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Shell Faces Historic $108 Million Climate Lawsuit in Brazil Over Floods That Killed Nearly 200 People
10 October 2026
Brazilian federal prosecutors have launched an unprecedented lawsuit against Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary, seeking approximately $108 million in compensation for the catastrophic 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul. The case could become an important test of whether an oil multinational can be required to compensate victims of a climate-related disaster according to its alleged contribution to historical global greenhouse gas emissions.
Shell has become the target of a potentially landmark climate lawsuit in Brazil.
On Friday, 9 October 2026, Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público Federal, or MPF), working alongside the environmental organisation Instituto Preservar, brought civil proceedings against Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary over the devastating floods that struck southern Brazil in April and May 2024.
The prosecutors are seeking more than 541 million Brazilian reais, approximately US$108 million, in compensation.
The legal argument is potentially far more significant than the monetary demand.
The prosecutors contend that Shell should bear a proportionate share of the damage caused by the floods because of the company’s historical and continuing contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the case described by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the claim attributes approximately 2% of historical global greenhouse gas emissions to Shell’s contribution to global warming.
That figure is part of the claimants’ case. It has not been established as a finding by the Brazilian court.
Nevertheless, the proceedings represent a striking development in the international effort to hold major fossil-fuel companies financially accountable for climate-related damage.
A catastrophe that devastated southern BrazilThe floods that overwhelmed Rio Grande do Sul in 2024 were among the worst natural disasters in modern Brazilian history.
Extraordinary rainfall inundated communities, destroyed homes, damaged infrastructure and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Nearly 200 people died.
Approximately half a million people were displaced.
The destruction extended across residential neighbourhoods, agricultural communities, businesses, transport networks and public facilities.
Porto Alegre, the state capital, became one of the most recognisable images of the disaster as floodwaters submerged streets and buildings.
The scale of the devastation is important to understanding the litigation.
This is not a conventional environmental case involving an oil spill, contaminated site or industrial accident directly attributable to a particular Shell installation.
Instead, prosecutors are attempting to establish responsibility for a disaster associated with the wider consequences of global climate change.
The claim therefore reaches beyond Shell’s immediate operations in Brazil.
It concerns the historical emissions associated with the multinational oil and gas business.
Why prosecutors are targeting ShellAccording to the court documents examined by AFP, Brazilian prosecutors argue that Shell’s historical and continuing greenhouse gas emissions, associated with fossil-fuel exploration, production and sales, have contributed to the warming of the planet.
Their case seeks to translate that alleged contribution into a financial responsibility for the consequences of an extreme weather disaster.
The argument is that major fossil-fuel producers should not be insulated from climate-damage claims merely because the resulting harm occurs far from their production facilities.
The proceedings reportedly seek compensation for both collective material damage and collective moral damage.
French-language AFP reporting describes two components of approximately 270 million reais each, together accounting for the reported total of roughly 541 million reais.
The distinction is important.
The prosecutors are not seeking a conventional regulatory fine.
They are pursuing civil compensation for alleged damage resulting from climate change.
The underlying proposition is that the costs of climate-related disasters should not necessarily be borne entirely by governments, taxpayers, insurers and victims.
Instead, the claimants argue that companies whose emissions have contributed to global warming should share those costs.
An unprecedented intervention by public prosecutorsOne of the most important features of the case is the identity of the claimant.
Climate litigation against multinational energy companies is no longer unusual.
Environmental organisations, affected communities and individual claimants have brought proceedings in several countries.
But this Brazilian action is different.
It has been initiated by a national public prosecution authority.
Maria Antonia Tigre, director of global climate litigation at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told AFP that this was the first case in which a national prosecutor had sued a major oil company over a climate disaster.
That assessment gives the proceedings international significance.
It suggests that climate-damage litigation may be expanding from private civil claims into cases brought directly by public authorities exercising environmental enforcement and public-interest responsibilities.
If other prosecutors adopt comparable approaches, major fossil-fuel producers could face a wider range of climate-related civil claims.
Whether the Brazilian action succeeds remains uncertain.
But its initiation is itself a development worth recording.
The central legal question: can climate damage be apportioned?The Brazilian case raises a difficult question.
Climate change results from greenhouse gas emissions accumulated over long periods and originating from numerous countries, industries, businesses and individuals.
How, then, can a court assign legal responsibility for a particular flood to one company?
The Brazilian prosecutors’ proposed answer is proportional responsibility.
Rather than arguing that Shell alone caused the disaster, they seek to attribute a share of responsibility based on the company’s alleged contribution to historical emissions.
The reported figure is 2%.
The legal theory is significant because it attempts to bridge the gap between scientific attribution and legal liability.
Climate science can assess how human-induced warming influences the probability or severity of certain extreme weather events.
Historical emissions research can also estimate contributions associated with major fossil-fuel producers.
But establishing that climate change contributed to an event is not necessarily the same as proving that a particular defendant is legally liable for a specified proportion of the resulting losses.
A court must consider the applicable legal standards, evidence of causation, the defendant’s conduct, the quantification of damages and any available defences.
These are substantial legal obstacles.
The Brazilian claimants will need to persuade the court that their proposed approach satisfies Brazilian law.
The German precedent: a warning, but not a victory for claimantsThe Brazilian proceedings arrive against a background of important developments in European climate litigation.
One of the most closely watched cases involved Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya and German energy company RWE.
Lliuya sought to establish that RWE should contribute towards measures addressing flood risks affecting his community in Peru.
In 2025, a German court rejected his individual compensation claim.
However, the judgment was widely regarded as significant because it recognised, in principle, the possibility of civil liability for climate-related damage attributable to major emitters.
The distinction is essential.
The German court did not order RWE to pay compensation.
Nor did it establish that every major emitter is automatically liable for a fixed percentage of climate damage.
Nevertheless, the litigation demonstrated that courts may be prepared to examine proportional climate liability as a legally arguable proposition.
Brazilian prosecutors are now pursuing a related approach, although under a different legal system and in materially different circumstances.
Shell already faces climate-damage litigation in BritainThe Brazilian lawsuit is not the only climate-damage claim confronting Shell.
AFP also draws attention to proceedings in the United Kingdom brought by people affected by Typhoon Odette, known internationally as Typhoon Rai, which devastated parts of the Philippines in December 2021.
Those claimants are pursuing Shell in connection with alleged contributions to climate change and the damage they suffered.
The existence of these proceedings illustrates how climate litigation is developing beyond cases seeking reductions in future emissions.
An increasingly important strand seeks financial redress for damage allegedly associated with emissions produced or enabled by major fossil-fuel companies.
Other claims have been brought against energy and industrial companies in connection with flooding in Pakistan and rising sea levels affecting an Indonesian island community.
The cases involve different defendants, legal systems and factual circumstances.
Their outcomes cannot be assumed to be interchangeable.
But together they demonstrate a developing international strategy: using civil liability to pursue compensation for climate-related losses.
What has Shell said?At the time of AFP’s initial reporting, Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary had not provided an immediate response to the news agency’s request for comment.
That should not be interpreted as an admission.
The lawsuit contains allegations that Shell is entitled to contest.
The company may dispute the proposed emissions attribution, the alleged causal connection with the floods, the legal basis for proportional liability, the amount of compensation sought or the appropriate defendant.
The publicly reported information does not yet establish the full scope of Shell’s defence.
Nor does the filing of the lawsuit mean that a Brazilian court has accepted the prosecutors’ allegations.
The case is at an early stage.
A reliable assessment of its prospects will require examination of the originating court documents, the applicable legal provisions and Shell’s response.
Why this case matters to Shell shareholdersThe immediate financial demand of approximately $108 million is not, by itself, a sum likely to threaten Shell’s financial viability.
The broader implications could be considerably more significant.
If courts begin accepting the principle that major fossil-fuel producers can be required to contribute proportionately to climate-disaster compensation, the resulting financial exposure could extend far beyond any individual case.
Extreme weather events can cause enormous losses.
Potential claims may involve destroyed infrastructure, damaged property, agricultural losses, business interruption, displacement and wider social harm.
For shareholders, the important issue is therefore not simply the amount demanded in Brazil.
It is whether the case advances a legal theory capable of being applied in other jurisdictions.
A single unsuccessful lawsuit may have limited financial consequences.
A successful precedent, however, could encourage further litigation and affect the assessment of long-term legal and financial risks associated with fossil-fuel production.
At present, such consequences remain possibilities rather than established liabilities.
The wider contradiction in Shell’s positionThere is also a striking contrast between this development and Shell’s recent financial disclosures.
On 7 October, Shell reported that its indicative refining margin had risen sharply to $42 per barrel.
That disclosure was examined in our recent article:
Three days later, Shell finds itself at the centre of another important climate-related legal development.
The contrast is revealing.
The company’s established oil and gas activities continue to generate substantial commercial opportunities.
At the same time, the long-term environmental consequences associated with fossil-fuel emissions are becoming the subject of increasingly ambitious legal claims.
That tension is likely to remain an important consideration for investors assessing Shell’s future.
A new chapter for the independent Shell archiveThe Brazilian proceedings deserve a permanent place in the independent historical record of Shell-related litigation.
The case is distinctive in several respects.
It involves federal prosecutors rather than only private claimants.
It seeks compensation for a specific, catastrophic weather event.
It advances a theory of proportional responsibility based on historical greenhouse gas emissions.
And it targets Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary while drawing on allegations concerning the wider group’s contribution to global warming.
For the purposes of The Shell Leaks Files and the broader Shell litigation archive, the case should be recorded as a newly filed civil climate-damages action.
The reported compensation demand is approximately 541 million reais, equivalent to around $108 million.
The alleged emissions contribution is 2%.
Neither the claimed damages nor the asserted attribution has yet been judicially established.
The exact court, case number and procedural timetable should be added once independently verified.
These distinctions are important because the value of a historical archive depends on separating allegations, documentary evidence and judicial findings.
Conclusion: a potentially historic test of climate responsibilityBrazil’s lawsuit against Shell could become an important test of how the law responds to the financial consequences of climate change.
The prosecutors are advancing a proposition that would have seemed highly ambitious only a few years ago.
They argue that a major fossil-fuel producer should contribute financially to the damage caused by a catastrophic flood because of its historical contribution to global warming.
Shell has not been found liable.
The prosecutors have not yet proved their case.
And substantial questions remain about causation, attribution and the application of Brazilian environmental law.
Nevertheless, the significance of the proceedings should not be underestimated.
For decades, major oil companies have generated revenues from the extraction, production and sale of fossil fuels.
The emerging legal question is whether those companies can also be required to contribute to the costs of climate-related disasters.
Brazilian federal prosecutors have now placed that question directly before a court in proceedings against Shell.
The outcome may matter far beyond Brazil.
Sources- Agence France-Presse, 10 October 2026 — Brazil prosecutors sue Shell for $108 million over deadly 2024 floods
- UOL / AFP, 9 October 2026 — Brazilian prosecutors seek more than R$541 million from Shell
- Correio do Povo — Federal prosecutors bring Shell flood claim
- Columbia University — Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
- Shell plc — Third Quarter 2026 Update Note
Editorial note: This article reports allegations in newly filed civil proceedings. Shell’s liability has not been established. The precise court docket, pleadings and any subsequent company response remain to be independently verified.
The most important aspect of this story is the involvement of Brazil’s federal prosecutors. That gives the case a significance beyond the $108 million demand and makes it particularly relevant to the Shell litigation archive.
AFP +2
I can also prepare a strong accompanying editorial image showing the 2024 Brazilian floods, Shell and the new climate lawsuit.
Shell Faces Historic $108 Million Climate Lawsuit in Brazil Over Floods That Killed Nearly 200 People was first posted on October 10, 2026 at 9:29 am.©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
To Speak the Truth: On the Mediated Obscene
The anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the three-year, U.S-funded Gazan genocide it ignited marks the birth of a dark new world where "the unthinkable has become banal," where many thousands of damaged Palestinian children - homeless, toy-less, traumatized, unschooled, with mournful questions about a lost world - have been given only "tents, hunger, and rubble as answers." Zohran Mamdani on the arduous, unfulfilled task before us: "There must be room to mourn every single life."
Precisely one year into what over 100 human rights organizations around the world call "a ceasefire in name only," Gaza remains "Ground Zero" in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In the last three years, Israeli strikes have killed at least 74,254 people, including over 21,500 children, and wounded 175,000 more, killing or wounding more than 1 in 10 of Gaza's pre-war population; health officials estimate tens of thousands more dead remain buried beneath Gaza's 61 million tons of rubble. Since the start of the so-called ceasefire on Oct.10 of last year, at least 1,470 more Palestinians have been killed, including nearly one child a day. No hospital is fully functional, over 1.4 million Palestinians face crisis-level hunger and most Gazan families remain trapped in a devastating cycle of loss, grief, deprivation and uncertainty.
Reports seeping out from a still-mostly-blockaded Gaza describe "entire worlds wiped out" - extended families, neighborhoods, over 80% of all buildings, resulting in nearly 1.9 million Palestinians displaced. Gaza's missing, or last seen detained, handcuffed, tortured, naked, haunt those who survive: "We don't know whether to mourn them or wait for them." During occasional prisoner swaps, Israel hands over images or remains of decomposing bodies of detainees, many handcuffed, blindfolded, missing limbs, clearly tortured. Parents scroll or search through them, all that's left of a long-missing son: "How did I become a mother who hopes to find her child among mutilated corpses? My dream was to hug him. Now I pray simply to bury him."
Others relive brutality they withstood: fires, bombings, multiple evacuations, sights, smells, sounds of phosphorous bombs, drones, tanks; the terror of running to an outhouse fast enough not to "be sniped," as bombs fall the uneasy sleep close enough to outside walls that, if buildings fall, neighbors can dig them out or at least bury them, the first up-close sight of Israeli soldiers swathed in armor, looking "invincible." The orders to strip to underwear, blindfolded, tightly handcuffed behind backs; kneeling on ground of broken glass and rubble; insults, beatings, cold relieved only when their own warm welcome blood from punches runs over them. Trying to pray or sleep, hallucinating "between life and death," when blankets, speaking, changing position is forbidden: "Everything was forbidden except breathing and swift death."
Palestinian detaineePhoto by Activestills
And always there are the children, Gaza's "lost generation," roughly 700,000 students left behind by three years of war and deliberate “scholasticide" that have destroyed 95% of their schools, turned the rest into shelters for the displaced, killed over 20,000 students and 1,000 teachers, seen books burned for fuel for warmth or cooking. At the start of a new school year, the UN and its partners have set up over 500 tent sites - no desks, chairs, books, water, ovens in summer, freezing in winter - to serve up to 100,000 hungry, shell-shocked students struggling to focus in an attempted return to a "normal life" they can't imagine, who've grown up falling asleep to the sound of bombs, "their entire existence one of life amid rubble, tents, stones and sand," writes Tareq Hajjaj of kids often too young to remember what a home or school was.
Hajjaj fled for Cairo in 2024 so his only child wouldn't "grow up believing the whole world looked like Gaza." He left behind 15 nieces and nephews whose "expectations for ordinary life" he's seen shrink; on one video call, a six-year-old nephew saw him sitting on a sofa and asked how he fit it in his tent, and they dream only of a bigger, dryer tent. In the occupied West Bank, residents likewise endure new Israeli gates that turn villages into "an effective cage," Bedouin families are expelled, settlers steal land, livestock, homes, olive groves harvested by Palestinian generations past. This is not a Palestinian "superhuman capacity" for resilience, Hajjaj argues, but "the ordinary human behavior of people who have no other choice, who are left alone to their fate." To cope, they dismiss the hardship with “aadi,” Arabic for normal -"it is what it is" - but "there is nothing normal about it."
Many Gazans are still surviving on a fraction of the food aid they need.Getty Image
In a deeply complicit America that contributed over $30 billion to the enduring carnage, the truth of what our blood money has wrought slowly seeps out. Last month, the New York Film Festival premiered NAZA, the Guardian-produced documentary by two Israeli filmmakers that offers a grim "Window Into Systems of Mass Killings" in a Gaza where rabid Zionists argued there are "no innocent people." NAZA, the Hebrew acronym for civilian deaths as high as 500 for one legit target, presents damning testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers, faces obscured from Israeli retribution, who veer from naming their genocidal acts to rationalizing them through performative nods toward their guilt - a longtime form of Israeli sort-of-moral-reckoning with state violence known as "shooting and crying" that critics dub "addiction to the mediated obscene." The film will stream for free in November on The Guardian website.
This week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani proffered a more heartfelt, equitable reckoning with what remains "a moral tear in the universe" by attending a peace vigil and press conference to commemorate the grim anniversary. As expected, he caught flak from both sides when he called out both Hamas' “horrific war crimes” - he's a Muslim "traitor" - and Israel's “devastating, ongoing genocide” - he's an "anti-Semite." Calmly, he noted, he "signed up for this," and will continue to insist on it, citing the need to equally mourn and extend human rights to the over 1,100 Israelis killed and 74,000 Palestinians subsequently killed. "This is part of what it means to believe in a sense of humanity, " he said. "We need not choose between which death we will mourn and which we will ignore, and we must reckon with the fact that all of it is to be opposed.”
A ceasefire in name only: The mother of 8-year-old Amal al-Mughayir mourns her death in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis last month.Photo by Doaa Albaz
Further glad proof of that reckoning was the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to “Navi” Pillay, 85, South African jurist, former U.N. human rights chief and member of the ICC who has led decades-long fights seeking accountability for apartheid, wartime rape and most recently the Gaza genocide. The Nobel committee cited Pillay's “exceptional courage”; noting her last report naming Gaza a genocide, she responded, "Why would you need courage to speak the truth?" Fittingly, Pillay learned of the award while at Germany's Nuremberg Forum, where Nazis went on trial in 1945: "I was sitting here minding my own business, listening to the panel present their research, because you’re always learning.” When colleagues applauded her, Pillay won the Internet by slyly adding, "Thank you so much. If you clap a little more, I may share this prize with President Trump."
Last year, Pillay was also awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. She dedicated it to “all the survivors of international crimes” and to “defenders of international justice (who) ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign.” Joining her righteous fight is Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza and winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Recently, per Zeteo, Toha wrote A Letter of Sympathy to the President of the United States after he saw posts online mocking Trump when he was seen wincing at the “deafening sound" of a military flyover for his autocrat bestie Chinese President Xi. "I didn’t like the tone of many of those posts,” Toha wrote. "I don't blame you for such a reaction/ I have reacted like this, and worse, hundred of times..."
To wit:
"My parents, wife, kids, and siblings have too.
So all of us now
know how
that sound feels.
In 2008, I was 16
on the roof of our house in Beit Lahia,
standing with my father, watching his pigeons in their coop,
when an Israeli, U.S.-made F-16
flew low, like a shaving machine,
before razing a neighborhood.
I panicked at its piercing shriek,
but also at the sight of the missiles
mounted beneath its wings.
But Mr. President, all of us, except you, know
the screech of a missile
or the blast of an explosion.
Do you know what’s louder than the screech and the blast?
The voice of a mother in Jabalia Camp,
begging me on October 31, 2023,
to search for the bodies of her husband and children
under the rubble
not just of her house,
but of the entire neighborhood.
The desperate pleas of 5-year-old Hind Rajab
from her uncle’s car in January 2024,
and the 335 bullets fired at her
before, during, and after the call.
The trickle of tears on the cheek of a father
who returned with no bread for his kids in a tent
in Khan Younis, and the screams of an infant
whose mother’s breast had dried up.
The heartbeat of 18-year-old Ahed
as her uncle, Dr. Hani Bseiso,
amputated her leg on a kitchen table,
without anesthesia.
It was dark!
The grinding footsteps of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyya
as he walked toward the tank in his white coat.
I can hear the sound of his disappearance.
And I can still hear and hear more!
But do you know what will be much louder than all?
The sound of the gavel
in the court of justice."
Women in Black: peace and justice across borders
Liz Khan reports on the global network of women organising against war and militarism since 1988, with feminist analyses at their core
The post Women in Black: peace and justice across borders appeared first on Red Pepper.
Australia’s most powerful battery set free of massive “shock absorber” contract after delay to Eraring coal closure
Australia's most powerful battery now free to trade its full capacity on market after its unique "shock absorber" contract was made redundant by Eraring closure delay.
The post Australia’s most powerful battery set free of massive “shock absorber” contract after delay to Eraring coal closure appeared first on Renew Economy.
Feds Deny Ballistics Expert Access to Prairieland Defendant Who Got a 100 Years w/ Adam Federman
ADELANTE: Dialogue of Global Processes
Audubon Mural Project in Hopkins, MN
The SFPUC has inflated its water demand projections for years, starving fish and riparian ecosystems. The Sierra Club is fighting back.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) has, for years, over-projected its water needs and used those over-projections to starve the environment of water. Today the Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter is asking a judge to put a stop to that cycle. The Sierra Club has filed a petition asking a judge to invalidate the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s 2025 Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP).
This flawed demand forecast is a big reason the SFPUC argues it can take more and more water from the Bay-Delta and rivers, even if its customers don’t end up using that water. The plan’s demand forecast is not supported by the utility’s own records, by facts, or by logic. The graph below shows the SFPUC pattern of over-projection that the Sierra Club is seeking to change:
The SFPUC uses two sets of booksWhen it comes to demand forecasts, the SFPUC keeps two sets of books. It has one demand forecast that shows ever-increasing demand for water. That’s the one that guides its operations and causes it to hoard water behind its dams (including Hetch Hetchy) just in case its fanciful forecasts ever materialize. This forecast means in dry years, little water flows downstream to feed the ecosystem the Tuolumne river sustains. At the same time, the SFPUC’s finance team has an entirely different forecast that it uses to predict what it will charge customers for water in the next decade. The finance forecast, presented last February, shows roughly flat water demand.
It’s not against the law to have two different forecasts. It is against the law to have an alternative forecast that your state-mandated UWMP water demand report neither acknowledges, nor explains.
An agency does not get to choose an audience and then choose a number to match it without disclosure. The California state agencies that set future water policies, bondholders, and ratepayers read these documents. They are all entitled to a detailed explanation in the UWMP of how and why the SFPUC uses two sets of numbers.
The assumptions run up the scoreTo arrive at its inflated demand forecast—SFPUC water deliveries have declined 28% in the past 25 years, but the forecast somehow arrives at a 13% increase over the next 25 years—the SFPUC has used a set of assumptions that willfully ignore facts and logic. These assumptions are not supported by evidence and push the demand model they are using to achieve the higher demand the SFPUC wants to show:
The model assumes San Francisco reaches 100 percent housing occupancy by 2030. The city has never reached 100 percent occupancy, as “vacant” includes second homes and homes up for sale or rent. Census data put occupancy near 88.5 percent in 2024, and the occupancy trend has been down, not up.
- The model assumes new multifamily units use as much water as old ones. However, the SFPUC’s own data show new multifamily units use ~25 percent less water.
- The model assumes conservation programs stop producing savings in 2030 or 2035, and so savings from conservation programs are less than 1% of water use by 2050. Yet the agency has no plan to shut those programs down.
- The model assumes water and wastewater rates never outpace inflation after the mid-2030s. Yet the agency has plans for a large capital buildout in exactly that time frame that would push up costs.
Every one of these choices pushes projected demand up. Not one pushes it down. That is not forecasting – that is using your assumptions to run up the demand numbers. The inflated numbers end up costing both the environment and ratepayers.
Who pays for the gapInflated demand numbers underpin the SFPUC’s argument that it cannot spare water for the San Francisco Bay Delta. They are the numbers the utility uses to starve the ecosystem of water. The SFPUC’s water planners think over-projecting demand keeps water users safe. In fact, they’re just using the environment as their buffer.
Ratepayers are also on the hook. The SFPUC is building a $400 million headquarters for its water department while customer rates climb 25 percent between 2026 and 2028. An inflated demand forecast gives planners permission to keep spending. The bill arrives as a rate increase.
What we are asking forWe are asking the court to force the SFPUC to set the plan aside and revise it. We want a demand forecast supported by facts. We want a straight explanation of how two forecasts from the same agency, published months apart, reached quite different conclusions. We have raised all of this with the Commission in writing and in person. We raised it more than once. The Commission adopted the plan anyway, so unfortunately we are left legal action as our only remaining option.
We are not asking a court to stop water deliveries or threaten San Francisco’s water supplies. We are asking for a defensible, transparent demand number so that we can all properly plan for ecosystem health and for a future of affordable water.
Look, no turbines! Natural landscape returns at site of decommissioned wind farm
The site of one of Australia's very first wind farms now shows little evidence of ever having hosted turbines, as work continues on returning the decommissioned project to its natural landscape.
The post Look, no turbines! Natural landscape returns at site of decommissioned wind farm appeared first on Renew Economy.
Counterpunch: Trump’s USDA Gambles America’s Forests on a Defective GMO Chestnut Tree
THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 9 OCTOBER 2026
Archive reference: SLF-2007-082
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal authenticated records: Gazprom corporate announcements of 23 February, 23 May and 30 September 2014; Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2014; US Treasury sanctions announcements of 16 July and 12 September 2014; EU Council Regulation 833/2014.
Contemporaneous reporting: Associated Press, 30 April 2014; Reuters and RIA Novosti, July–September 2014; Interfax, 19 September 2014; UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office report on the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, published 1 June 2014.
Judicial context: District Court of The Hague, MH17 judgments, 17 November 2022, used solely to establish the historical and legal context of the July 2014 disaster.
Evidence standard: Official corporate records establish meetings, ownership interests and publicly announced proposals. Journalistic reports of Shell statements are attributed to their sources. Sanctions are described according to their scope at the relevant date, not according to restrictions introduced subsequently. No allegation is made that Shell breached sanctions or was involved in the destruction of flight MH17.
Introduction: Five weeks after PutinThe previous Shell Leaks File ended on Good Friday, 18 April 2014.
Ben van Beurden, recently appointed chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, had travelled to Vladimir Putin’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.
The meeting occurred barely a month after Russia annexed Crimea.
Western governments had condemned the annexation.
The United States and European Union had begun imposing sanctions.
Yet Shell’s chief executive was seeking Kremlin support for expanding the Sakhalin II liquefied natural gas project.
The Kremlin transcript recorded Putin responding favourably.
Van Beurden presented Shell as a long-term Russian investor with ambitions extending beyond its existing operations.
That meeting might reasonably have been interpreted as an exceptional diplomatic encounter arranged before the crisis worsened.
But what happened next demonstrates that it was not an isolated occasion.
On 23 May, van Beurden returned to discussions with Gazprom’s chairman.
The two companies were still exploring expansion.
And this time the meeting occurred within an international economic forum that had itself become a symbol of Russia’s growing political isolation.
1. The 23 May meeting is documented by GazpromThe primary record is a Gazprom announcement published at 12:35 on 23 May 2014.
Its title was:
“Gazprom and Shell look at possible expansion of cooperation within Sakhalin II.”
The announcement confirms that Alexey Miller and Ben van Beurden held a working meeting during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
According to Gazprom, the discussions covered strategic cooperation, including geological exploration, production, hydrocarbon processing, international marketing and LNG.
Particular attention was given to possible expansion of cooperation connected with Sakhalin II.
This was not merely a journalist reporting an unconfirmed conversation.
It was a contemporaneous corporate announcement identifying both executives, the occasion and the subjects discussed. Gazprom
The distinction matters.
We cannot reconstruct every private exchange between the two executives.
But the public record establishes that Shell’s interest in expanding its Russian activities continued after the April Kremlin meeting.
2. What Gazprom and Shell were actually discussingThe commercial centrepiece remained Sakhalin II.
By 2014, Sakhalin Energy had been exporting LNG for approximately five years.
Its liquefaction plant at Prigorodnoye had two production trains with an original combined design capacity of 9.6 million tonnes annually.
Gazprom’s 23 May announcement recorded that the project had produced 10.8 million tonnes of LNG and 5.4 million tonnes of oil in 2013.
The ownership structure was equally important.
Gazprom held 50 per cent plus one share.
Shell held 27.5 per cent minus one share.
Mitsui held 12.5 per cent.
Mitsubishi held 10 per cent.
Those proportions reflected the restructuring completed in 2007, when Shell surrendered majority control following the extraordinary regulatory and commercial confrontation documented earlier in this series. Gazprom
Shell therefore remained a substantial investor.
But it could no longer determine Sakhalin Energy’s future independently.
A third LNG train would require cooperation with Gazprom and agreement among the project participants.
Additional gas resources would also be needed to support any significant expansion.
Gazprom controlled potentially relevant resources elsewhere around Sakhalin.
That gave the Russian company considerable commercial leverage.
Shell brought international LNG expertise, technology, marketing experience and investment capabilities.
The relationship remained mutually useful.
It was also politically sensitive.
3. The February roadmap was not a construction decisionThe May discussion followed an agreement signed in Sochi on 23 February 2014.
At that meeting, Miller and van Beurden signed a memorandum-roadmap providing for preparation of front-end engineering and design documentation for a third Sakhalin II LNG train.
Van Beurden welcomed Gazprom’s approach to expanding the plant and emphasised Sakhalin II’s importance as an LNG supplier to Asia.
Gazprom highlighted growing Asian demand.
These statements reveal the commercial logic behind Shell’s continued engagement.
The Asia-Pacific LNG market appeared to offer substantial opportunities.
Sakhalin II already possessed operating infrastructure, export facilities and established customers.
Expansion could potentially build upon those advantages. Gazprom
But the documentary distinction is essential.
A memorandum authorising engineering preparation is not a final investment decision.
It does not prove that all financing, gas-supply arrangements, construction contracts or government approvals were in place.
Nor does it establish that the third train was certain to be built.
The documents demonstrate corporate intention and preparatory activity.
They do not demonstrate an irrevocable construction commitment.
4. Shell’s finance chief had already sounded a warningThere is another contemporary record that complicates the picture.
On 30 April 2014, less than two weeks after van Beurden’s meeting with Putin, Shell chief financial officer Simon Henryaddressed Russia during a discussion of the company’s financial results.
Associated Press reported that Shell would continue managing existing Russian operations but was reluctant to begin new investments while the political situation remained uncertain.
Henry said the company was unlikely to embark upon new Russian investments in the immediate future.
He also defended van Beurden’s meeting with Putin against suggestions that the visit meant Shell was taking sides in the Ukraine crisis. Washington Examiner
Was Shell contradicting itself?
Not necessarily.
There is an important difference between maintaining an established investment, conducting preliminary engineering for an existing project’s expansion and committing substantial capital to a completely new venture.
The April and May statements can be reconciled on that basis.
Nevertheless, they expose the tension within Shell’s Russian strategy.
Its financial management was acknowledging political risk.
Its chief executive was continuing discussions about commercial opportunity.
Shell wanted to preserve options.
It did not yet want to surrender the possibility of expansion.
5. St Petersburg became a political stageThe setting of the May meeting deserves particular attention.
The St Petersburg International Economic Forum took place between 22 and 24 May 2014.
The event had long served as an important gathering of Russian and international business leaders.
But in 2014 it occurred during an international confrontation.
A contemporary report prepared by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, published on 1 June 2014, provides valuable independent context.
The report recorded that fewer senior international participants attended than in previous years.
It also described how Putin used the forum to criticise Western sanctions and appeal directly to international business interests.
According to the British diplomatic account, Putin thanked the Western companies that attended for maintaining what he characterised as an independent and responsible position despite political pressure.
He argued that sanctions harmed the businesses and economies of the countries imposing them.
He also emphasised Russia’s continuing desire for cooperation with European companies. GOV.UK
The political usefulness of Western corporate attendance was therefore explicit.
Putin wanted to demonstrate that Russia was not economically isolated.
Western companies that continued participating in Russian investment discussions helped reinforce that message, whether they intended to or not.
Shell’s meeting with Gazprom occurred within this environment.
That does not establish that van Beurden endorsed Putin’s political arguments.
It establishes that Shell continued its commercial discussions at an event whose political significance was recognised by the British government at the time.
6. Russia was turning towards ChinaTwo days before the Shell–Gazprom meeting, another major energy development had occurred.
On 21 May 2014, Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation signed a long-term agreement for Russian gas supplies to China.
Gazprom described the contract as a historic agreement.
It provided for annual deliveries of 38 billion cubic metres of gas under a 30-year arrangement.
The agreement formed part of the development of Russia’s eastern gas infrastructure, including what became known as the Power of Siberia pipeline. Gazprom
That agreement was separate from Sakhalin II.
It should not be presented as a Shell contract or as proof that the proposed third Sakhalin train would supply the Chinese pipeline system.
But it demonstrates the wider strategic setting.
Gazprom was strengthening its position in Asian energy markets.
At the same time, Shell was pursuing further LNG cooperation with Gazprom on Sakhalin.
The commercial incentives were substantial.
Russia was seeking new export opportunities.
Shell wanted access to growing Asian gas demand.
Neither company wished to abandon a relationship that had already produced a major operating LNG complex.
7. July 2014: sanctions become much more seriousThe sanctions environment changed significantly during July.
On 16 July 2014, the US Treasury announced restrictions targeting major Russian financial institutions and energy companies.
The measures included restrictions on certain new financing involving:
Gazprombank.
VEB.
Rosneft.
Novatek.
These were sectoral sanctions designed to limit access to US capital markets.
They did not impose a blanket prohibition upon every commercial transaction involving Russian energy companies.
Nor did the July measures amount to a comprehensive ban on Shell’s existing Sakhalin II operations. U.S. Department of the Treasury
A distinction frequently lost in retrospective accounts is particularly important here.
Gazprombank and Gazprom were not interchangeable legal entities.
Restricting financing involving Gazprombank did not automatically prohibit every transaction with Gazprom itself.
Similarly, restrictions upon Rosneft or Novatek did not automatically prohibit Sakhalin LNG exports.
The precise entity, transaction, date and applicable sanctions jurisdiction mattered.
This was not an academic distinction.
For companies such as Shell, the legal boundaries determined which activities could continue and which required modification, suspension or termination.
8. The following day: the MH17 catastropheOn 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was destroyed over eastern Ukraine.
All 298 passengers and crew died.
The aircraft had departed Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur.
The tragedy profoundly affected the Netherlands, where Shell was historically headquartered and where many of the victims lived.
Subsequent investigations established that the aircraft was brought down by a Buk surface-to-air missile.
On 17 November 2022, the District Court of The Hague convicted three defendants in connection with the destruction of the aircraft and the murder of those aboard. A fourth defendant was acquitted.
The judgments are preserved in the official MH17 court archive. Court MH17
This judicial context must be handled carefully.
The MH17 proceedings did not concern Shell’s commercial operations.
They made no finding that Shell was involved in the attack.
The relevance to this instalment is historical and political.
After MH17, relations between Russia and the Netherlands deteriorated further.
The political cost of continuing business relations with Russian state enterprises became increasingly difficult to ignore.
Shell’s commercial challenge was now considerably more complicated than it had been during van Beurden’s April visit.
9. Shell’s July response: business strategy unchangedThe contemporary Donovan archive preserves a particularly revealing report from this period.
On 26 July 2014, the archive reproduced a RIA Novosti dispatch dated 25 July.
RIA Novosti reported that an unnamed representative of Shell’s press service had said the company intended to continue operating in Russia despite Western sanctions.
The reported position was that Shell was monitoring the sanctions but had not changed its existing Russian business strategy.
The article identified both upstream and downstream operations.
It also referred to Shell’s established relationships with Gazprom and Gazprom Neft.
This contemporary reproduction is an important historical source.
But the evidential distinction should be retained.
It preserves a statement attributed by RIA Novosti to an unnamed Shell representative.
It is not an independently authenticated internal Shell policy memorandum. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com
Fortunately, the same general corporate position was subsequently reported through additional sources.
10. September: Shell’s Russian chairman confirms the strategyOn 19 September 2014, Shell’s senior representative in Russia, Olivier Lazare, spoke at an economic forum in Sochi.
Reuters reported that Shell intended to continue its Russian activities while complying with Western sanctions.
Lazare said the company’s strategy in Russia had not changed, although Shell was assessing the implications of the restrictions.
The Russian news agency Interfax independently reported the same position.
Lazare emphasised Shell’s longstanding presence in Russia and its preference for a long-term approach to investment.
He also said the company was concentrating on current operations. La Tribune
These reports provide corroboration of the general position recorded by RIA Novosti in July.
Shell was not announcing a wholesale withdrawal.
It was attempting to maintain its existing position while operating within the legal boundaries of the sanctions regime.
The distinction between maintaining operations and authorising new investment remained central.
11. The September sanctions targeted particular technologies and projectsThe restrictions became more significant on 12 September 2014.
The US Treasury announced further measures targeting Russian finance, energy and defence-related entities.
Of particular importance to Shell’s broader Russian interests was Directive 4.
It prohibited specified goods, services and technology from being supplied by US persons, or from the United States, in support of certain Russian deepwater, Arctic offshore and shale projects with the potential to produce oil.
The named Russian companies included Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegas and Rosneft.
The Treasury explained that the measures were intended to impede Russia’s development of technologically demanding future oil resources.
It also expressly distinguished those restrictions from a prohibition on the current supply and sale of Russian energy. U.S. Department of the Treasury
The European Union introduced corresponding restrictions through its own sanctions framework, including Regulation 833/2014 and subsequent amendments. Eur-Lex
For Shell, the implications depended upon the activity.
Conventional Sakhalin LNG production was not necessarily subject to the same restrictions as a new Arctic offshore oil venture.
An established gas-processing operation could continue under circumstances in which a new unconventional oil project might encounter serious legal obstacles.
The legal position required project-specific examination.
That is why it would be inaccurate to say that the September sanctions automatically prohibited Shell’s entire Russian business.
Equally, it would be inaccurate to claim that the restrictions were irrelevant to Shell’s future ambitions.
They affected important categories of technology and potential cooperation involving Russian energy companies.
12. Gazprom Neft made the distinction especially importantShell’s Russian exposure extended beyond Sakhalin II.
The company also had a longstanding relationship with Gazprom Neft.
Earlier Shell Leaks Files examined Shell’s participation in Salym Petroleum Development and the companies’ interest in unconventional oil development.
In April 2013, Gazprom and Shell had also signed a memorandum addressing possible cooperation in exploration and development on Russia’s Arctic continental shelf and certain deepwater areas elsewhere.
Gazprom’s May 2014 announcement still identified that memorandum as part of the relationship’s background.
That is a significant documentary detail.
It shows that the parties’ broader ambitions included precisely the types of technically challenging activity that Western sanctions would subsequently begin restricting. Gazprom
But the chronology is crucial.
A memorandum signed in 2013 cannot retrospectively constitute a breach of restrictions introduced in September 2014.
Nor does the existence of that memorandum establish that any prohibited activity occurred after the restrictions took effect.
The stronger conclusion is that Shell’s options were narrowing.
The company could continue established activities where lawful.
But some potential new projects had become considerably more difficult.
13. ExxonMobil provides an instructive comparisonThe effect of the September restrictions can be seen in what happened to another Western oil major.
ExxonMobil was working with Rosneft on Arctic offshore exploration.
Following the new sanctions, Reuters reported on 19 September 2014 that ExxonMobil would wind down drilling in the Russian Arctic.
The US authorities had provided a short extension to enable the company to cease operations safely.
This was a practical consequence of the sanctions regime rather than merely a political statement. Voice of America
Shell’s position was different.
Its principal existing Russian investment was the Sakhalin II LNG project, which was already producing and exporting gas.
The company therefore had a substantial continuing commercial interest that was not automatically eliminated by restrictions designed principally to impede certain new oil developments.
This helps explain why Lazare could speak about maintaining Shell’s Russian strategy while other Western oil activities were being suspended.
It does not mean Shell was unaffected.
It means the restrictions affected different projects differently.
14. Shell’s commercial relationship survivedBy the end of September 2014, the sequence was clear.
Van Beurden had visited Putin in April.
He had met Miller in May.
Shell’s finance chief had expressed caution about new Russian investment.
Western sanctions had expanded.
Flight MH17 had been destroyed over Ukraine.
US restrictions had reached major Russian financial institutions and selected energy activities.
The European Union had introduced its own economic measures.
And Shell’s Russian leadership continued publicly defending the company’s long-term business strategy.
The existing Sakhalin II project provided a powerful commercial incentive to maintain cooperation.
Gazprom controlled the venture.
Shell still held a valuable minority interest.
The LNG plant was operating.
Expansion remained under consideration.
Neither company had concluded that the political crisis required their commercial relationship to end.
The contemporaneous reporting supports that conclusion.
It does not establish that Shell was prepared to disregard the law.
Indeed, the September reporting specifically recorded the company’s intention to comply with applicable sanctions.
The important distinction is between continuing lawful commercial engagement and breaching sanctions.
Only the former is established by the documents examined here.
Documentary Findings Established by official corporate records23 February 2014: Gazprom and Shell signed a memorandum-roadmap covering preparation of front-end engineering documentation for a proposed third Sakhalin II LNG train.
18 April 2014: Ben van Beurden met Vladimir Putin and discussed Shell’s Russian investments and expansion ambitions.
23 May 2014: Van Beurden met Alexey Miller at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Gazprom’s official announcement confirms that the parties discussed strategic cooperation and possible expansion connected with Sakhalin II.
Gazprom remained Sakhalin Energy’s controlling shareholder. Shell held approximately 27.5 per cent.
The Sakhalin II LNG plant was an established operating asset, not a speculative project awaiting first production. Gazprom
Established by government recordsThe US Treasury imposed significant Russian financial and energy-sector restrictions in July 2014.
Further measures introduced in September targeted specified deepwater, Arctic offshore and shale-oil activities involving named Russian companies.
The European Union introduced its own sectoral restrictions.
These measures were specific in their application and did not constitute a comprehensive prohibition on every Western commercial transaction involving Russia.
The contemporary British diplomatic record also establishes that the St Petersburg forum was politically sensitive and that Putin publicly welcomed continued Western business engagement. U.S. Department of the Treasury
Established by contemporaneous reportingAssociated Press reported Simon Henry’s caution concerning new Russian investment on 30 April 2014.
RIA Novosti reported in July that Shell intended to maintain its existing Russian business strategy.
Reuters and Interfax reported in September that Olivier Lazare continued to support Shell’s long-term Russian activities while acknowledging the need to comply with sanctions.
These reports independently support the conclusion that Shell was seeking to maintain commercial continuity despite growing political restrictions. Washington Examiner
Established by subsequent judicial proceedingsThe District Court of The Hague established criminal responsibility in the MH17 case against three defendants.
That judgment provides authoritative context for the political crisis following 17 July 2014.
It does not establish wrongdoing by Shell.
The MH17 proceedings and Shell’s Russian commercial activities were legally separate matters. Court MH17
Not establishedThe documents do not establish that Shell violated US or EU sanctions during the period examined.
They do not establish that van Beurden supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
They do not establish that discussions about Sakhalin II expansion amounted to a final investment decision.
They do not establish that Putin directed Shell’s commercial decisions.
They do not establish that Shell participated in or had responsibility for the destruction of flight MH17.
They do not establish that every proposed Shell–Gazprom Arctic or unconventional oil project proceeded.
And they do not establish that Shell’s entire Russian business was prohibited by the sanctions introduced in 2014.
Commentary: The Commercial Logic of StayingThe most revealing aspect of this instalment is not simply that Shell continued dealing with Gazprom.
It is the consistency of that decision across a rapidly deteriorating political environment.
Shell’s chief executive had told Putin that the company wanted to expand.
Its finance chief had subsequently warned against rushing into new investments.
The distinction was commercially rational.
Preserving a producing asset is not the same as committing billions to a new one.
Sakhalin II was already generating LNG revenues.
Its infrastructure existed.
Customers were receiving its products.
Shell’s minority interest remained valuable.
Abandoning that investment would have involved considerable commercial consequences.
Nor would unilateral withdrawal necessarily have changed the Russian state’s ownership or control of the project.
These were real considerations for Shell’s management.
But there was another side.
In 2006, Russian regulatory pressure and the negotiations surrounding Gazprom’s entry had demonstrated how political authority could affect the company’s investment.
Shell had surrendered control of Sakhalin Energy.
By 2014, however, it was once again seeking Russian government support to expand the same project.
That reversal deserves emphasis.
The company that had experienced the consequences of Russia’s determination to control strategic energy resources had chosen to deepen its relationship with the Russian state company that benefited from the restructuring.
This was not necessarily irrational.
From Shell’s perspective, Gazprom controlled resources and infrastructure that were essential to future growth.
The relationship offered commercial opportunities that Shell could not reproduce merely by insisting upon more favourable political circumstances.
But the dependence also created strategic vulnerability.
The more Shell invested in a relationship requiring cooperation with Russian state enterprises, the harder it became to separate ordinary commercial decisions from geopolitical developments.
The St Petersburg forum illustrated that dilemma.
Putin publicly thanked Western companies for maintaining their engagement.
Shell had its own reasons for attending and continuing discussions.
Yet the same corporate participation could serve Russian political purposes by demonstrating that important Western businesses remained willing to cooperate.
The documents do not establish Shell’s intentions beyond those it expressed.
They do establish that the political consequences of commercial activity could extend beyond those intentions.
There is also an important lesson concerning sanctions.
Western restrictions in 2014 were not designed as an immediate, comprehensive severance of every business relationship with Russia.
They developed incrementally.
They targeted individuals, institutions, financing arrangements, technology and particular categories of energy development.
Companies were therefore required to operate within an evolving legal framework.
Some activities continued.
Others became restricted.
Still others were suspended.
For Shell, this left room to maintain Sakhalin II while reconsidering more technically demanding or politically sensitive projects.
That distinction helps explain the company’s conduct.
But it also explains why the relationship endured.
Shell did not have to choose in 2014 between complete withdrawal and complete disregard of sanctions.
It could preserve existing investments, continue permitted discussions and postpone major decisions.
That was the strategy reflected in the contemporary record.
Whether it was politically wise is a separate question.
The later history of Russia, Ukraine and Shell’s own investments would make that question increasingly difficult.
For the purposes of this documentary archive, however, the conclusion should remain anchored to what the sources establish.
Shell continued seeking commercial opportunities with Gazprom during 2014.
It did so while publicly committing to sanctions compliance.
The Russian government valued continued cooperation with Western companies.
And the commercial partnership around Sakhalin II survived another major international crisis.
At least for the time being.
Principal Documentary SourcesGazprom — 23 May 2014
The central primary document confirming the meeting between Alexey Miller and Ben van Beurden and identifying the subjects discussed.
Gazprom: Possible expansion of cooperation within Sakhalin II
Gazprom — 23 February 2014
The memorandum-roadmap concerning engineering preparation for the proposed third Sakhalin II LNG production train.
Gazprom: Roadmap for Sakhalin II third train
UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office — 1 June 2014
Contemporaneous assessment of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, including Putin’s comments on sanctions and the participation of Western companies.
UK Government: St Petersburg International Economic Forum
US Department of the Treasury — 16 July 2014
Official announcement of restrictions affecting Gazprombank, VEB, Rosneft and Novatek.
US Treasury: Sanctions announced on 16 July 2014
US Department of the Treasury — 12 September 2014
Official announcement detailing the expansion of financial and energy restrictions, including Directive 4.
US Treasury: Expanded sanctions of 12 September 2014
European Union — Council Regulation 833/2014
The regulatory framework governing specified trade, finance and technology restrictions connected with Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Associated Press — 30 April 2014
Contemporary reporting of Simon Henry’s caution concerning new Russian investments and Shell’s stated intention to maintain existing operations.
AP report: Shell cautious about new Russian investments
RIA Novosti — 25 July 2014
Contemporary reporting of Shell’s intention to maintain its existing Russian business strategy, preserved by the Donovan archive.
Shell Leaves Business Strategy for Russia Unchanged Despite Sanctions
Reuters — 19 September 2014
Contemporaneous account of Olivier Lazare’s statements about Shell’s Russian strategy and sanctions compliance.
Reuters: Shell and Total continue Russian operations
Interfax — 19 September 2014
Independent contemporary reporting of Lazare’s remarks.
Interfax: Sanctions have not yet affected Shell’s Russian operations
District Court of The Hague — 17 November 2022
Official MH17 judgments, used exclusively to establish the subsequent judicial findings concerning the July 2014 tragedy.
District Court of The Hague: MH17 judgments
Royal Dutch Shell plc — Annual Report and Form 20-F 2014
Shell’s own corporate reporting for the year, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in March 2015.
Royal Dutch Shell: 2014 Form 20-F
Archive disclaimer: This instalment relies upon contemporary corporate announcements, government records, historical journalism and subsequent judicial material. Gazprom statements establish what the company publicly reported, not the complete content of private negotiations. Statements attributed to Shell representatives are identified according to their published sources.
The judicial material concerning MH17 does not implicate Shell. No breach of sanctions by Shell is alleged or established in the records examined here. The commercial motives and political implications discussed in the commentary are interpretations, not findings of fact.
Site-wide disclaimer also applies.
NEXT: The Partnership Deepens — Shell and Gazprom Meet Again as Sanctions Take HoldThe September sanctions had created a new legal environment.
But the Shell–Gazprom relationship had not ended.
On 30 September 2014, Alexey Miller and Ben van Beurden met again at Gazprom’s headquarters.
Gazprom’s official announcement recorded that the two executives discussed their existing and future cooperation, particularly LNG production at Sakhalin II.
The company emphasised the potential for increasing LNG output from the project.
This meeting took place only eighteen days after the United States introduced its expanded restrictions on Russian energy technology. Gazprom
That timing raises important questions.
Was Shell still pursuing the proposed third LNG train?
How did the new sanctions affect the project’s prospects?
Could Gazprom obtain the additional gas needed for expansion?
And how would the relationship between Shell and Russia’s state-controlled energy companies develop as Western restrictions became more demanding?
The next Shell Leaks File will examine the 30 September 2014 meeting and the continuing effort to expand Sakhalin II — revealing how Shell and Gazprom sought to preserve their LNG ambitions while the political and legal obstacles surrounding their partnership continued to grow.
THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 9 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 9, 2026 at 7:49 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
Inside the successful campaign against illegal Chinese mining in Africa
This article Inside the successful campaign against illegal Chinese mining in Africa was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
When the shrill of heavy earthmoving machinery crept towards Elias Mlambo’s riverside banana plantations in February, the sudden brownish color of the river alarmed him.
The water was laced with used machinery oil, disfiguring the once crystal-clear, wild water of the Haroni River. The river not only sustains the Ndau tribal people of the Chimanimani district in southeast Zimbabwe but also acts as Zimbabwe’s eastern border with Mozambique. By December of last year, excavators operated by a Chinese mining syndicate were at work along a stretch of the riverbeds — tearing up centuries of riparian ecology in a hunt for alluvial gold deposits.
“They appeared without notice, without our permission, claiming to have a government license to dig for gold on our land, but never showing the actual permit,” said Mlambo, a banana farmer and local tribal elder in Rusitu, one of the largest villages in the district.
He said he confronted a man who claimed to be the manager of the Chinese miners — but the man gave his name only as “Xai Samson” and flatly refused to give out the company’s name. He acted as though he did not understand English — a deliberate tactic some dubious Chinese mining syndicates adopt in Zimbabwe when confronted by aggrieved locals, Mlambo said.
“He just waffled a few sentences in Chinese — gestured to the excavators and piles of fresh soil,” he explained. “We figured out that our river, fruit plantations and ancestral graves were collateral to the invaders.”
Ignored at firstFor the next three months, Mlambo made complaints to the Chimanimani municipal authorities, a lawmaker and Zimbabwe’s mines ministry — and was ignored. Just one ministry bureaucrat responded to Mlambo and other tribal elders by telephone, only to say that his hands were tied, citing how high-level state partnerships and national economic priorities trump tribal land rights. It’s a familiar cold response from Zimbabwe’s government that human rights leaders say has given dozens of Chinese prospectors carte blanche to excavate hills and river streams, and encroach onto tribal farming and grazing lands in pursuit of precious metals like platinum, lithium or gold.
#newsletter-block_15274f02932a8a8e4b772696b6cbbfaa { background: #ECECEC; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_15274f02932a8a8e4b772696b6cbbfaa #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our Newsletter“There’s a cozy, transactional relationship between state decision-makers and Chinese minerals prospectors,” said Nsama Musonda, the executive director of Care for Nature Zambia, a regional ecology monitoring nonprofit. “This gifts Chinese businesspeople a carefree right to dig for precious minerals — without consent — on tribal people’s lands in Zimbabwe and nearby countries like Zambia.”
Knowing the script that has played out elsewhere across Zimbabwe, Mlambo and fellow villagers refused to retreat. Instead, they looked across the international boundary to Mozambique — a stone’s throw across the Haroni River. On the other side, in Mozambique’s Sussundenga district, villager Manuel Pinto was watching his community’s primary fish stocks float belly-up to the surface.
Fish in the community ponds that line the Mozambique side of the Haroni riverbed were suffocating from the sludge coming from the spoiled headwaters on the Zimbabwe side, he said. But Pinto feared something worse: Mozambique’s community health nurses warned that children could develop chemical rashes if they encountered contaminated waters.
“The river doesn’t need a passport to flow and nourish both countries, Zimbabwe and Mozambique,” he said, speaking the same Ndau vernacular language that hundreds of thousands of tribal people on the Zimbabwe side of the river border speak, too. “We realized that if authorities in Zimbabwe would not enforce environmental law, the Ndau people on both sides of the border would act to protect their right to safe livelihoods.”
The border alliancePinto says he knew routine complaints would be easily ignored by state decision-makers. So Mlambo and Pinto conjured up a community alliance rooted in their shared Ndau lineage. Tribal identity, older than colonial state borders, drove their determination to defend their environment against the encroachment of heavily polluting Chinese miners.
In daylight, the Ndau communities on the Zimbabwe side confronted the Chinese miners: spraying graffiti on the worksite and the machinery, and singing, chanting and banging pots, drowning them in noise. Since the area is remote geographically, located far from city markets, they also successfully convinced local food shops to refuse to sell soap, beverages, bread, meat, tea, essential groceries and cellphone top-up cards to the Chinese miners and their local mining employers. Taxis and buses refused them service. These actions constantly reminded the miners and their workers that they were trespassing on tribal lands.
“We made life uncomfortable for them,” Mlambo said. “Their workers were often hungry because we instructed local shops not to sell food or beer to the invaders, which they liked a lot. They would drive 50 kilometers just to replenish the food pantry with essentials like salt and cigarettes. Their workers began to quarrel with their bosses.”
Locals also shared their displeasure to social media networks followed by thousands of Zimbabweans.
At the same time, the Ndau communities on the Mozambique side of the river filled out urgent cross-border environmental petitions with provincial authorities in Mozambique’s Manica province. They walked into the offices of the governor and lawmakers and demanded urgent meetings, asking them to directly press the Zimbabwean government to take action under specified timelines. If the decision-makers didn’t follow through, the Ndau activists threatened not to pay taxes because the sludge from Zimbabwe’s polluted river was beginning to spoil their corn and fruit farming plots.
A Chinese mining excavator digs a hillside for gold in Chimanimani district, Zimbabwe. (Centre for Natural Resource Governance)The Zimbabwe government is known for being “tone deaf” to citizens’ grassroots petitions against irregular mining, said Pedrito Martinho Campira, chief of the Sussunhega district. But he added that the deliberate aggressive petitioning of the regional government in Manica, which borders Chimanimani, has created a diplomatic headache for Zimbabwe’s stubborn authorities, whom locals suspect were shielding the Chinese syndicate.
“At night our people would cross the river, cover the Chinese mining site with paper petitions and spray graffiti, warning the Chinese miners that they are messing with the waters flowing into Mozambique,” Campira recalled of the intense cross-border pushback that overwhelmed the Chinese prospectors.
“Illegal riverbed mining is an affront to our two shared lands and cultures,” he said. “We are one Ndau people separated by a colonial fence; we have blood family ties across the river.”
Faced with nightly protests, daily confrontation with locals on the Zimbabwe side of operations, cross-border diplomatic pressure and vocal warnings from Mozambique border guards, who were dismayed by the contaminated water flowing from the Zimbabwe side, the unidentified Chinese miners finally retreated in June. They abandoned heavy machinery and fled the mining site — leaving locals to rehabilitate spoiled riverbeds, banana plantations and damaged forest cover.
“We won,” Mlambo said. The Chinese mining syndicates operating without consent across rural Zimbabwe are used to facing only local complaints and enjoying the shield of compromised government bureaucrats, he added. “This time they faced something unfamiliar — a cross-border, bi-national grassroots pushback, and they were clueless on how to respond.”
Xiao Samson, the manager of the Chinese syndicate that attempted to excavate for gold in Haroni River, refused to give a full interview. He only said in a short phone call, in broken English, that, “we are no lawless people. We have a permit. We will [be] back in Haroni River to do our gold with law.”
Mutoko pushbackThe victory in Chimanimani is not an isolated event; it marks an uptick of grassroots defiance forming in rural Zimbabwe in areas where precious minerals are being discovered. In the granite-rich hills of Mutoko, 250 miles north of Chimanimani, a similar crisis boiled over in June. Mutoko has long been the center of friction over complaints that Chinese miner-exporters are blasting and digging up lucrative black granite and gold without consent — leaving in their wake damaged homes, polluted riverways, desecrated grazing and farming lands, and deformed hills. For example, Shanghai Haoying Mining Investments has been frequently cited by locals for continuing mining activities without obtaining community consultation or environmental approvals, and for threatening to evict locals.
In June, the community finally drew a line in the sand with a different band of Chinese miners, who, like the miners in Chimanimani, refused to give out their identity.
“My house has been shaken to the core — its roof and walls cracking from relentless blasting by nearby Chinese miners who are going for gold,” said Urai Godo, a mother of three whose home stands at the slopes of a contested hill. One day in early August, the building frustration finally boiled over when locals saw a crew at a Chinese gold prospecting site setting up wires and detonators. Locals feared that the hill was going to be destroyed by dynamite while kids were doing homework in houses nearby. Word filtered around the village in minutes and residents carrying pots and wooden sticks stormed the blasting site without warning, Godo said. A Chinese mining boss who called himself “Hei Chu” felt the pressure and gave orders for his workers to stop blasting preparations.
“We encircled the miners — chanting, singing, blocking their work progress. The rattled miners dropped their detonators, unwound the blasting wires, hopped into their cars, abandoned the site and never returned,” Godo recalled.
“Hei Chu” was not reachable for comment on why the miners had attempted to work on communal land in Mutoko because the number he gave the village head repeatedly went to voicemail and no longer seemed to be working.
Compromised governance and impunityThough still small, this growing pushback by rural residents against mining impunity is a damning example of how the state in Zimbabwe is now captive to foreign extractive corporations, said Ancelimo Magaya, an outspoken cleric based in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“Rural Zimbabweans are seeing this shady encroachment onto tribal lands without consent,” he said. “Rather than simply relying on hiring expensive lawyers to litigate or lodge complaints with the same tone-deaf government agencies, they are taking the miners head-on through peaceful grassroots protests.”
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DonateThe Environmental Management Agency of Zimbabwe doesn’t do much against these foreign mining syndicates, Magaya says. They often issue small, token fines. Some officials could themselves be compromised by the same mining syndicates. This has not escaped the attention of rural residents in Zimbabwe, and they are determined to mount active, peaceful grassroots resistance rather than wait for regulatory protection, which is often absent.
The spokesperson for the Environmental Management Agency did not respond to emailed questions about why mining in Chimanimani began without first obtaining community consent, an environmental impact assessment certificate, and all the necessary paperwork. However, speaking on anonymity, a senior bureaucrat denied such characterization.
“We are in a tricky situation,” he said. “We would like to do our jobs properly defending communities against ecological destruction. But we can’t match the money, tools and vehicles that these mining syndicates have — and the political influence they carry.”
Back in Chimanimani, Mlambo surveyed the banks of the Haroni River. The water is beginning to run cleaner, but the marks of devastation on the land remain. Some youths are replanting fruit and Indigenous trees to rehabilitate disturbed riverbanks. The scars on the land will take years to heal.
“We reasoned that the government in Zimbabwe won’t tackle these Chinese miners,” Mlambo said. “As Ndau people on both sides of the border, we resolve to be united and proactive in defending our ecosystems. It worked, and this is a model of how grassroots communities can defend their lands against corporate extractivism.”
The Chinese in Zimbabwe had never met this kind of bi-national grassroots community resistance to unaccountable mining, he says proudly. “We shocked them – they froze and we learnt lessons to refine our resistance next time should they try to mine on our lands again.”
This article Inside the successful campaign against illegal Chinese mining in Africa was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
New report finds cost-cutting at MedStar Franklin Square puts patient care in jeopardy
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Equipo de Facilitadores - Removed Arturo Escobar
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Engie, LS Power land 2.1 GW in fast-track interconnection approval from PJM
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The Hub 10/9/2026: Clean Air Council’s Weekly Round-up of Transportation News
“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.
Week Without Driving ended this week but keep fighting for freedom of transportation for all! Sign up with Transit For All PA! for more information.
Image Source: KYW NewsMetro Philadelphia: SEPTA universal student fare cards could carry hefty cost for Philadelphia – Current SEPTA Student Fare cards are only available for students in grades 7 through 12 who live at least a mile and a half away from their school. The cards can only be used between 5:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. during the school year, meaning cards are not valid on weekends, holidays, or over the summer. Expanding the cards to give students unrestricted transit access could cost up to $64 million a year. Philadelphia school board officials testified that they would support the expansion initiative if there was a dedicated funding source. Fare cost can be a significant barrier to accessing opportunities for students and families.
Image Source: CBS PhiladelphiaCBS Philadelphia: Here’s when the 2nd Pennsylvanian Amtrak route will start – The second daily round trip from Pittsburgh to New York City will be added next month, with stops including Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and a dozen others. Amtrak ridership has grown 20% since 2019, and the demand for more service was a driving factor in this route, which begins on November 18.
Image Source: The InquirerThe Inquirer: Accelerate to the modern SEPTA the region deserves – The infrastructure in Philadelphia, specifically in Center City, offers millions of people commuting options to the largest employment hub in the region. However, relying on infrastructure from a century ago is limiting where SEPTA can grow. SEPTA’s recently- released Accelerate plan offers better connectivity with Regional Rail, more trips offered on subways and buses, but the piece missing from this improvement plan is dedicated and secure funding.
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CBS Pittsburgh: Southwest adding 3 nonstop destinations from Pittsburgh International Airport next summer
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Above-average Rainfall Recorded at the Sanctuary in September
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