trump has escalated the attack beyond anything we have seen so far. Behind his agenda is an extreme form of authoritarian nationalism driven by his clique of oligarchs. Their agenda is class war at home, imperialist aggression against Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland and China, and a new form of autocratic rule.

ICE and the police are key to this project. Increased funding means that ICE  would rank as the fourteenth largest military budget in the world.

Democratic mayors in city after city have not resisted these developments but collaborated with them. Their police forces have worked hand in glove with ICE.

The resistance has been led not by the political establishment but rather by migrant organizers. They knew all this was coming and they prepared across the country, setting up emergency response networks, joining with working class organizations, and deepening community outreach and defense.

With this foundation in place, when Trump escalated his assault on migrants, our multiracial, multinational working class was prepared to respond with mass self-defense. Protests have erupted in city after city from LA to Chicago to Minneapolis to Houston, and throughout the state of Maine.

The workers and oppressed of Minneapolis gave Trump his biggest defeat. Despite the high risks of organizing and the stakes of the struggle, they continued to stand up against ICE, CBP and the police, looking to the model of the George Floyd rebellion and building on deep bonds of solidarity and traditions of organizing. So, when Trump deployed ICE and murdered Renée Good and Alex Pretti, among so many others, the people of Minneapolis shut the city down.

Trump reacted, firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and demoting Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. But he did not relent. He brought in Tom Homan, who before serving in both Trump administrations was appointed by President Obama to lead the deportation branch of ICE. He was assigned to his latest role by Trump to achieve the same ends with different tactics of deploying agents in a less public-facing manner.

The mass resistance forced the Democrats to be seen as doing something different. They held up funding for ICE. But their only demands were more training, removing masks, and, of course, body cameras. We know that none of these “reforms” stop cops everywhere from brutalizing and killing people. This is not resistance, but collaboration.

Given the continuing escalation of attacks on immigrant workers— the ever-growing numbers of detentions, deportations, and killings on the streets and in custody—it is an urgent priority to build working class solidarity against Trump’s assaults. Political clarity in this moment is a life and death matter, and we cannot afford to have illusions in the two-party system.

Obviously the Republicans are our enemies. But we cannot trust the Democrats either. We can only rely on ourselves. This means that regardless of what we do at the ballot box, we have to build the kind of struggle that can provide a counterweight to politicians’ default mode of capitulation to the system.

This is a dangerous moment. Trump is a wounded beast who is becoming more authoritarian and erratic. He lost in Minneapolis. He is losing the war in Iran. He’s plummeting in polls. And in response, he is threatening our right to free and fair elections.

Steve Bannon, who remains a Trump confidant, is even clamoring for ICE to be deployed at the polls to suppress the votes of Black and Brown people and rig the elections in favor of the GOP. Democracy hangs in the balance.

We must organize to defend what is left of our electoral rights after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. But we also know that elections will not stop state violence because both parties are part of the problem. Lesser evilism enables the greater evil. Only mass working-class action can pose an alternative. We are not yet ready, but we can direct all our energies to becoming more organized so that we can rise to the challenge of the moment.

Depending on locations, we can fight to create or strengthen Fair and Impartial Policing Policies (FIPPS) that prevent collusion between ICE and the police, we can demand discipline and accountability for criminal violence by agents, we can build and expand defense networks so that whenever ICE comes for someone, they are met with organized resistance.

And above all, we must build the fight to defund the police and abolish ICE, and to fund the pillars of working-class communities: jobs, education, affordable housing, healthcare, public transportation, and environmental measures that can mitigate the climate crisis.

If we are to succeed in these greater goals, we need mass community protests that are bigger, more working-class, and more rooted in unions than those we have seen so far. Only such mass actions can stop the right or pressure the Democrats.

These are necessary objectives to confront the immediate crisis. They are also part of the long-term work of advancing solidarity across divisions of nationality and community toward the goal of liberation for the working class, which can only be achieved in a post-capitalist society through the abolition of borders, the police, and prisons.

There has been a lull in struggle in the run-up to the midterm elections. But once this ends, we have no choice but to ramp up protests in the streets and in the workplace. This is the only way we can prevent more devastating murders by bloodthirsty agents of the state.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Chad Davis; modified by Tempest.

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Wendell Berry, a farmer, writer, and advocate whose work challenged industrial agriculture and defended the ties between land, food, and community, died at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky, according to the New York Times (NYT). He was 92.

A poet, novelist, essayist, teacher, conservationist, activist, and farmer, Berry resisted easy categorization. “Berry has refused to specialize,” Charles Hudson wrote in the Georgia Review.

Throughout his five-decade career, Berry argued that agriculture was inseparable from the health of the land and the communities that depend on it. He questioned the consolidation and industrialization of farming while championing small farms, local economies, and responsible stewardship.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1934, Berry grew up in Henry County, where his family had farmed for generations. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Kentucky before joining Stanford University’s creative writing program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow.

He later traveled to Europe and taught in New York, but felt increasingly drawn back to his roots. Berry returned to Port Royal in the 1960s. He and his wife, Tanya, settled on a 125-acre farm, where they raised sheep and crops. He spent the rest of his life there writing and farming.

Living in his native landscape kept him accountable to the place and people he described, Berry told the NYT in a phone interview in 2018 for his obituary.

From his home, Berry analyzed the consequences of an agricultural system increasingly defined by consolidation, mechanization, chemicals, and soil degradation. He examined the disappearance of small farms and rural communities, and how their absence threatened individual liberty, local autonomy, and economic independence.

Those concerns became the foundation of his body of writing. Berry published more than 50 books of poetry, fiction, and essays, all written by hand during daylight hours. His farmhouse had electricity, but he refused to use electric lights because, he said, the power was supplied by strip-mined coal.

His 1977 book The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture argues that agriculture is the foundation of America’s culture. The book questioned U.S. policies promoting practices that he argued lead to overproduction, pollution, and soil erosion.

Berry examined these ideas further in The Gift of Good Land and Home Economics, collections that examining organic farming. He argued that the values driving industrial agriculture were eroding family farms and weakening what he regarded as a foundation of American society.

In a New Perspectives Quarterly interview Berry commented that large-scale agriculture is morally as well as environmentally unacceptable: “We must support what supports local life, which means community, family, household life—the moral capital our larger institutions have to come to rest upon. If the larger institutions undermine the local life, they destroy that moral capital just exactly as the industrial economy has destroyed the natural capital of localities—soil fertility and so on. Essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds in the soil.”

The issues that animated Berry’s essays also shaped his fiction. Through novels and short stories set largely in the fictional Kentucky town of Port William, he chronicled generations of farmers, families, and neighbors confronting the economic and technological changes reshaping rural life.

Berry also carried his convictions beyond the page. He joined protests against the Vietnam War, nuclear power, mountaintop-removal coal mining, coal-fired power plants, and the death penalty.

In 1979, Berry was arrested for trespassing while protesting the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant in Madison, Indiana. Recalling the episode in 2010, he said, “People asked if I wanted to be arrested and I said, ‘Hell No’ but I was willing to be.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities described him in 2012 as “cheerful in dissent” and a person who “writes to document and defend what is being lost to the forces of modernization.”

His writing and advocacy earned more than 30 honors. President Barack Obama awarded Berry the National Humanities Medal for his achievements as a poet, novelist, farmer, and conservationist, and the National Book Critics Circle honored him with its Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

He also earned honors including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award, the John Hay Award and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, according to the Poetry Foundation.

His ideas continue through The Berry Center, established in 2011 to put Berry’s “writings to work” by supporting farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.

Food Tank Co-founder and President Danielle Nierenberg had the privilege of both meeting and hearing Berry speak over the last two decades. She says that he inspired so many of us as food and agriculture system advocates not only with his poems and books, but his love of the land and farmers.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Berry is survived by his son, Pryor, who goes by Den, two sisters, Mary Jo Berry and Martha Baxter, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

“There’s not enough I could say about him to do him justice,” his daughter, Mary Berry, told the Associated Press.

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 Wikimedia

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The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently announced two WaterSMART programs funding stream restoration projects, with multiple rounds of funding through 2028. The Enhancing Water Resources Projects...

It is once again time to vote for MEIC’s board members. Only MEIC members can vote in the MEIC board election. MEIC members are those who have contributed financially or with volunteerism within the last year. If you have questions or concerns about your ballot or the process of voting, contact Denise at drothbarberatmeic.org. Please …

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This is a re-post from By the Numbers by Hannah Ritchie

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about why the UK needs to get its act together and build some new reservoirs. It hasn’t built one in my lifetime — despite adding 10 million people — and the mismatch between winter and summer rain is probably going to get worse.

Someone asked a very reasonable question: why don’t we just build some desalination plants instead? Reservoirs are pretty big infrastructure projects. They constantly get blocked by local communities. They clearly disrupt the ecosystems and environments where they’re built.

Now, a lot of you will immediately think this is an insane idea. Do you realise how much energy desalination uses?!

I admit, it does seem a bit mad. Rather than just collecting freshwater in a big hole before it goes into the ocean, we’ll let it run in there, get all salty, then use a bunch of energy to pull the salt back out again.

For a long time, I had also held the “desalination consumes so much energy” tightly. It was a mantra I’d been taught a long time ago, and never updated. That is, until a few years ago, when I dug into the latest numbers. Supplying drinking and household water through desalination is really quite cheap, and uses far less energy than I’d have guessed.

How would these numbers work out for the UK? By that, we’re really talking about England, because that is where most of the water demand will be.

The Environment Agency estimates that by 2050, England will need to fill a deficit of 5 billion litres per day.1 Reverse osmosis from seawater consumes around 4 kWh per cubic metre (m3).2 Or 4 Wh per litre. That means we’d need 7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity to meet all of England’s additional demand from desalination.3

The UK consumes around 290 TWh of electricity a year, so this would add a little over 2% to our annual demand.4 That’s not that much.

The UK’s electricity demand is already set to roughly double by 2050 to meet growing demand from the shift to electrified transport, heating, and industry. An extra 1% or 2% to have adequate water supplies doesn’t seem like a huge deal.

Producing that extra electricity has some (but small) environmental impact, whether it’s the materials or the land use. They also have the problem of managing brine — the plant’s output that they need to discharge somewhere. But reservoirs have environmental costs, too. How do they compare on other measures?

Why wouldn’t we go for desalination?

England already has a desalination plant — Beckton in London — which gives us some insights into how this goes.

How long does it take to build them?

I first thought this would be a win for desalination. Historical experience is actually quite positive. The Beckton plant took six years to build; the first planning application was submitted in 2004, and it was completed in 2010. Compare that to the Abingdon reservoir, which has been a saga going on for more than 15 years.

The prospects for desalination plants looked good until I found out that two plants — Bacton and Mablethorpe — in the early feasibility stages are not expected until at least 2040. That’s no better than a reservoir. It seems that Beckton was built under a far simpler regulatory regime that no longer exists. Desalination projects will be stuck in the long planning and approval queues that almost every infrastructure project now faces.

How many would we need?

If they were the same size as the Beckton one, we’d need around 50.5 The desalination plant the UK has built is small. We could dramatically reduce that by building much larger plants. The Sorek plant in Israel, for example, has a capacity five or six times larger. With these designs, we’d need around 8.

Would they be expensive?

Building desalination plants would be more expensive than many alternatives. The government plans to fill a lot of the water deficit, not through supply solutions like desalination or reservoirs, but by fixing leakages in the water system (which are pretty large) and improving efficiency. Those solutions obviously make sense and are far cheaper than building large infrastructure projects (although there are diminishing returns: the first leaks are very cheap to fix, but there is a tail where things get increasingly expensive).

But for the remaining gap that needs to be filled with new supplies, is it cheaper to desalinate or to build a reservoir?

There are two ways to compare these: the upfront cost to build, and how expensive water is over the lifetime of the project.

Reservoirs are not automatically cheaper than desalination plants. Costed over their lifetime (which can be more than 80 years), they often are. But in the near- to medium-term, I don’t think they clearly win on economics. Reservoirs do come with high upfront costs, even if they’re then cheaper to run. Recent figures from Severn Trent put the average capital cost at £8.12 million per Ml per day for reservoirs, compared with £9.77 million per Ml per day for desalination.6 Desalination is around 20% more expensive to build. But these projected costs have a habit of ballooning, so I could quite plausibly believe that the inverse becomes true.

Desalination plants in the UK are expensive by international standards. In the UK, it costs somewhere between $1.50 and $12 per m3. That range is so large because it depends on how often the desalination plant is running (we’ll come on to this later). That compares to around $0.50 in the Middle East, $1 in Australia, and $2 to $3 in the US.

There are a couple of reasons why it’s more expensive. The UK doesn’t have much experience building desalination plants, so it misses out on some of the learning that drives down costs. Its current plant and proposed ones are small, so we miss out on economies of scale. The UK has strict planning regulations that extend timelines and are costly, even before construction begins. Finally, its plants would be used intermittently — probably only in the summer, and not even every summer. That redundancy drives up costs compared to a plant that runs continuously, as in countries like Australia or the Middle East.

The real problem with desalination plants in the UK is how rarely they’d run

The places where desalination works well have one thing in common: they’re running almost all the time. They don’t just get turned on in a drought. They’re there to provide basic water services year-round.

That’s not how the UK’s current desalination plant works. It’s not how its future ones would work either.

This affects the economics: the unit price is lower for plants running 24/7. But it also affects their reliability.

The Beckton plant was completed more than 15 years ago, and it has only been switched on 5 times. When the UK was facing severe droughts in 2022, it was ordered to come online. Despite assurances that it was ready to go online, it was not. The plant did not run and provided no help whatsoever during the crisis period that it was specifically built for.

This year was a repeat of that. Most of England was in drought this summer. The Beckton plant was “unusable” because it needed “essential operational upgrades”.

The problem is that the infrastructure that is almost never used does not go through the same continual operational testing as stuff that runs continuously.

Here’s an excerpt of a government examination with the CEO of Thames Water:

Chris Weston: The first thing I would say is we have a team at the desalination plant that is working very hard to try to make it work.

Chair: Has it ever worked properly?

Chris Weston: It has worked in the past.

Chair: It is not going to work this year though?

Chris Weston: No, and I share your concerns. The desalination plant is a big problem for us. I wonder why it was built in the first place.

Chair: Two hundred and fifty million pounds.

Chris Weston: Yes, I accept that. It is not a good story, it was not a good investment, and there are no excuses about it. I would point out one thing with the desalination plant: at the moment, it relies on a very complicated and expensive process. Within it, it has certain treatment membranes. Those treatment membranes are at the end of their life.

This is nothing specific to the UK. We see it in Australia, too. Desalination plants have worked well in Perth because they are used as a key source of drinking water, and these plants run almost continuously.

Elsewhere, the story is similar to Beckton’s. Melbourne’s plant was completed in 2012, but mothballed until 2017, when it started delivering water for the first time. The government had agreed contracts to pay for this every year, despite receiving no water in return. In Adelaide, the plant sits idle for most of the wetter months. But Sydney has gone in the other direction: in 2023, the government stopped regarding it as an on-off backup, and it now runs close to a full-time operation. Maybe that’s something Britain can learn from.

For me, this is the crux of it.

I am not worried about the energy demands of desalination for the UK. I think adding 1% to 2% to our electricity demand is not unmanageable. I’d be happy with that trade-off if it reduced the environmental impact of reservoirs and unsustainable extraction from existing aquifers.

The problem is that reserving desalination for emergency situations does not seem to work well. It hurts the economics. It means they sit idle for years, and then are not ready to go when a crisis hits. Desalination plants work far better when you need continuous freshwater supplies. For Britain, that means they’d be far better suited to relieving pressure on existing aquifers (which is less stop-start) than to being kept on reserve for drought management.

If we build them, we should make sure we actually use them.

1 This is partly due to population growth, partly due to climate change, but actually the biggest driver is more water resources to reduce pressure on existing aquifers in environmentally-sensitive areas.

2 This is on the higher end of the estimates, but I'm trying to be conservative/harsh here.

3 5 billion * 365 * 4 = 7.3x10 12 Wh. That's 7 billion kWh (or 7 TWh). One point to note is that electricity generation also uses water (how much depends on the electricity source). But even if this extra demand was being supplied by gas (which uses the most water), it would be far less than 1% of the water deficit: millions rather than billions of m3.

4 7 / 290 * 100 = 2.4%

5 Thames Water previously scoped the plant to have a capacity for around 150 million litres per day. But has since said that its more realistic capacity is around 100 million litres.

6 This report cites a range of £1000 to £9000 per ML. I've converted that to cubic metres, and dollars. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/157464/html/

(Photo credit: Bold Nebraska)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 1, 2026

Airplane Banner Over Osborn-Ricketts Senate Debate Reads: “Billionaire Ricketts Supports Data Centers”
Plane flyover sponsored by local group Bold Nebraska

Grand Island, NE – Attendees of the Nebraska State Fair and scheduled U.S. Senate debate this evening between independent candidate Dan Osborn and incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts will be greeted overhead by a plane flying a banner that reads: “Billionaire Ricketts Supports Data Centers.”

While Ricketts, whose billionaire parents have subsidized his entire political career, has called data centers “a matter of national security” citing Chinese communist bogeymen, Dan Osborn signed onto a candidate “AI Pact” which calls for advocating for mandatory safety reviews for AI models, supporting policies that would create an AI dividend for workers, and ensuring that consumers and companies can sue over harms caused by models – by networking with AI safety groups and other political organizations working on AI legislation.

“Pete Ricketts doesn’t care about our communities and is willing to sell us out to Big Tech,” said Bold Nebraska founder and director Jane Kleeb. “Ricketts uses the bogeyman of China and yet, before Trump’s trade wars, they were a country we sold massive amounts of corn and soybeans to. Rather than creating a bogeyman as an excuse to run roughshod over communities, Ricketts should be proposing laws that have teeth, accountability and guardrails. Policies like ending eminent domain for private gain, closed loop systems, community benefits agreements and funding for first responders. These are all common sense solutions the Senate can act on but instead Ricketts kicks the can.”

Photos and b-roll video downloadable for use by media:

(Photo credit: Bold Nebraska)

B-roll video 1: download

B-r0ll video 2: download

About Bold:
Bold is a network of “small and mighty” groups in rural states working to protect land and water. We fight fossil fuel projects, protect landowners against eminent domain abuse, and work for clean energy solutions while building an engaged base of citizens who care about the land, water, and climate change. (https://boldalliance.org) (https://boldnebraska.org)

# # #

Shell is making another significant move in the United States — this time not in deepwater oil, LNG or shale gas, but in petrol stations, convenience stores and coffee.

On 1 September 2026, Shell announced that its U.S. downstream subsidiary, Equilon Enterprises LLC, trading as Shell Oil Products US, had agreed to increase its ownership of Nashville-based Tri Star Energy from 33% to 100%.

The transaction will give Shell full ownership of an additional 320 fuel and convenience retail sites in Tennessee and surrounding states, together with fuel-supply agreements covering another 552 dealer-owned locations.

Financial terms have not been disclosed.

The deal is expected to complete before the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.

From minority shareholder to outright owner

Shell is not arriving at Tri Star as a stranger.

Its published annual reports show that Shell already held a 33% interest in Tri Star Energy by 2021, and that holding remained at 33% in subsequent reporting.

The new agreement therefore represents the conversion of a longstanding minority position into full corporate control.

The remaining interest is being acquired from The Parman Corporation, Kimbro Oil Company and related subsidiaries.

Tri Star itself is considerably more than a collection of Shell-branded filling stations.

Founded in 2000, it operates convenience-store brands including Twice Daily, Sudden Service and Little General, distributes fuel through wholesale channels across 23 states, and also owns the White Bison Coffee business.

That gives Shell exposure not merely to fuel margins, but also to the increasingly important non-fuel side of forecourt retailing: food, beverages, coffee and convenience shopping.

More than doubling Shell’s directly owned U.S. retail network

The scale of the deal becomes clearer when compared with Shell’s existing company-owned network.

When Shell completed its acquisition of 45 Brewer Oil retail sites in New Mexico in 2024, it said it then owned and operated nearly 200 convenience-retail sites in the United States.

Adding 320 Tri Star sites therefore more than doubles that directly controlled footprint.

That distinction is important.

Shell already has one of the largest branded fuel networks in America, with approximately 12,000 Shell-branded fuel and convenience locations across 49 states, but the great majority are owned by wholesalers or dealers rather than by Shell itself.

Tri Star materially increases the portion of that network over which Shell has direct operational and commercial control.

Shell’s explanation: concentrate capital where it has an advantage

Shell Downstream, Renewables and Energy Solutions President Machteld de Haan said the acquisition was aligned with the company’s strategy of concentrating capital in businesses where Shell believes it has distinctive advantages and can generate long-term shareholder value.

That language is worth noting because it closely resembles the terminology Shell has been using while disposing of assets elsewhere.

The company is currently engaged in an extensive reshaping of its portfolio.

In July 2026 Shell agreed to sell the Sprng Energy renewable-power business in India to Aditya Birla Renewables for $1.8 billion, describing the move as part of its continuing effort to high-grade the power portfolio and recycle capital.

In August it agreed to sell its European onshore renewables business to TotalEnergies, including approximately 500 MW of operational or development-stage generating capacity and a much larger future project pipeline.

Shell again described the transaction in terms of capital recycling and concentrating investment where it has differentiated capabilities.

Meanwhile, in June Shell agreed to dispose of its 50% non-operated interest in the Na Kika platform and associated Gulf of America assets for consideration of approximately $1.7 billion, subject to adjustments and contingent payments.

So although Shell is selling assets, it certainly is not retreating from investment.

It is reallocating.

Sell renewables, buy convenience stores?

That inevitably produces an interesting contrast.

Shell spent much of the previous decade emphasising the growth of its power, renewables and energy-transition businesses.

The present strategy appears considerably more selective.

European renewable-generation projects can be sold.

Indian renewables can be sold.

Older upstream interests can be sold.

Yet hundreds of American convenience stores can be acquired.

That does not necessarily mean Shell believes filling stations have a greater future than renewable electricity.

It does mean Shell believes that certain retail and mobility businesses can produce returns attractive enough to justify additional capital, particularly where Shell already possesses distribution infrastructure, fuel-supply capability, brand recognition and large customer volumes.

Convenience retail also offers something increasingly important to oil companies: revenue that does not depend entirely on the litres of petrol or diesel passing through the pumps.

Food, coffee, groceries, loyalty programmes and other non-fuel products can materially increase margins at retail locations.

Another piece of Shell’s American expansion

The Tri Star acquisition also sits alongside a broader expansion of Shell’s U.S. retail holdings.

In June 2022 Shell completed the acquisition of a large group of Landmark fuel and convenience sites, arguing that direct ownership would strengthen its position in one of the world’s largest retail-fuels markets and provide opportunities for both conventional and lower-carbon transport products.

The 2024 Brewer Oil acquisition then added another 45 sites in New Mexico.

Tri Star is considerably larger.

Once completed, the transaction will add 320 company-controlled sites in a single move, plus supply relationships with another 552 dealer locations.

That is a substantial downstream acquisition by any measure.

The price remains the obvious unanswered question

One conspicuous detail is missing from Shell’s announcement.

How much is Shell paying?

Neither Shell nor the sellers have disclosed the purchase price. Reuters, Dow Jones and industry coverage all confirm that the financial terms remain confidential.

Without that figure it is impossible for outsiders to determine the acquisition multiple, expected return on invested capital or the valuation Shell has placed on Tri Star’s store network, wholesale contracts and associated brands.

Given Shell’s repeated emphasis on capital discipline and shareholder returns, that will be an important figure if it eventually becomes public.

What the transaction tells us about today’s Shell

The Tri Star purchase is useful because it illustrates the increasingly pragmatic character of Shell’s present strategy.

The company is not simply expanding or contracting.

It is continuously rearranging the portfolio.

Businesses judged insufficiently competitive or strategically peripheral are sold.

Businesses regarded as capable of producing stronger returns are expanded.

And sometimes that produces combinations which would have looked surprising during the height of the corporate energy-transition rhetoric: a major oil company disposing of renewable-power portfolios while spending undisclosed sums to acquire hundreds of American convenience stores.

From Shell’s perspective there is no contradiction.

It calls the process high-grading.

The simpler description is that Shell is following the money.

For the moment, the Tri Star transaction leaves one very large question unanswered:

How much money?

That figure — together with any later disclosure about integration, store branding, employment effects and capital expenditure — will be worth watching as the transaction moves towards its expected completion before the end of 2026.

Shell Goes Shopping in America: Tri Star Deal More Than Doubles Its Company-Owned U.S. Convenience-Store Footprint was first posted on September 1, 2026 at 9:28 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Audubon Texas is excited to announce the 2026 Texas Women in Conservation Honorees: Pamela Reese, Lydia Saldaña, and Shelly Plante. These remarkable leaders are recognized for their outstanding...

Controversial decision undercuts New York law that sought $75 billion from the largest historical emitters to fund climate resilience, rather than taxpayers footing the bill for extreme weather impacts

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Despite a controversial ruling out of New York State, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) vowed to continue efforts to make polluters, not taxpayers, pay for mounting climate damages.  A federal circuit court judge ruled Monday that New York could not enforce its Climate Change Superfund Act. This ruling, which will likely be appealed, was based on a controversial decision made by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and does not amount to a national rejection of climate superfund laws.

New York’s Superfund law, enacted in 2024, would have required the world’s largest fossil fuel companies responsible for significant historical greenhouse gas emissions to contribute to a $75 billion fund supporting climate resilience and adaptation in the Empire State. The fund was designed to help frontline communities address the escalating financial burdens of flooding, extreme heat, infrastructure damage, and other climate change-related impacts. 

“Communities should not be forced to shoulder the enormous costs of a climate crisis they did not create,” said Quentin Scott, Federal Policy Director at Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “For decades, fossil fuel companies have profited from selling products that drive climate change, while families are left paying for flooded homes, damaged infrastructure, extreme heat, and rising costs. The industry’s preferred outcome is that the public pays all the costs of their pollution. We cannot accept a system where polluters keep the profits and taxpayers are left with the bill.”

As communities across the country face mounting costs from climate-driven disasters and extreme weather, climate superfund laws are an effort to establish a simple principle we all learn as children: those who helped make the mess should help clean up the mess. 

This is NOT the final word on state superfund bills. The result is a reflection of one judge’s interpretation of a controversial precedent from a fundamentally different case. That controversial precedent is not binding across most of the rest of the country, and states should not be discouraged from pursuing innovative approaches to climate accountability. CCAN will continue to pursue Superfund policies in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

###

Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, DC and beyond.

The post New York Climate Superfund Court Ruling Not the Final Word on State Superfund Laws appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Join us for a free two-part training on September 30th and October 6th to learn from two experts on people's assemblies: Dr. Camila Vergara, an academic and organizer who was deeply involved in numerous assemblies held in Chile between 2020 and 2022 as part of the effort to enact a transformative new constitutional structure, and Denzel Caldwell, an organizer with the Black Nashville Assembly working to build black political power in Tennessee. 

The post 2-PART TRAINING: People’s Assemblies and The Revolutionary Potential of Grassroots Power appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

A flash flood tore through the bottom of the Grand Canyon over the weekend, killing at least two people and leaving one missing. Between half an inch and a full inch of rain fell in just 30 minutes Saturday afternoon, sending a wall of water down Bright Angel Creek toward the Colorado River.

Phantom Ranch, Bright Angel Campground, and the North Kaibab Trail are closed indefinitely while crews assess the damage. At least 80 people were rescued from the canyon. Part of the reason the storm was so destructive is that it hit the burn scar of the Dragon Bravo wildfire, a destructive blaze that swept across nearly 150,000 acres near the Grand Canyon in July 2025.

“It was like a whirlpool in there, with all the debris circling around, cabins and other equipment,” evacuee David Gregory told CBS News. One footbridge collapsed roughly 10 minutes after his group crossed it. Another hiker in the canyon, Parth Desai, described “waterfalls coming up out of nowhere; boulders, mud, landslides happening everywhere,” according to Al Jazeera.

A similar downpour on Monday caused destructive flooding at Zion National Park. All slot canyons in the park, including The Narrows, were shut off to visitors due to rising water. So far, no one has been reported dead or missing due to this flooding.

Live from Tucson: Arizona’s Public Lands and the Border Wall

The latest episode of The Landscape, recorded live in Tucson as part of CWP’s Keep Parks Public tour, brings together four experts to discuss the current state of Arizona’s public lands: Matthew Nelson with the Arizona Trail Association, Russ McSpadden with the Center for Biological Diversity, Emily Burns with Sky Island Alliance, and Amy Juan from the Tohono O’odham Nation. They talk about the negative impacts of border wall construction ;on wildlife migration, national parks, and Indigenous sites. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Quick hits Report warns of environmental impacts from proposed oil and gas lease near Grand Canyon

KJZZ

Federal judge extends pause on Big Bend border security construction

Texas Public Radio

Opinion: Trump’s plan to sell off a part of Yosemite is what oligarchy looks like

The Guardian

How intense rains in the Grand Canyon turned into a deadly disaster

The Guardian

Proposed changes to U.S. Forest Service rule could open door to more e-bikes, ATVs on national forest lands

Post Independent

Trump’s national park fees for foreign tourists fail to raise expected revenue

Forbes

Interior Department approves massive Navajo coal mine expansion

Santa Fe New Mexican

The buzz of chainsaws in Idaho is testing what wilderness means

KUNC

Quote of the day

A lot of people see wilderness as nothing but a backcountry recreation area, but it’s way more than that. It’s really not even about us. It’s about nature. It’s about the places. It’s kind of nature’s bill of rights.”

—George Nickas, former executive director of Wilderness Watch, KUNC

Picture This

@Interior

Dolly Parton once described the Smokies as “one of those special places that God put here for us to enjoy.”

At Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s 75th anniversary celebration in 2009, she sang about that special place in “My Mountains, My Home.”

Video by @hawriverfilms

 

Feature image: Grand Canyon flooding; Source: GrandCanyonNPS/x.com

The post Grand Canyon flash flood kills 2, leaves 1 still missing appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 1 SEPTEMBER 2026 SLF-2007-044 The Sakhalin Papers XXXIV: The Second Japanese Lifeline — NEXI and the Extra $1.4 Billion That Took Project Finance to $6.7 Billion In February 2008 Sakhalin Energy abandoned its proposed British export-credit backing. By June, Japan’s JBIC and commercial banks had supplied a $5.3 billion replacement financing package. Then, in October 2009, another $1.4 billion arrived — this time from commercial banks protected by Japanese government export-credit insurance. Shell no longer controlled Sakhalin Energy, but the documentary record shows that it remained a shareholder, technical participant and one of the sponsors standing behind the financing until project completion.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-044
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal financing record: Mitsubishi Corporation/Sakhalin Energy announcement, 7 October 2009
Authenticated Shell record: Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2009; Shell corporate reporting archive
Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, 1 October 2009; Offshore, 7 October 2009; LNG Journal, October 2009
Public-finance record: Nippon Export and Investment Insurance — NEXI — resource and untied-loan insurance framework
Environmental record: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel material from 2009
Court record: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), used here to establish the termination of the earlier British financing route
Evidence standard: Financing agreements, shareholdings and company statements are distinguished from lender or corporate assessments of the project’s creditworthiness. Environmental-group allegations are identified as such. No inference is made that NEXI financing constituted a judicial or regulatory determination that every environmental controversy surrounding Sakhalin II had been resolved.

Introduction

The previous Shell Leaks File followed Sakhalin II’s financing east.

Britain’s Export Credits Guarantee Department had spent years considering approximately $650 million of support.

Environmental organisations had challenged the process.

Government documents had gone through information litigation.

A separate judicial review was approaching hearing.

Then Sakhalin Energy withdrew its British application on 29 February 2008.

The High Court subsequently recorded the decisive fact: no final ECGD decision had been made, and after the withdrawal none ever would be. (vLex)

Japan then supplied the alternative.

In June 2008, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and commercial banks signed a $5.3 billion project-finance package.

That might reasonably have looked like the end of the financing story.

It was not.

On 1 October 2009, Reuters reported that Sakhalin Energy had secured another $1.4 billion.

Six days later, a shareholder announcement set out the formal structure.

The commercial banks would lend the money.

Japan’s government export-credit insurer would protect the lending.

And the shareholders — including Royal Dutch Shell — would provide a sponsor guarantee until completion.

Total Phase 2 project debt:

$6.7 billion. (Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com)

That second Japanese-backed tranche deserves examination in its own right.

1. Reuters Reported the Money Before the Formal Announcement

The first contemporaneous signal appears on 1 October 2009.

Reuters reported from Moscow that Sakhalin Energy had secured $1.4 billion of new funding for Sakhalin II.

The report cited Interfax quoting Sakhalin Energy chief executive Ian Craig.

Reuters placed the new money directly on top of the earlier $5.3 billion package provided by JBIC and international commercial banks.

Craig said the new funds would be paid in shortly. (Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com)

The Reuters report is preserved in the contemporary RoyalDutchShellPlc.com archive, complete with its original date, Moscow dateline, reporter Vladimir Soldatkin and Reuters attribution. (Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com)

Six days later, the transaction received a more detailed documentary description.

2. 7 October 2009: The Structure Becomes Clear

A Mitsubishi Corporation announcement dated 7 October 2009 stated that Sakhalin Energy had concluded an additional financing agreement of $1.4 billion with a consortium of international commercial banks.

The Japanese government export-credit agency Nippon Export and Investment Insurance — NEXI — would insure the loan.

The document described the cover as Overseas Untied Loan Insurance for natural-resources and energy financing. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

The arithmetic was explicit:

Existing financing: $5.3 billion

Additional financing: $1.4 billion

Total project debt: $6.7 billion

The additional funds were intended to finance completion of the full Phase 2 scope, including the continuing drilling programme needed to achieve full oil and gas production capacity. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

3. NEXI Did Not Lend the $1.4 Billion

This distinction matters.

The $3.7 billion JBIC component of the 2008 package involved a Japanese public-sector lender actually advancing money.

The 2009 structure was different.

Commercial banks supplied the $1.4 billion.

NEXI insured their exposure. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

That distinction is central to understanding export-credit finance.

Loan insurance can make commercial-bank participation possible — or substantially more attractive — because an export-credit agency absorbs specified risks that the lender would otherwise bear.

NEXI’s own description of its resource-finance insurance explains the general mechanism: the cover protects qualifying lenders against losses arising from long-term overseas resource-development lending, including defined political and commercial risks such as restrictions on transfers, force majeure and borrower default. (Nexi)

The exact contractual terms of the 2009 Sakhalin policy are not reproduced in the public material examined for this file.

The safe conclusion is therefore narrower:

private banks supplied the money; Japanese public credit insurance stood behind the lending.

4. Japan Had Now Backed Both Layers of the Financing

By October 2009, Japanese public finance occupied two distinct positions in Sakhalin II.

JBIC had provided direct project lending as part of the first $5.3 billion package.

NEXI now insured the additional $1.4 billion commercial-bank tranche.

In each case the ultimate policy logic was closely connected with natural resources and Japanese energy security.

NEXI continues to describe its natural-resource loan insurance as a mechanism intended to support overseas resource projects from the perspective of securing stable resource supplies for Japan. (Nexi)

The Sakhalin financing fitted that strategic pattern almost perfectly.

Japan had Japanese shareholders in the project.

Japanese utilities had long-term LNG purchase contracts.

Japanese financial institutions were involved in the debt.

And Japan was about to receive a large proportion of Sakhalin II’s output.

5. The LNG Plant Was No Longer a Construction Promise

There was another major difference between 2009 and the years when ECGD, EBRD and other prospective lenders had been examining the project.

Sakhalin II was now operating.

Gazprom formally inaugurated Russia’s first LNG plant at Prigorodnoye on 18 February 2009.

Its two trains were designed for combined annual output of 9.6 million tonnes.

Gazprom said approximately 65 per cent of Sakhalin LNG was contracted to nine Japanese purchasers. (Gazprom)

The first LNG cargo left for Japan in March.

By May, the second train had started operation.

Contemporaneous industry reporting said the plant was being ramped toward full design capacity. (Offshore Magazine)

The financial proposition had therefore changed profoundly.

Lenders were no longer being asked principally to finance an uncertain future LNG business.

The LNG business had begun.

6. Shell’s Own Annual Report Records the Transition

Royal Dutch Shell’s 2009 Annual Report and Form 20-F described Sakhalin II as one of the major projects completed during the year.

Shell stated that, together with its partners, it had completed Russia’s first LNG plant, describing Sakhalin II as one of the world’s largest integrated energy projects. (KU Leuven Bibliotheken)

The report is part of Shell’s official historical annual-report archive, which continues to make the 2009 corporate reporting available. (Shell)

This is useful authenticated corporate evidence because it fixes Shell’s own presentation of Sakhalin II at the moment the additional finance arrived.

The project had crossed the boundary from construction megaproject to producing asset.

7. Shell Was Still There — But No Longer in Control

By October 2009 the ownership structure was:

Gazprom — 50 per cent plus one share

Royal Dutch Shell — 27.5 per cent minus one share

Mitsui — 12.5 per cent

Mitsubishi — 10 per cent (FinanzNachrichten.de)

This distinction has been maintained throughout the Sakhalin Papers because it matters historically.

Shell controlled Sakhalin Energy when many of the controversial Phase 2 decisions were taken.

After the 2007 restructuring, Gazprom controlled it.

But Shell did not disappear.

A 27.5 per cent interest in a project of Sakhalin II’s scale remained economically substantial.

And the 2009 financing documents reveal something more specific about Shell’s continuing role.

8. The Shareholders Signed a Sponsor Guarantee

The Mitsubishi announcement states that Mitsubishi, together with Sakhalin Energy’s other shareholders, signed a sponsor guarantee agreement connected with the additional financing.

That guarantee would remain effective until completion of the project. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

The identified shareholders included Royal Dutch Shell.

Accordingly, the documentary record establishes that Shell was one of the sponsors standing behind this additional financing structure.

What the public announcement does not disclose is equally important.

It does not specify the financial allocation of the guarantee among the four shareholders.

It does not establish that Shell guaranteed 27.5 per cent of the $1.4 billion.

It does not provide the detailed trigger provisions, caps or completion tests.

Those figures should therefore not be invented.

The established fact is:

Shell remained contractually involved as a project sponsor while the additional financing moved toward completion.

9. This Was Project Finance — But With Completion Support

The Mitsubishi statement described the financing as project finance secured principally by the cash flow generated by Sakhalin II.

That is the conventional attraction of large infrastructure project financing: lenders look primarily toward future project revenues rather than simply relying upon the general balance sheets of the shareholders. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

But the simultaneous sponsor guarantee is an important qualification.

Before agreed completion conditions were achieved, the lenders were not relying solely upon future LNG and oil cash flow.

The sponsors were also providing completion-period support.

That is a finance interpretation derived from the structure disclosed in the shareholder announcement — not a quotation from a court or lender.

It reinforces an important point about Shell’s status after losing control.

Shell was no longer the operator-controlling shareholder of the earlier years.

But it remained financially intertwined with the project.

10. Why Was Another $1.4 Billion Needed After Production Had Started?

The answer is in the financing announcement itself.

Starting production did not mean every part of Phase 2 was complete.

The proceeds were intended to complete the full project scope and support the continuing drilling programme necessary for full production capacity. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

This is common in very large energy projects.

First production can occur while:

additional wells are being drilled;

production is ramping up;

commissioning continues;

facilities are being optimised;

and expenditure remains before the asset reaches contractual or technical completion.

Sakhalin II was producing LNG in 2009.

It was not yet at full design capacity.

11. The Two LNG Trains Were Still Ramping Up

LNG Journal reported that the first and second LNG trains each had a design capacity of approximately 4.8 million tonnes per year.

The second train came online on 31 May 2009.

Both were still being ramped toward the combined nameplate capacity of 9.6 million tonnes annually when the additional financing was arranged. (OilCor)

The same report described the infrastructure supporting those exports:

three offshore platforms;

approximately 300 kilometres of offshore pipelines;

about 1,600 kilometres of onshore pipelines;

an onshore processing facility;

the oil export installation;

and the LNG plant. (OilCor)

The $1.4 billion was therefore not financing a marginal addition.

It was helping bring an enormous integrated production system fully to maturity.

12. Most of the LNG Had Already Been Sold

Another factor mattered enormously to lenders.

The product had buyers.

Contemporaneous reporting said virtually all of the plant’s planned annual LNG output had already been committed under long-term sales contracts. (OilCor)

Japanese purchasers included some of the country’s largest power and gas utilities.

The contracts created predictable future revenue streams of precisely the type project-finance lenders value.

Japan’s participation was therefore circular in an economically powerful sense:

Japanese companies owned equity.

Japanese consumers bought the LNG.

Japanese banks helped finance the infrastructure.

Japanese public institutions either lent or insured the financing.

The project’s debt and sales architecture reinforced one another.

13. Shell Was Also Buying Sakhalin LNG

Shell’s commercial relationship with Sakhalin II went beyond its equity interest.

On 8 April 2009, Gazprom and Royal Dutch Shell announced agreements under which Shell Eastern Trading and Gazprom Global LNG would each purchase LNG from Sakhalin Energy.

Deliveries were to begin in 2009 and continue until 2028, reaching approximately one million tonnes per year for each buyer at plateau.

A linked arrangement provided equivalent gas volumes to Shell’s European portfolio. (Gazprom)

This is another reason the proposition that Shell had simply “left” Sakhalin after Gazprom took control is historically wrong.

Shell remained:

a shareholder;

a technical participant;

a project sponsor;

and an LNG buyer.

Its role had changed.

It had not evaporated.

14. The Financing Closed in the Shadow of the Financial Crisis

The timing also deserves attention.

The global banking system had suffered its most severe upheaval in generations during 2008 and 2009.

Credit availability had been severely disrupted.

Ian Craig highlighted the significance of securing the additional debt under the prevailing financial-market conditions.

Sakhalin Energy characterised the combined Phase 2 financing as a record for Russia and evidence of the project’s strategic and commercial importance. (OilCor)

Those are corporate assessments, not independent credit ratings.

They nevertheless document how Sakhalin Energy itself viewed the financing achievement.

Obtaining another $1.4 billion in international bank debt during that period was commercially significant.

15. The $6.7 Billion Figure Had an Earlier History

There is a curious circularity to the total.

Before the ownership restructuring and before the earlier international financing structure disintegrated, Sakhalin II had contemplated project finance of roughly $6.7 billion.

After years of institutional change, lender departures, environmental controversy, the Gazprom takeover and reconstruction of the financing, the ultimate total returned to:

$6.7 billion.

The route was entirely different.

The number was remarkably familiar.

The final structure comprised the 2008 JBIC/commercial package and the 2009 NEXI-insured additional tranche. (Project Finance)

16. Britain Had Disappeared From the Financing — Not From the Documentary History

The contrast with the earlier UK process is stark.

Mr Justice Mitting’s 17 March 2008 High Court judgment records that approximately $650 million of ECGD project-finance support had been sought.

It also records that Sakhalin Energy withdrew that application on 29 February 2008 before a final decision was made. (vLex)

That judgment concerned environmental-information disclosure.

It did not rule upon the legality of the separate 2004 conditional commitment challenged by WWF and The Corner House.

It did not reject Sakhalin Energy’s financing application.

And it said nothing about the later Japanese loans.

Its relevance here is narrower but important:

it provides an independent judicial record confirming when the British financing route ended.

The Japanese-financed route succeeded afterwards.

17. Did Japan Simply Apply Weaker Environmental Standards?

The documentary record does not support such a categorical conclusion.

JBIC had imposed environmental monitoring requirements when it joined the 2008 financing.

NEXI operated its own system for examining environmental and social considerations in insured overseas projects.

Its framework requires categorisation and environmental review for projects carrying significant potential impacts and allows insurance support to be refused where environmental and social consideration is insufficient. (Nexi)

But the existence of formal standards does not establish that critics regarded those standards as adequate.

They plainly did not.

Environmental disputes around Sakhalin II remained active throughout 2009.

18. February 2009: IUCN Criticised Sakhalin Energy’s Cooperation

Before the NEXI-insured tranche was concluded, the independent Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel had raised a serious concern.

On 12 February 2009, IUCN reported that the Panel was dissatisfied with delays in Sakhalin Energy supplying relevant documents and scientific information.

IUCN warned that inadequate collaboration could impair the Panel’s ability to provide conservation advice for the Western Gray Whale population. (IUCN)

This was not an NGO campaigning allegation from outside the scientific process.

It was a statement from the institution convening the independent panel with which Sakhalin Energy itself had agreed to work.

But events shortly afterwards also provide evidence of the system functioning.

19. April 2009: The Scientific Panel Called for a Moratorium

On 24 April 2009, IUCN reported that the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel had recommended postponement of industrial activities capable of adversely affecting the whales.

Its recommendation included Sakhalin Energy’s planned 2009 seismic survey.

The Panel was particularly concerned about observations during 2008 suggesting changes in whale distribution and behaviour. (IUCN)

The recommendation was precautionary.

It did not declare that Sakhalin Energy had killed whales.

It did not establish environmental liability.

It called for activities to be postponed until further monitoring reduced the scientific uncertainty.

What happened next is important.

20. Sakhalin Energy Accepted the Recommendation

Four days later, on 28 April 2009, IUCN announced that Sakhalin Energy had accepted the Panel’s advice and postponed the seismic survey.

IUCN publicly welcomed the decision. (IUCN)

The detailed Panel record confirms the nuance.

Sakhalin Energy maintained that it believed the survey could have proceeded safely with the agreed mitigation and monitoring programme.

Nevertheless, in light of the Panel’s recommendation, it agreed to postpone the work until 2010. (IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group)

That is an instructive piece of the financing story.

By 2009 the project was financed and producing.

Yet independent scientific scrutiny still had enough institutional weight to cause a planned industrial activity to be deferred.

21. Financial Close Had Not Ended Environmental Dispute

This distinction is worth making explicit.

The successful financing did not mean:

all environmental questions answered.

The February and April IUCN records prove otherwise.

Nor did continuing environmental controversy mean:

the project could no longer obtain finance.

The October $1.4 billion agreement proves otherwise.

Those facts are not contradictory.

They describe the model that had emerged by 2009:

finance the project;

attach monitoring and environmental processes;

continue operation;

and address individual scientific or environmental issues while the business proceeds.

Environmental organisations often regarded that model as fundamentally inadequate.

The lenders and sponsors evidently regarded it as workable.

22. Environmental Campaigners Continued to Raise Pipeline Concerns

The controversy also extended far beyond whales.

On 20 October 2009, less than two weeks after the formal additional-financing announcement, Sakhalin Environment Watch publicly alleged continuing problems along the trans-Sakhalin pipeline route.

Its statement described erosion, landslides and river-crossing problems and said Russian environmental authorities had previously identified violations requiring corrective work. (FOE Japan)

These statements must be handled carefully.

They document what the environmental organisation alleged and what it said Russian inspections had found.

They are not substituted here for the underlying Russian regulatory orders or a court judgment.

The important documentary point is simply this:

serious environmental criticism continued after the financing had closed.

23. Sakhalin Energy Presented a Very Different Environmental Record

The company’s own environmental material presented another side.

Sakhalin Energy described extensive impact assessment, biodiversity programmes, river restoration, monitoring of protected species and measures developed with specialists to mitigate impacts on Western Gray Whales.

It pointed particularly to rerouting offshore pipelines away from whale feeding areas and cooperation with the IUCN-convened advisory process. (Gazprom)

These company statements are relevant evidence.

They should not automatically be accepted as independent findings any more than activist claims should.

The documentary method requires both to be labelled by source.

The proper historical record contains the disagreement.

24. What Exactly Did the Additional Finance Prove?

Very little about environmental legality.

Quite a lot about commercial viability.

The banks and NEXI were prepared to support another $1.4 billion of project debt.

Long-term LNG sales were in place.

Production had begun.

The plant was ramping up.

The shareholders provided completion support.

And Japan had a powerful strategic interest in ensuring the project reached full production.

Those facts demonstrate confidence sufficient for a financing transaction.

They do not amount to a finding that every environmental issue had been resolved.

Project finance is not a court judgment.

Credit insurance is not environmental absolution.

25. What Did It Mean for Shell?

For Shell, the October 2009 financing crystallised its transformed position.

It had once held 55 per cent and controlled Sakhalin Energy.

It now held 27.5 per cent under Gazprom control.

But Shell’s continuing commercial exposure can be traced through several authenticated records.

Shell remained an equity investor. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

Its Annual Report celebrated completion of Russia’s first LNG plant with its partners. (KU Leuven Bibliotheken)

It entered long-term arrangements to buy Sakhalin LNG. (Gazprom)

And the financing announcement records that Sakhalin Energy’s shareholders collectively entered the sponsor guarantee associated with the extra $1.4 billion. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

Shell had surrendered control.

It had not surrendered its economic interest in success.

26. The Financing Architecture Was Now Complete

By the end of 2009, Sakhalin II had achieved something that had seemed far less certain only a few years earlier.

It possessed a $6.7 billion external project-finance structure.

It had Japan’s principal public international lender involved.

It had Japanese government credit insurance protecting additional commercial debt.

It had international banks.

It had shareholder completion support.

It had long-term buyers.

And it had begun generating LNG revenues.

The financing problem that had occupied British officials, campaigners, lawyers and prospective lenders for years had not disappeared.

It had been solved somewhere else.

Documentary Findings Established

Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application for British ECGD support on 29 February 2008, before ECGD made a final financing decision. This is recorded in the High Court judgment in Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth. (vLex)

Sakhalin Energy subsequently concluded a $5.3 billion project-finance package involving JBIC and commercial banks in June 2008.

On 1 October 2009, Reuters reported that Sakhalin Energy had secured an additional $1.4 billion. (Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com)

On 7 October 2009, Mitsubishi Corporation announced the formal additional-financing agreement.

The $1.4 billion was to be advanced by international commercial banks and insured by NEXI.

The additional tranche took total Phase 2 project debt to $6.7 billion. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

The funds were intended for completion of the Phase 2 scope, including continuing oil and gas drilling required to achieve full production capacity. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

The shareholders at that point were Gazprom, Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Shell held approximately 27.5 per cent. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

Mitsubishi’s announcement records that the shareholders entered into a sponsor guarantee effective until project completion. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

Shell’s 2009 Annual Report records completion of Russia’s first LNG plant at Sakhalin II with its partners. (KU Leuven Bibliotheken)

Sakhalin II was already exporting LNG while the additional financing was being completed.

The LNG plant consisted of two trains designed for combined annual capacity of approximately 9.6 million tonnes. (Gazprom)

Established Environmental Context

In February 2009, the IUCN-convened Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel expressed concern about Sakhalin Energy’s provision of information necessary to its conservation work. (IUCN)

In April 2009 the Panel recommended postponement of activities that might adversely affect Western Gray Whales, including Sakhalin Energy’s proposed seismic survey. (IUCN)

Sakhalin Energy accepted that recommendation and postponed the survey, while maintaining that it believed the survey could have been undertaken safely with appropriate mitigation. (IUCN)

These facts demonstrate that environmental scrutiny continued after project finance had become available.

They do not establish environmental liability.

Alleged or Contested

Sakhalin Environment Watch continued in October 2009 to allege pipeline, erosion, regulatory and river-crossing deficiencies.

Those allegations are part of the contemporaneous record but are not presented here as judicial findings. (FOE Japan)

Sakhalin Energy’s own environmental materials described extensive mitigation, monitoring and biodiversity measures and presented the company’s record substantially more favourably. (Gazprom)

The conflict between these accounts is preserved rather than artificially resolved.

Not Established

It is not established that NEXI itself lent the additional $1.4 billion. The commercial banks supplied the loan; NEXI insured it.

It is not established from the public announcement how the sponsor-guarantee obligation was divided among Shell, Gazprom, Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

It is not established that Shell guaranteed precisely 27.5 per cent of the additional debt.

It is not established that NEXI’s participation represented a determination that every environmental issue associated with Sakhalin II had been resolved.

It is not established that the British, US or EBRD financing routes failed solely because of environmental concerns.

It is not established that Japanese public finance was arranged merely because British financing disappeared.

And no court decision identified in the records examined for this file held that the NEXI-insured financing was unlawful.

Commentary

The extra $1.4 billion makes the evolution of the Sakhalin financing story unusually clear.

At the beginning, public finance looked like a gate.

Could EBRD approve the project?

Would ECGD provide cover?

Would American export-credit support follow?

Would environmental standards prevent financial close?

By late 2009, the gate had become something else.

Sakhalin II was already through it.

Billions had been invested.

Oil was flowing.

LNG cargoes were sailing.

Long-term customers had signed contracts.

Gazprom controlled the venture.

Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi remained deeply invested.

Japan wanted the energy.

The financing question was no longer whether Sakhalin II would exist.

It was how its remaining costs would be funded and how lenders would manage the risks of an operating megaproject.

Japan provided the answer.

First JBIC lent.

Then NEXI insured.

Private banks supplied capital behind the Japanese public guarantee structure.

The shareholders supplied completion support.

And the total debt reached $6.7 billion.

Yet the environmental record did not become irrelevant.

The same year that the extra financing was arranged, an independent scientific panel criticised Sakhalin Energy’s information-sharing, recommended postponement of a seismic survey, and saw Sakhalin Energy accept that recommendation.

That combination is revealing.

Finance and environmental constraint were no longer mutually exclusive outcomes.

The project could obtain billions of dollars and still be required — through lender-linked and independent scientific mechanisms — to alter individual activities.

Whether those constraints were sufficient remains legitimately debatable.

What the documentary record establishes is the structure that emerged:

Sakhalin II would proceed. Environmental scrutiny would proceed with it.

And Shell, despite no longer controlling the project, remained financially and commercially attached to both.

Source Record

The principal financing source is the 7 October 2009 announcement concerning the additional Sakhalin II project-finance contract, issued in connection with Mitsubishi Corporation’s 10 per cent shareholding. It records the $1.4 billion commercial-bank financing, NEXI insurance, sponsor guarantee, intended use of the proceeds and resulting $6.7 billion total Phase 2 debt. (FinanzNachrichten.de)

Contemporaneous Reuters reporting dated 1 October 2009, preserved in the RoyalDutchShellPlc.com archive, records Ian Craig’s announcement that Sakhalin Energy had obtained the additional $1.4 billion and places it alongside the earlier $5.3 billion financing. (Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com)

Contemporaneous industry confirmation is supplied by Offshore, 7 October 2009, which reported the NEXI-insured $1.4 billion financing and stated that the funds would support completion and the drilling programme required for full production capacity. (Offshore Magazine)

LNG Journal subsequently reported the $6.7 billion financing total, the status of the two LNG trains, the long-term customer base and Sakhalin Energy’s assessment of the transaction’s significance under difficult financial-market conditions. (OilCor)

The authenticated Shell corporate record is the Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2009, which records Sakhalin II among the major projects completed that year and identifies the LNG plant as Russia’s first. Shell’s official website maintains its historical annual reports archive including 2009. (KU Leuven Bibliotheken)

The contemporaneous Gazprom record includes its 18 February 2009 announcement inaugurating the LNG plant, documenting its 9.6 million-tonne design capacity and the large proportion of LNG contracted to Japanese customers. (Gazprom)

Gazprom’s 8 April 2009 announcement with Royal Dutch Shell records long-term LNG purchase arrangements involving Shell Eastern Trading and confirms Shell’s continuing commercial relationship with Sakhalin output. (Gazprom)

The relevant judicial record remains Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), which establishes that Sakhalin Energy withdrew its UK export-credit application on 29 February 2008 before a substantive ECGD financing decision was made. (vLex)

The independent scientific record is supplied by IUCN and the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel, including the February 2009 criticism concerning information provision, the April recommendation to postpone potentially harmful activity and IUCN’s subsequent confirmation that Sakhalin Energy postponed its planned seismic survey. (IUCN)

Environmental-group material concerning alleged pipeline deficiencies is included only as evidence of contemporaneous criticism and is expressly distinguished from judicial or regulatory findings. (FOE Japan)

Archive disclaimer: Project financing, insurance support and financial close do not themselves determine environmental compliance. Environmental allegations are attributed to their sources. NEXI’s insurance participation is not characterised as a judicial approval of Sakhalin II’s environmental record. Shell’s inclusion among the project shareholders and sponsors is established, but no unsupported allocation of the sponsor-guarantee liability is made.

Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Next Archive File SLF-2007-045 — The Sakhalin Papers XXXV: Stop the Survey — When the Western Gray Whale Panel Told Sakhalin Energy to Stand Down

In February 2009, the independent scientists advising Sakhalin Energy were publicly unhappy.

They said the company had not supplied important information early enough for proper assessment.

Two months later, their concern became more serious.

After troubling observations concerning Western Gray Whale distribution and behaviour during the previous summer, the IUCN-convened panel recommended a moratorium on activities capable of disturbing the animals.

That recommendation included Sakhalin Energy’s planned 2009 seismic survey. (IUCN)

Sakhalin Energy disagreed with the scientists on one important point.

The company believed the survey could be carried out safely under the elaborate mitigation programme already devised.

But it did something significant nonetheless.

It cancelled the 2009 survey. (IUCN)

The episode raises a question central to the entire Sakhalin financing controversy.

Years earlier, environmental campaigners had argued that once the project was built and financed, meaningful lender leverage would disappear.

Yet here was an operating, financed LNG megaproject changing its plans in response to an independent scientific panel.

How independent was the Panel?

What information had Sakhalin Energy failed to provide?

What had happened to the whales in 2008?

What exactly did the scientists recommend?

And did the company’s decision demonstrate that the environmental safeguards demanded during the financing battles still had real force after financial close?

SLF-2007-045 will return from the money to the whales — and examine the moment Sakhalin Energy was told not to proceed.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 1 SEPTEMBER 2026 was first posted on September 1, 2026 at 7:57 pm.
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En español

Earlier this summer, Xinka People in Guatemala and their allies around the globe gathered online and in person to celebrate something remarkable: nine straight years of standing guard against the Escobal silver mine. Day and night, in rain and heat, community members have taken shifts watching the road, making sure it stays closed to mine related traffic. It is one of the longest-running Indigenous resistance encampments in the world.

But this anniversary wasn’t just about nine years. Speaker after speaker connected their struggle to something much older–500 years of Indigenous women refusing to disappear.

Drawing on a history of resistance

Marisol Guerra, president of the Xinka Parliament Women’s Commission, put it simply: her people have never been known for traditional dress or a widely-spoken language, in fact, the Xinka language nearly vanished under centuries of pressure to erase it. What defines the Xinka people now, she said, is this fight itself. “My people are no longer being rendered invisible thanks to this tireless struggle.”

That struggle has deep roots. Dr. Alfonso Solorzano Contreras reminded the crowd that the Xinka were fierce enough to resist Spanish colonization outright and that Sunday’s celebration, with their banners raised together, was proof that the same unity is still alive today.

Women leading the way

Women have driven this resistance from the start. Daniel Orantes, who keeps watch at the encampment, described how mining company allies have tried to spread rumors specifically targeting the women who show up for shifts, hoping to turn husbands against wives and break the community apart from the inside. It hasn’t worked.

Marisol answered those attacks directly. The encampment, she said, has become a second home. “We women have also played a fundamental role in this struggle.” 

Last year, she traveled to Vancouver with fellow delegate Marta Muñoz to tell Pan American Silver, the Canadian company behind the mine, exactly where the Xinka People stand. Asked whether any deal, even a majority stake in the mine’s profits, could change their minds, Marisol didn’t hesitate: “Even if they offered us 50% or 70% share in the operations, the answer is no… We simply want them to go away.”

Health and environmental impacts from the mine

This isn’t resistance for resistances’ sake. Experts hired by the Xinka People have documented arsenic and heavy metals in local wildlife and water. Wells that once supplied drinking water have dropped by as much as 120 meters. A sacred archaeological site was bulldozed down to a single mound. And the mine’s tailings dam, which is projected to be more than 150 meters tall and hold millions of tons of waste, sits in an earthquake zone prone to landslides.

In May 2025, after nearly seven years of a court-ordered consultation process, the Xinka People delivered their final answer: no consent for the mine to reopen. Pan American Silver has yet to publicly acknowledge that decision.

Remembering the past and determining the future

The Xinka People describe their fight not just as opposition to a mine, but as an act of remembering. Derek Mazariegos, a researcher with the Chiviricuarta Collective, spoke about youth recovering place names, oral histories, and traditional knowledge alongside the fight over water. Telling their own story, he said, is itself a form of power: it “shapes the way it has been represented and strengthens its capacity to determine what kind of future we want as a people.”

Nine years of holding a roadblock is extraordinary on its own. Doing it while also rebuilding language, recording history, and training the next generation of leaders is something else entirely. As Marisol said, closing out the anniversary: “For life and our territory, here we are, here we remain.”

Pan American Silver has still not publicly recognized the Xinka People’s decision to deny consent for the Escobal mine. Subscribe to email updates for opportunities to take action.

The post Here We Remain: Xinka People on Five Hundred Years of Resistance appeared first on Earthworks.

In English

A principios de este verano, el Pueblo Xinka de Guatemala y sus aliados de todo el mundo se reunieron en línea para celebrar algo extraordinario: nueve años consecutivos de vigilancia frente a la mina de plata de Escobal. Día y noche, bajo la lluvia y el calor, miembros de las comunidades se han turnado para vigilar la carretera, asegurándose de que permanezca cerrada al tráfico relacionado con la mina. Se trata de uno de los campamentos de resistencia indígena más longevos del mundo.

Pero este aniversario no se limitó a los nueve años. Un orador tras otro vinculó su lucha a algo mucho más antiguo: 500 años de mujeres indígenas que se niegan a desaparecer.

Inspirándose en una historia de resistencia

Marisol Guerra, presidenta de la Comisión de la Mujer del Parlamento Xinka, lo expresó con sencillez: su pueblo nunca se ha caracterizado por su vestimenta tradicional ni por una lengua de amplia difusión; de hecho, la lengua Xinka estuvo a punto de desaparecer tras siglos de presión para erradicarla. Lo que define ahora al Pueblo Xinka, afirmó, es esta misma lucha. «Mi pueblo ha dejado de ser invisibilizado por esta lucha incansable».

Esa lucha tiene raíces profundas. El Dr. Alfonso Solórzano Contreras recordó a la multitud que el Pueblo Xinka fueron lo suficientemente valientes como para resistirse abiertamente a la colonización española y que la celebración del domingo, 14 de junio, con sus pancartas en alto, era prueba de que esa misma unidad sigue viva hoy en día.

Las mujeres al frente

Las mujeres han impulsado esta resistencia desde el principio. Daniel Orantes, que monta guardia en el campamento, describió cómo los aliados de las empresas mineras han intentado difundir rumores dirigidos específicamente contra las mujeres que acuden a los turnos, con la esperanza de enfrentar a maridos contra esposas y dividir a la comunidad desde dentro. No ha funcionado.

Marisol respondió directamente a esos ataques. El campamento, dijo, se ha convertido en un segundo hogar. «Nosotras, las mujeres, también hemos sido parte fundamental en esta lucha». 

El año pasado, viajó a Vancouver junto con la también delegada Marta Muñoz para comunicar a Pan American Silver, la empresa canadiense responsable de la mina, cuál es exactamente la postura del Pueblo Xinka. Cuando se le preguntó si algún acuerdo, incluso una participación mayoritaria en los beneficios de la mina, podría hacerles cambiar de opinión, Marisol no dudó: «Aunque nos ofrecieran un 50 % o un 70 % de participación en las operaciones, la respuesta es no… Simplemente queremos que se vayan».

Repercusiones de la mina en la salud y el medio ambiente

No se trata de resistencia por el simple hecho de resistirse. Los expertos contratados por el Pueblo Xinka han documentado la presencia de arsénico y metales pesados en la fauna y el agua locales. Los pozos que antes suministraban agua potable han descendido hasta 120 metros. Un yacimiento arqueológico sagrado fue arrasado con excavadoras hasta quedar reducido a un simple montículo. Y la presa de residuos de la mina, que se prevé que tenga más de 150 metros de altura y albergue millones de toneladas de residuos, se encuentra en una zona sísmica propensa a los deslizamientos de tierra.

En mayo de 2025, tras casi siete años de un proceso de consulta ordenado por los tribunales, el Pueblo Xinka dio su respuesta definitiva: no dan su consentimiento para que la mina vuelva a abrir. Pan American Silver aún no ha reconocido públicamente esa decisión.

Recordar el pasado y decidir el futuro

El Pueblo Xinka describe su lucha no solo como una oposición a una mina, sino como un acto de memoria. Derek Mazariegos, un investigador con el Colectivo Chiviricuarta, habló de cómo jóvenes investigadores están recuperando topónimos, historias orales y conocimientos tradicionales, en paralelo a la lucha por el agua. Contar su propia historia, dijo, es en sí mismo una forma de poder: «cuando un pueblo narra su propia historia construye una forma en la que ha sido representado y fortalece sus capacidades sobre qué futuro queremos como población».

Nueve años manteniendo un bloqueo de carretera es algo extraordinario de por sí. Hacerlo al tiempo que se reconstruye la lengua, se registra la historia y se forma a la próxima generación de líderes es algo completamente distinto. Como dijo Marisol al clausurar el aniversario: «Por la vida y nuestro territorio, aquí estamos, aquí seguimos».

Pan American Silver aún no ha reconocido públicamente la decisión del Pueblo Xinka de denegar su consentimiento para la mina Escobal. Suscríbete a las actualizaciones por correo electrónico para conocer las oportunidades de actuar.

The post Aquí seguimos: el Pueblo Xinka y sus quinientos años de resistencia appeared first on Earthworks.