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THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 4 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-077 The Sakhalin Papers LXVII: From Protocol Toward a Joint Venture — Shell and Gazprom Neft Plan Expansion Across Western Siberia and Beyond Seven months after Shell and Gazprom signed their “Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation”, Shell chief executive Peter Voser and Gazprom Neft chief Alexander Dyukov signed basic terms for something more concrete: a possible new joint venture covering Western Siberia, other Russian regions and even “third countries”. The distinction matters. No new venture was actually created by the June 2011 document. Shell and Gazprom Neft agreed to study one. By September Alexey Miller and Voser were still discussing how it might be established. But the direction was unmistakable. Four years after Shell lost control of Sakhalin II, the company was attempting to turn its relationship with Gazprom into a platform for expansion far beyond Sakhalin.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-077
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal authenticated records: Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2011; US Securities and Exchange Commission filing record; Gazprom corporate records concerning the 2010 Strategic Global Cooperation Protocol and the June 2011 Gazprom Neft–Shell agreement
Contemporaneous reporting: Gazprom Neft press-service material; Dow Jones; Russian business press; contemporaneous Donovan archive
Judicial context: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)
Evidence standard: The June 2011 agreement is described according to what it actually did: it established basic terms for examining the creation of a joint venture. It is not represented as proof that the contemplated venture had already been incorporated or that every proposed project proceeded. Corporate statements about technology, international assets and future cooperation are attributed to the companies making them. Commentary concerning strategic motives is identified as commentary.

Introduction

Yesterday’s file ended with a remarkable document.

On 30 November 2010 Shell and Gazprom signed a:

Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation.

Its reach was deliberately broad.

Western Siberia.

The Russian Far East.

European downstream markets.

And possible Gazprom participation in Shell projects outside Russia.

The language suggested ambition.

But a protocol is not a project.

It does not drill a well.

It does not transfer an asset.

It does not create a producing company.

The next question was therefore obvious:

Would Shell and Gazprom turn the rhetoric into corporate machinery?

By June 2011, the answer was beginning to emerge.

Not through Sakhalin Energy itself.

Through Gazprom’s oil subsidiary:

Gazprom Neft. 1. First came an April meeting

On 12 April 2011, Alexey Miller and Peter Voser met in Moscow.

The companies discussed implementation of the global strategic-cooperation protocol.

The agenda included possible joint projects in Western Siberia and eastern Russia, downstream cooperation in Russia and Europe, and Gazprom participation in Shell projects in third countries.

There was also an immediate Sakhalin issue.

Japan had suffered the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011, followed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Contemporary reporting recorded that Gazprom and Shell discussed increasing LNG deliveries to Japan from Sakhalin II. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

The Sakhalin partnership therefore had two dimensions by spring 2011.

It was an operating LNG business.

And it was becoming the institutional foundation for something much larger.

2. 16 June 2011: Shell and Gazprom Neft sign the basic terms

Gazprom’s subsequent official corporate record dates the next major step to:

16 June 2011.

Gazprom Neft and Shell signed what Gazprom described as the:

Basic Terms and Conditions of the Agreement.

The parties would examine the possibility of creating a joint venture for projects in:

Western Siberia;

other Russian regions;

and:

“third countries.”

Gazprom repeated that description in later official releases, including its June 2012 account of continuing Shell cooperation. Gazprom

A contemporaneous Gazprom Neft press-service account carried by Russian business media described the same agreement and its intended geographical scope. BFM.ru – деловой портал

This was the bridge between the grand 2010 protocol and possible operating ventures.

3. A small but important correction: no new joint venture yet

The wording needs care.

Shell and Gazprom Neft did not announce on 16 June that a new joint venture had already been created.

They agreed to:

assess the potential of creating one.

The surviving English-language version of the announcement states that the companies would examine a joint venture to pursue projects inside and outside Russia.

Peter Voser described the agreement as a:

“launch pad for new joint projects”

in Russia and elsewhere.

Alexander Dyukov said working with Shell could give Gazprom Neft access to advanced technology and opportunities involving assets outside Russia. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

That distinction is central to this instalment.

The ambition was established.

The corporate vehicle was still being designed.

4. Western Siberia was not new territory for Shell

Shell was not entering Western Siberia for the first time.

It already had a substantial producing business there.

Shell and Gazprom Neft each held 50 per cent of the Salym development.

Shell’s 2011 Annual Report and Form 20-F records that Salym production averaged approximately:

165,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day

during 2011.

The same filing records Shell’s continuing 27.5 per cent interest in Sakhalin II. FinancialFilings

So the contemplated new joint venture was not an experiment between companies unfamiliar with one another.

There was already a working precedent.

Sakhalin II linked Shell with Gazprom.

Salym linked Shell with Gazprom Neft.

5. Salym provided a different model from Sakhalin

The contrast is worth making explicit.

At Sakhalin II, Shell had begun as the controlling shareholder and later became a minority partner after Gazprom acquired 50 per cent plus one share.

At Salym, Shell and Gazprom Neft were equal partners.

That meant Shell already possessed an example of Russian cooperation based on:

50–50 ownership.

The June proposal therefore did not simply extend the ownership structure imposed at Sakhalin II.

It pointed towards a different model:

equal partnership with the oil arm of Gazprom.

That was potentially much easier for Shell to present internally and externally as conventional commercial cooperation.

6. And Salym was producing at substantial scale

Shell’s SEC-filed 2011 annual report provides useful perspective.

Sakhalin II had reached planned plateau production of about:

360,000 boe per day

in 2010.

Its two LNG trains had been designed around approximately 9.6 million tonnes per annum, and Shell said optimisation increased production to:

10 million tonnes per annum

in 2011.

Salym, meanwhile, was producing approximately:

165,000 boe per day.

These were not marginal experimental assets.

Together they demonstrated that Shell’s Russian partnerships were already capable of producing hydrocarbons at material scale. FinancialFilings

The strategic-cooperation programme therefore rested on substantial operating experience.

7. Gazprom Neft said openly what it wanted from Shell

Alexander Dyukov’s statement accompanying the June agreement is unusually revealing.

Gazprom Neft wanted:

experience;

advanced technology;

and:

access to assets outside Russia.

That last element directly echoed the reciprocity principle discussed in yesterday’s file.

Gazprom’s senior management had already said that foreign companies obtaining access to Russian upstream projects should be prepared to offer access to attractive international opportunities in return.

The Gazprom Neft statement now expressed the same idea at operating-company level. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Russia had the resource base.

Shell had international assets and technology.

The contemplated venture was intended to combine them.

8. Shell’s description was equally revealing

Voser did not describe the June agreement as damage limitation following Sakhalin.

He said it built upon the companies’:

“successful partnership”.

And he called it a potential:

“launch pad”

for projects in Russia and elsewhere. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

The choice of language matters.

Four and a half years earlier Shell had been fighting to retain control of its largest Russian investment.

Now its chief executive was treating the relationship that emerged from that confrontation as a base from which to expand.

That statement is corporate fact.

Why Shell regarded this as strategically sensible belongs partly to commentary.

But what Shell said publicly is unambiguous.

9. The proposed reach was deliberately wider than oil production

The agreement was not confined to drilling.

The contemporary Gazprom Neft press-service account said the companies wanted to develop cooperation across:

geological exploration;

production;

processing;

and:

marketing of hydrocarbons.

That meant the proposed partnership could span a substantial part of the oil and gas value chain. BFM.ru – деловой портал

Again, this closely reflected the November 2010 Global Strategic Cooperation Protocol.

The June agreement was beginning to give that framework an operating shape.

10. “Third countries” may be the most important phrase

Western Siberia was unsurprising.

Shell already operated there.

Other Russian regions were logical.

But the phrase:

“third countries”

deserves attention.

It meant the contemplated venture was not necessarily to be confined to Russia.

Gazprom Neft wanted the possibility of accompanying Shell into international assets.

That was a major conceptual shift from the early Sakhalin relationship.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Shell had brought international capital and expertise into a Russian project.

By 2011, Russia’s state-controlled energy companies were seeking routes outward.

Shell could potentially provide them.

11. Shell was not relying exclusively on Gazprom

Another fact prevents the story from becoming too neat.

Shell was also talking to:

Rosneft.

In July 2011, after the collapse of BP’s attempted strategic alliance with Rosneft, Peter Voser confirmed that Shell had held early-stage discussions with the Russian state and Rosneft about opportunities both inside and outside Russia.

He specifically acknowledged Shell’s interest in Arctic acreage, including the Russian Arctic.

Dow Jones contemporaneously reported Voser saying the discussions were still at an early stage and that any outcome would be speculative. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

That matters.

Shell’s strategy was not simply:

attach ourselves permanently to Gazprom.

A more defensible reading is:

secure access to Russian resources through relationships with the state-controlled companies capable of providing it.

Gazprom was central.

It was not necessarily exclusive.

12. September: the proposed joint venture returns to the agenda

On 15 September 2011, Alexey Miller and Peter Voser met again at Gazprom headquarters.

The official account, reproduced contemporaneously, states that the parties discussed implementation of the June agreement.

Specifically, they considered issues connected with:

creating a joint venture

for projects in:

Western Siberia;

other Russian regions;

and third countries. Oreanda News

Three months after the June signing, therefore, the venture was still prospective.

The companies were discussing its creation.

That reinforces the evidential distinction made earlier.

13. The September meeting broadened the discussion again

The Miller–Voser meeting also addressed wider cooperation in:

geological exploration;

hydrocarbon production;

processing;

and distribution;

in Russian and international oil and gas markets. Oreanda News

The progression can now be traced document by document.

November 2010

A protocol for global strategic cooperation.

April 2011

Detailed discussion of Russian and international opportunities.

June 2011

Basic terms for examining a new Shell–Gazprom Neft joint venture.

September 2011

Management discussions about actually creating that venture.

The relationship was moving incrementally from political language towards operating structures.

14. Shell’s own year-end filing shows how important Russia remained

Royal Dutch Shell filed its 2011 Annual Report and Form 20-F with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on:

15 March 2012. SEC

Its Russia section did not describe a company retreating from the country.

It recorded:

a 27.5 per cent interest in Sakhalin II;

a 50 per cent interest in Salym;

additional exploration interests in Russia;

and new exploration rights acquired during the year.

Shell also reported that total LNG sales rose to:

18.83 million tonnes in 2011,

with higher Sakhalin II production among the factors contributing to the increase. FinancialFilings

Russia remained embedded in Shell’s growth portfolio.

15. Sakhalin II was now performing better than its original nameplate figure

There is another small but telling detail in the annual report.

The original two-train Sakhalin LNG plant was designed around approximately:

9.6 mtpa.

After optimisation, Shell reported that production from the two trains reached:

10 mtpa

in 2011. FinancialFilings

The project over which Shell had fought so bitterly was not merely operational.

It was performing strongly.

That made the commercial logic of staying in Russia easier to understand.

Shell had lost control.

It had not lost the profitability or strategic value of its remaining share.

16. The proposed new partnership therefore rested on success, not failure alone

It is easy to frame every subsequent Shell-Gazprom agreement as an aftershock of the 2006 crisis.

That misses half the story.

By 2011 Shell had practical evidence that joint Russian ventures could work commercially.

Sakhalin II was exporting LNG.

Salym was producing approximately 165,000 boe per day.

Gazprom and Shell had established long-term LNG and pipeline-gas arrangements.

Both sides had experience working together.

The new venture discussions were therefore not occurring in the shadow of Sakhalin alone.

They were also being driven by the operating results that followed it.

17. But the political asymmetry had not vanished

This is where fact and commentary must be separated.

Nothing in the June agreement says:

Shell accepted a weaker political position in exchange for resource access.

Nothing in the September account says:

Gazprom was rewarding Shell for its behaviour at Sakhalin II.

No such proposition should be presented as documented fact.

But the institutional structure remained asymmetric.

Shell could provide technology, capital and international assets.

It could not grant itself licences to strategic Russian resources.

Russian state-controlled companies occupied the stronger position in determining access.

That structural fact helps explain why partnership became central to Shell’s Russian strategy.

It does not prove a secret bargain.

18. The High Court record remains relevant — but only as history

The surviving judicial record concerning Sakhalin II remains:

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

Mr Justice Mitting delivered judgment on 17 March 2008.

The case concerned access to environmental information relating to possible UK financial support for Sakhalin II.

It recorded the project’s environmental significance and the ownership transition involving the Russian participant.

It did not consider the 2010 strategic protocol.

It did not consider the 2011 Gazprom Neft agreement.

It did not rule on Shell’s decision to expand its Russian partnerships.

And it made no finding that later commercial cooperation constituted compensation for Shell’s earlier loss of control. vLex

The court record supplies historical context.

It does not supply motive.

19. What was actually created in June 2011?

The documentary answer is narrower than the headline ambition.

The parties created:

an agreed framework for studying a joint venture.

They did not yet create the joint venture itself.

That distinction is supported twice:

first by the June wording;

and again by the September meeting, when Miller and Voser were still discussing the issues involved in creating the vehicle. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

This is an important example of why corporate announcements must be read literally.

“Agreement.”

“Joint venture.”

“Strategic cooperation.”

“Basic terms.”

These phrases can sound interchangeable in headlines.

Legally and commercially, they are not.

20. What the agreement nevertheless demonstrates

Even with that caution, the significance is substantial.

Shell and Gazprom had moved from:

a contested ownership restructuring;

to operating cooperation;

to LNG sales;

to global strategic cooperation;

to studying a new international joint venture.

That sequence was completed in less than five years.

The 2006 confrontation therefore did not produce a long-term commercial rupture.

It produced a different architecture for Shell’s Russian business.

One in which state-controlled Russian companies would be embedded much more deeply in Shell’s future plans.

Documentary Findings Established

On 30 November 2010, Shell and Gazprom signed a Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation covering Russian and international opportunities.

On 16 June 2011, Gazprom Neft and Shell signed basic terms governing study of a possible joint venture for projects in Western Siberia, other Russian regions and third countries. Gazprom later repeated that chronology in its official corporate records. Gazprom

The contemporary Gazprom Neft press-service account said the proposed cooperation covered exploration, production, processing and marketing of hydrocarbons. BFM.ru – деловой портал

Peter Voser described the agreement as a potential “launch pad” for joint projects in Russia and elsewhere. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Alexander Dyukov said cooperation with Shell could provide Gazprom Neft with advanced technology, additional experience and access to assets outside Russia. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

On 15 September 2011, Alexey Miller and Peter Voser were still discussing the creation of the contemplated joint venture. Oreanda News

Shell’s 2011 Form 20-F recorded a 50 per cent interest in Salym, where production averaged about 165,000 boe/d, and a 27.5 per cent interest in Sakhalin II. FinancialFilings

Shell reported that Sakhalin II LNG production reached approximately 10 mtpa after optimisation of the two existing trains. FinancialFilings

Established broader context

Shell was simultaneously holding early-stage discussions with Rosneft concerning further Russian and international opportunities, including possible Arctic involvement. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

This shows that Shell’s Russian strategy was not confined exclusively to Gazprom.

Judicial boundary

The relevant High Court litigation concerned environmental-information disclosure and pre-dated the 2010–11 strategic agreements.

It did not adjudicate Shell’s later partnership strategy or the motives behind it. vLex

Not established

The June 2011 document did not itself establish the contemplated new joint venture.

No evidence examined here establishes that Shell was guaranteed any particular Russian field.

No evidence examined here establishes that Gazprom Neft obtained a specific overseas Shell asset under the June agreement.

No court finding establishes that later cooperation was compensation for Shell’s loss of control of Sakhalin II.

No public document examined here establishes a secret quid pro quo connecting the 2006 ownership transfer with the 2011 joint-venture negotiations.

Commentary

The language of the June agreement is revealing precisely because it was so practical.

The 2010 protocol had spoken of “strategic global cooperation.”

Seven months later the companies were asking the more difficult question:

What corporate structure would actually deliver it?

The answer under consideration was a joint venture.

Western Siberia provided an obvious starting point.

Shell and Gazprom Neft were already producing oil together at Salym.

The commercial relationship had operating history.

The technical relationship had substance.

The companies knew one another.

But “third countries” shows that the ambition went further.

Gazprom Neft did not merely want Shell’s help producing Russian oil.

It wanted the experience of working internationally.

Shell, meanwhile, wanted continuing access to a resource-rich country in which access to strategic acreage depended heavily upon relationships with state companies.

That is the bargain visible in the public record.

Not a secret bargain.

A structural one.

Resources and access on one side.

Technology, international reach and project experience on the other.

Sakhalin II had demonstrated how unequal the political relationship could become when circumstances changed.

Salym demonstrated that equal commercial partnership could nevertheless work.

By 2011 Shell was trying to build upon both lessons.

The irony remains unavoidable.

Five years earlier Shell had been struggling against the dilution of its largest Russian investment.

Now its chief executive was publicly calling cooperation with the same state-controlled corporate system a:

“launch pad”.

That does not mean Shell had forgotten Sakhalin.

It may mean Shell had learned from it.

Source Record

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Annual Report and Form 20-F 2011, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 15 March 2012, records Shell’s Russian production interests, including Sakhalin II and Salym. SEC

US SEC — Royal Dutch Shell plc 2011 Form 20-F filing index

Gazprom’s official 21 June 2012 review of Shell cooperation confirms that Gazprom Neft and Shell signed the Basic Terms and Conditions on 16 June 2011, contemplating a joint venture for Western Siberia, other Russian regions and third countries. Gazprom

Gazprom — Gazprom and Shell develop cooperation in Russian and international oil and gas markets

The contemporaneous Gazprom Neft press-service account describes the purpose of the June agreement and records the statements of Alexander Dyukov and Peter Voser. BFM.ru – деловой портал

Royal Dutch Shell archive — Shell and Gazprom Neft to Implement Joint Projects

The 15 September 2011 Miller–Voser meeting record confirms that creation of the proposed venture was still under discussion three months later. Oreanda News

Contemporaneous Dow Jones reporting recorded Shell’s simultaneous early-stage discussions with Rosneft and Peter Voser’s expressed interest in Russian Arctic opportunities. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

The relevant judicial background remains Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), judgment of Mr Justice Mitting dated 17 March 2008. vLex

Archive disclaimer: Agreements to investigate, study or establish future ventures are not treated as completed investments unless the documentary record establishes completion. Corporate statements are distinguished from independent reporting and from judicial findings. Strategic interpretation is identified as commentary rather than fact.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Next instalment SLF-2007-078 — The Sakhalin Papers LXVIII: From Siberia to the Arctic — Shell Takes the Gazprom Partnership Into Russia’s New Frontier

The joint-venture discussions did not disappear.

They evolved.

By 2013, Shell and Gazprom were ready to move into territory considerably more politically and environmentally sensitive than Salym.

In April 2013, during Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Netherlands, Gazprom and Shell signed a memorandum covering possible cooperation on:

Russia’s Arctic shelf.

At the same time Shell and Gazprom Neft moved toward a 50–50 venture for liquids-rich shale development in Western Siberia, with the existing Salym organisation expected to provide initial oilfield services. Gazprom’s own corporate history records the Arctic cooperation memorandum; contemporaneous accounts record the parallel shale arrangement. Gazprom

The timing would be extraordinary.

Only months earlier, Shell’s own attempt to conquer the Alaskan Arctic had ended its 2012 drilling season amid a catalogue of operational setbacks.

Yet rather than retreat from the Arctic idea, Shell was preparing to pursue another Arctic frontier —

this time with Gazprom.

The next file will examine how the partnership born from the Sakhalin crisis moved north into the Russian Arctic, and why Shell remained determined to pursue high-risk frontier oil even after its Alaskan experience had gone badly wrong.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 4 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 4, 2026 at 7:32 pm.
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A new water tower in Turkey: $3 million. Upgrades for a museum in Stamford: $400,000. A first responders appreciation barbecue in Medina County: $10,000.

These are just some of the public investments data center companies have paid for across rural Texas in the past year.

According to a Texas Tribune analysis, data center companies have donated or invested more than $343 million across the Lone Star state for various community needs, including school programs, infrastructure repairs and emergency services. Much of that money has gone to the very communities that have fought against data center development and is seemingly an effort to win over public support through their bottomless bank accounts.

The Texas Tribune reviewed news releases, public meeting agendas, and interviewed local officials to understand how data centers are using their money in Texas. Because not every donation is made public, the total — the first of its kind compiled in Texas — is likely an undercount.

Google donated millions of dollars to the Haskell area for its hospital, pregnancy center, and other causes. Rowan Digital Infrastructure is giving $38 million to Temple for its water infrastructure, along with more money for STEM Centers at schools in nearby small towns.

Read Next The rush to power data centers is weakening the Clean Air Act Emily Jones

Data centers also created community action grants, which are used for recurring investments in the communities they’re building in. Others, such as Google’s Texas Water Impact Fund, provide funds to restore resources that cause concern for Texans or provide direct lump sum donations to both community and state funds.

As data centers move into the state at a rapid pace, Texas communities in mostly rural areas face a fiscal cliff from property tax cuts, inflation, and overall economic uncertainty. Over the last year, data center companies have stepped in as a white knight of community investment.

“There is no question that these data centers are an opportunity for rural communities that are living in the margin,” said Suzanne Bellsnyder, an editor and publisher of two Panhandle newspapers and a Substack focused on rural issues. “Most infrastructure resources are paid with tax dollars, and there’s not a ton there.”

It’s not a new strategy. Major corporations regularly invest in communities and make charitable gifts big and small. Oil and gas companies in West Texas, for example, have donated to fire and police stations and hosted back-to-school backpack drives to weave themselves into communities.

Data centers have also capitalized on tax breaks from both state and local governments. A Texas Tribune analysis earlier this year found the state will forgo at least $3 billion in sales tax revenue over the next two years due to the exemption for the state’s booming data center industry.

Read Next In rural communities, fears amplified by ‘AI slop’ and social media hamper solar boom Delaney Nolan, The Lens

Because of the negative public perception toward data centers, however, they still have some ways to go. In an August poll from The Texas Politics Project, a nonpartisan research hub focused on Texas government and politics, 57 percent of respondents said they would oppose the construction of a data center in their communities.

“I hope their intentions are good, and they’re not just trying to buy these communities off,” Bellsnyder said.

Tied into the community

It’s been two years since a tornado struck Temple, a city of just over 96,000 people that lies 70 miles north of Austin. The city was devastated. Hundreds of homes and businesses were severely damaged or destroyed. One of the buildings lost was the beloved Sammons Community Center, where senior citizens could come together for bingo, swimming, and meals.

The price tag for the city’s recovery was high — $7.7 million.

Then, Rowan Digital Infrastructure stepped in. The company is developing a $4.2 billion data center campus with six facilities planned in East Temple.

Earlier this month, Rowan announced a $38 million investment in Temple’s public infrastructure, including $25 million to the South Temple Water Infrastructure Capital Program and $10 million for an aquifer storage and recovery program.

Read Next It’s official: Data centers are slowing America’s shift away from coal Jake Bittle

As for the Sammons Community Center, city leaders have proposed a $15 million bond to rebuild it. If voters approve the measure, Rowan has promised to put $3 million to help the project. It’s one of many actions that has made Rowan stand out to Tim Davis, Temple’s mayor, particularly since the company is not making money from the town yet.

“To go ahead and invest dollars into the community for a current need is very generous of them,” Davis said. “That tells me they want to work hard to have a positive impact, and they’ve chosen to help the city.”

Gaining public support is an important tactic for data center companies coming to Texas, and one that can’t be ignored. Over the last year, communities all over the state have voiced opposition to data centers coming to their areas — their main concerns being rising electric bills, losing water and housing issues. Some cities have prevented developments from moving forward. For example, a project in East Texas was pulled after community backlash, and Lubbock leaders passed a 90-day moratorium on large-scale projects following a citizen-led petition.

Nathaniel Brown, director of public relations for Rowan, admits that integrating into a community hasn’t been an easy task. Brown said Rowan began hosting neighbor dinners every month for residents to talk with the construction team and ask them questions. The company has also held public hearings and open houses and has Facebook pages dedicated to its project updates.

“This development doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It needs to be able to fit into the community’s vision for their area,” Brown said.

Read Next Nebraska wants data centers to come clean about water usage Anila Yoganathan

Google has used a similar strategy. On top of community meetings, the tech company hosted a dinner in August to announce $6 million for nonprofits in Haskell, Stamford and Rule.

Suzie Shin, manager of data center sustainability programs for Google, said some of their investments are the company’s way of saying they are listening to the public’s concerns. The company has given millions toward major water infrastructure projects, as well as supporting local school programs. Most recently, the company announced a $4.5 million commitment to help Vernon, a town with less than 10,000 residents, fix a leaking pipeline.

Shin said she feels strongly about investing in modernizing water and wastewater infrastructure for the broader community, not just their data centers.

“I think there’s a win-win for communities,” Shin said. “Again, we have employees who live and work there. We are part of the community. It’s a great way to show the value and help improve outcomes, not only for the watershed but for the water users there.”

Bellsnyder, the newspaper publisher and resident in Spearman, said she’s spoken with some of the data center executives who visit the Texas Panhandle. She does think their intentions are to partner with the communities and make them better.

However, she’s still wary because of the boom-and-bust industrial patterns that have become all too familiar for rural Texas. Spearman was built by an oil and gas service company, Bellsnyder said, and when the business left, there wasn’t a long-term plan for the town.

“I don’t want our entire identities to be built around what one company can provide to us,” Bellsnyder said. “We still need to figure out ways to take care of our own business. Nobody likes taxes, but taxpayers will have to be invested in the community.”

Pros vs. cons

When the water tower went out in Turkey, a small Panhandle town of about 275 residents, people were without water for weeks and had to find places in other towns to live temporarily. Lynette Findley, the city manager, said everyone’s known for years that the tower would fail. However, with an annual budget of $500,000, the city had no way to pay for it to be fixed.

After weeks of no water, QTS Data Centers, one of the data center companies in the county, said it would replace it for the city. The cost for the company, which is a major global data center developer, is estimated to be between $3 million and $5 million.

“It was right before major conversations were starting on how QTS could help with our infrastructure,” Findley said. “I joke about it failing at the exact right time.”

For cities and towns facing a budget crunch, data centers are hard to turn away, especially as the Legislature continues to cut their resources. Kevin Hodges, the city manager for Childress, said the more restrictions on cities, the less money they have to put into the city’s needs.

Read Next Climate activists take on a new foe: Data centers Kate Yoder

Childress is facing a similar problem as Turkey. The small town of just over 5,834 people has been under a boil-water notice for a month, and the town issued a disaster declaration because of the problems. Local leaders have handed out bottled water to residents the last few weeks, and employees from IREN, one of the two data centers in town, stepped in to help.

“We’ve had some of our employees help distribute water, particularly to folks who might be challenged to get it, or to the health services, and the elderly,” said David Shaw, COO of IREN. “We’ve been in Childress for around four years now, so it was important to us to establish that connection with the community.”

Hodges, the city manager, blames the ongoing drought for their water issues because Greenbelt Lake levels dropped. While people in town blame the town’s water shortage problems on IREN and Lancium, another data center company in town, Hodges says they are helping.

“The fact of the matter is Lancium does not get any water from Greenbelt Lake,” Hodges said. “They get zero, but they’re willing to give us water from their own water wells.”

While Lancium does not take water from the lake, the company does have wells to take water from the nearby Blaine Aquifer. Hodges said Lancium is running a 16-mile pipeline from its campus to the Greenbelt storage tank, and the company will treat and provide the city with 1 million gallons of water a day — all with no cost to the town, Hodges said.

Read Next Cow manure could be the next data center fuel Marin Scotten, Sentient

“They’re not taking,” Hodges said. “They’re providing.”

Hodges said the Legislature will look into more property tax cuts and other measures that could cause cities to lose money. That will hurt small towns, Hodges said, but data centers could give municipalities the money they wouldn’t normally get.

Davis, Temple’s mayor, agrees. He said municipalities are also impacted by inflation, and delivering essential services is expensive. However, the tax revenue generated by a data center will allow a city to set its own path financially, Davis said.

“If the ability to raise money is hampered, then those dollars have to come from somewhere,” Davis said. “Or, a community simply delivers less services to its residents. And I don’t think that’s acceptable to them.”

Still, Davis said leaders have to weigh the city’s capabilities and guard against any damage that could happen from a data center moving in.

Findley, the city manager in Turkey, said QTS and Lancium have promised to help with other needs too by providing funds for emergency services and the schools. She said all the contracts are with Hall County — not the city — and they are trying to navigate what has been put in their backyard.

“Data centers get a ton of negative publicity, so I’m sure it is a little self-serving on their end,” Findley said. “But to be honest, I don’t know what we would have done without their assistance.”

Alejandra Martinez contributed to this reporting.

Disclosure: Google has been a major financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in our journalism. Find a complete list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies here.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline To win over locals, data centers pump $340M into rural Texas projects on Oct 4, 2026.

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• “OpenAI Safety Staffer Quits, Says AI Labs Should Run Like Nuclear Plants” • A leading member of OpenAI’s safety team has quit, warning that the company is not taking enough care with AI’s risks. In an essay for The Atlantic, David Robinson wrote that the ChatGPT maker “has thrived by trial and error.” He warned that approach no longer works. [The Next Web]
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THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 3 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-076 The Sakhalin Papers LXVI: “Strategic Global Cooperation” — Four Years After the Kremlin Crisis, Shell Signs a Worldwide Pact with Gazprom On 30 November 2010, Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Peter Voser and Gazprom chairman Alexey Miller signed a “Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation”. The language was striking. Shell and Gazprom would examine exploration and production opportunities in western Siberia and the Russian Far East, downstream cooperation in Russia and Europe, and even Gazprom participation in Shell projects outside Russia. Shell described the relationship as a “strong partnership”. This was less than four years after Gazprom had taken control of Sakhalin II during one of the most contentious episodes in Shell’s modern history. The protocol did not erase what had happened at Sakhalin. It showed what Shell decided to do afterwards.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-076
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal authenticated records: Royal Dutch Shell plc Form 6-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, December 2010; Royal Dutch Shell fourth-quarter and full-year 2010 results; Royal Dutch Shell plc Form 6-K of December 2006
Contemporaneous reporting: The Guardian; Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal reporting preserved in the Donovan archive; Bloomberg
Judicial context: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)
Evidence standard: The 2010 protocol, its stated scope and the parties’ public statements are treated as established corporate facts. Contemporary descriptions of the 2006 Sakhalin ownership transfer as forced or Kremlin-driven remain attributed descriptions. No court identified here found that Shell entered the 2010 agreement because of coercion, a secret bargain or an earlier promise of access to Russian resources.

Introduction

Four years earlier, Shell had been fighting to preserve control of Sakhalin II.

By December 2006, it had agreed to halve its interest.

Gazprom would acquire:

50 per cent plus one share.

Shell would fall from:

55 per cent to 27.5 per cent.

The transaction price was:

$7.45 billion.

Shell would remain technical adviser, but Gazprom would become the leading shareholder. Shell’s own SEC filing recorded those terms. SEC

The political and environmental battle surrounding that transaction has occupied much of this archive.

But by late 2010 Shell’s language had changed dramatically.

It was no longer merely accommodating Gazprom inside Sakhalin II.

It was inviting Gazprom into a potentially worldwide relationship.

1. 30 November 2010: the protocol is signed

The most authoritative source is Shell’s own filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Royal Dutch Shell furnished a Form 6-K containing the announcement:

“GAZPROM AND SHELL AGREE TO PURSUE BROADER COOPERATION”

The release stated that Alexey Miller and Peter Voser had signed:

a protocol on strategic global cooperation.

Shell said the agreement established “basic guidelines” for broader collaboration. SEC

That phrase matters.

This was not a Sakhalin operating note.

It was not an amendment to an LNG sales contract.

It was a framework for a much wider relationship.

2. The proposed cooperation crossed Russia from west to east

Shell’s SEC filing identified one principal area of potential cooperation as:

exploration and production of hydrocarbons in:

western Siberia

and

the Russian Far East.

Those two regions represented very different opportunities.

Western Siberia was Russia’s mature hydrocarbon heartland.

The Far East included Sakhalin and the emerging Asia-Pacific export strategy.

Shell was therefore contemplating cooperation with Gazprom not around a single asset but across two enormous producing regions. SEC

3. Gazprom could also enter Shell projects outside Russia

The second provision was even more revealing.

Shell and Gazprom would examine:

downstream oil-products cooperation in Russia and Europe

and:

Gazprom participation in Shell upstream projects outside Russia.

That represented an important change in the direction of the relationship.

Until then, the public story had largely involved Shell seeking access to Russian resources.

Now Gazprom was being offered the possibility of access to Shell-controlled or Shell-participated opportunities elsewhere in the world. SEC

The partnership was explicitly becoming reciprocal.

4. Gazprom had already explained the principle of reciprocity

The day before the protocol was announced, Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev made the logic unusually clear.

Contemporaneous Dow Jones reporting recorded him saying that Gazprom welcomed foreign partners into Russian upstream projects:

“only if in exchange we get the access to their first class projects somewhere in the world.”

He added that Gazprom knew Shell possessed assets that might interest it. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

This is one of the most revealing statements in the entire post-Sakhalin sequence.

Gazprom was not presenting access to Russian reserves as a one-way commercial opportunity.

It was describing access as something to be exchanged.

Russian resources for international assets.

5. Shell called it a “strong partnership”

Peter Voser’s language was equally notable.

Shell’s SEC-filed announcement quoted him saying:

“This underscores the strong partnership our companies have built in recent years.”

He continued that Russia was an important area for new energy development for Shell and would play a large role in meeting future global oil and gas demand. SEC

The expression “strong partnership” deserves to be read against the chronology.

Those “recent years” included:

the environmental confrontation of 2006;

Gazprom’s acquisition of control;

Shell’s reduction from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent;

the 2007 completion of that transaction;

the start-up of LNG exports in 2009;

and the rapid commercial deepening described in yesterday’s file.

The company that had lost control was now formally celebrating the partnership that followed.

6. Gazprom saw “new large-scale projects”

Alexey Miller was even more expansive.

Shell’s filing records Miller describing the agreement as a mutually beneficial strategic partnership between major energy companies.

He said the future held:

“new large-scale projects”

and a growing joint presence in new markets. SEC

This was therefore not presented as defensive diplomacy.

Gazprom was talking about expansion.

Shell was talking about partnership.

Both sides were looking beyond Sakhalin II.

7. Joint working groups were to turn the protocol into projects

The protocol was not itself a final investment decision.

No specific new field was awarded to Shell on 30 November.

No overseas Shell asset was transferred to Gazprom.

No new LNG train was formally approved.

The document was a framework.

Shell’s release explicitly stated that:

Shell and Gazprom would create joint working groups

to develop the opportunities further. SEC

That distinction is important.

A protocol establishes intent.

It does not prove that every contemplated project subsequently materialised.

8. Shell already had two substantial Gazprom-linked positions in Russia

The Shell announcement itself identified the existing foundation of the relationship.

First:

Sakhalin II.

Gazprom and Shell had been partners there since 2007.

Second:

Salym.

Shell and Gazprom Neft were jointly developing a group of oil fields in western Siberia. SEC

That gave the new global protocol a practical base.

The parties were not strangers signing a speculative memorandum.

They were already sharing producing assets.

9. By 2010 Sakhalin II was no longer an unfinished megaproject

The timing was commercially significant.

When the Kremlin agreement had been signed in December 2006, Sakhalin II Phase 2 was still under construction.

Shell’s 2006 SEC filing said the project was more than 80 per cent complete and that roughly $12 billion had already been invested by the end of the third quarter. SEC

By 2010, the project was operating.

Russia’s first LNG plant had opened.

LNG exports were flowing.

Sakhalin II had ramped towards full production.

The argument was no longer about whether the giant project could be completed.

It had become a valuable producing asset.

10. Shell told investors the Gazprom protocol was a material portfolio development

The agreement did not disappear into a public-relations archive.

When Shell announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2010 results, it listed the Gazprom protocol among its major Upstream portfolio developments.

Shell told investors:

“In Russia, Shell signed a protocol on strategic global cooperation with Gazprom”

covering broader collaboration in both Upstream and Downstream businesses. PR Newswire

That inclusion is important.

Shell itself treated the protocol as part of its strategic portfolio story.

11. Sakhalin was already contributing to Shell’s LNG growth

The same full-year results provide the commercial background.

Shell reported LNG sales volumes of:

16.76 million tonnes in 2010,

up from:

13.40 million tonnes in 2009.

An increase of:

25 per cent.

Shell specifically said the increase reflected, among other things, the ramp-up of Sakhalin II LNG sales. PR Newswire

This helps explain why continued cooperation was commercially attractive.

Whatever Shell thought of the events that had cost it control, Sakhalin II was now producing cash-generating LNG within a growing global gas business.

12. Contemporary journalists immediately noticed the irony

The contrast with 2006 was not lost on observers.

The Guardian reported the agreement under the headline:

“Shell and Gazprom sign ‘global co-operation’ pact.”

Its report stressed that the deal had been signed almost four years after Shell surrendered control of Sakhalin II following intense Kremlin pressure.

Analyst Peter Hitchens of Panmure Gordon described the situation as:

“slightly ironic”.

He also argued that foreign companies partnered with Gazprom appeared to fare better in Russia than those attempting to operate independently. The Guardian

That was an analyst’s interpretation.

It was not Shell’s formal explanation.

But it captured the obvious historical tension.

13. The arrangement offered something important to both sides

The commercial exchange was relatively easy to see.

Gazprom controlled enormous Russian hydrocarbon resources.

Shell possessed:

LNG technology;

international project-management experience;

global trading operations;

access to overseas upstream positions;

downstream markets;

and capital.

Gazprom wanted international reach.

Shell wanted Russian resource access.

The 2010 protocol offered a structure through which those interests could meet.

That interpretation is supported by the explicit scope of the agreement, but the precise internal valuation placed on each component by Shell and Gazprom is not public. SEC

14. The protocol also carried a remarkable risk warning

There is an almost surreal documentary detail in Shell’s own SEC filing.

Immediately after announcing its expanded strategic partnership with Gazprom, Shell’s formal cautionary language warned investors about:

political risk;

expropriation;

and:

“renegotiation of the terms of contracts with governmental entities.”

It also warned about regulatory developments, project approvals and the risks of operating internationally. SEC

These were standard Shell forward-looking-statement warnings.

They were not written specifically about Russia.

That qualification matters.

But in the context of Sakhalin II, the juxtaposition is extraordinary.

The press release celebrated deeper Russian cooperation.

Its legal boilerplate simultaneously described precisely the class of political and contractual risks that international investors associated with the Sakhalin episode.

15. Compare the two Shell filings: 2006 and 2010

Placed side by side, Shell’s own SEC filings tell the transformation remarkably clearly.

December 2006

Gazprom would acquire 50 per cent plus one share of Sakhalin Energy.

Shell’s holding would fall to 27.5 per cent.

Gazprom would become the leading shareholder.

Shell would remain technical adviser.

The parties would establish an Area of Mutual Interest covering future Sakhalin opportunities. SEC

November 2010

Shell and Gazprom signed a protocol on:

strategic global cooperation.

They would consider Russian upstream development.

They would consider European downstream cooperation.

Gazprom might participate in Shell upstream projects outside Russia.

Joint working groups would develop the opportunities. SEC

The relationship had moved from one project to a potential international alliance.

16. The 2006 Area of Mutual Interest had foreshadowed this direction

The 2006 filing contained a detail whose significance became clearer later.

Shell, Gazprom, Mitsui and Mitsubishi agreed to establish an:

Area of Mutual Interest

covering future oil and gas exploration around Sakhalin and the development of Sakhalin II as a regional oil and LNG hub. SEC

The 2010 strategic protocol did not arise from nowhere.

It enlarged a pattern already embedded in the ownership settlement.

The deal that removed Shell’s control also created mechanisms for future cooperation.

That fact should not be mistaken for proof that future access was secretly promised in return for Shell surrendering control.

The documents do not establish such a bargain.

They do establish continuity.

17. Bloomberg was already reporting possible Sakhalin expansion by the end of December

Within a month of the strategic protocol, the possibility of further Sakhalin expansion was publicly circulating.

Bloomberg reported on 29 December 2010 that Gazprom and Shell might add a third LNG train at Sakhalin II or build another LNG plant.

The Sakhalin regional governor also referred to possible asset swaps involving Gazprom’s Sakhalin III interests.

Gazprom itself said it had no information to confirm the specific LNG expansion proposal at that stage, and Shell declined to comment. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Again, this distinction matters.

Expansion was being discussed.

It was not yet approved.

18. The High Court record still imposes an evidential boundary

The judicial context remains:

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

Mr Justice Mitting’s judgment independently recorded the controversy surrounding Sakhalin II, the contemplated British export-credit support and the project’s environmental significance.

But the High Court case concerned access to environmental information.

It did not decide why Gazprom obtained control.

It did not adjudicate a secret Kremlin bargain.

It did not determine whether Shell had been unlawfully forced to sell.

And it did not consider the 2010 strategic cooperation agreement, which did not yet exist. vLex

That legal boundary remains essential.

The corporate and journalistic record may support conclusions about strategy and political context.

It cannot be converted into a judicial finding that was never made.

19. What the evidence establishes

By November 2010, several propositions are no longer matters of interpretation.

Shell had accepted minority status at Sakhalin II.

Sakhalin II was producing LNG.

Shell and Gazprom were already commercially linked in western Siberia.

Shell wanted additional Russian opportunities.

Gazprom wanted participation in international projects.

Both sides publicly described deeper cooperation as desirable.

And the relationship had advanced to a formal:

Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation.

That is documentary fact.

20. What the documents do not establish

The public record examined for this instalment does not establish that:

Shell was secretly promised new Russian fields in return for surrendering control of Sakhalin II;

the 2010 protocol was compensation for the 2006 transaction;

Gazprom guaranteed Shell participation in Sakhalin III, Yamal or any particular future field;

Shell privately regarded Gazprom as a trustworthy partner;

the Kremlin admitted using environmental regulation as commercial leverage;

or the 2006 transfer of control was declared unlawful by any court.

Those propositions would require evidence beyond the material presently available.

Documentary Findings Established

On 30 November 2010, Alexey Miller and Peter Voser signed a Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation. SEC

The agreement contemplated further exploration and production cooperation in western Siberia and the Russian Far East.

It contemplated downstream cooperation in Russia and Europe.

It also contemplated Gazprom participation in Shell upstream projects outside Russia. SEC

Shell and Gazprom agreed to establish joint working groups.

Peter Voser publicly described the relationship as a “strong partnership.”

Alexey Miller said the companies expected new large-scale projects and participation in new markets. SEC

Shell’s fourth-quarter and full-year results later identified the Gazprom protocol as an important portfolio development. PR Newswire

Shell’s 2010 LNG sales rose by 25 per cent compared with 2009, with the Sakhalin II ramp-up contributing to that increase. PR Newswire

Established historical context

Shell’s December 2006 SEC filing records Gazprom’s acquisition of 50 per cent plus one share, Shell’s reduction to 27.5 per cent and Shell’s continuing technical-adviser role. SEC

The same filing records an Area of Mutual Interest arrangement covering future Sakhalin development opportunities.

Established contemporaneous interpretation

The Guardian described Shell as having surrendered control after intense Kremlin pressure and noted the irony of the later worldwide cooperation agreement. The Guardian

Dow Jones reporting quoted Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev explicitly linking foreign access to Russian upstream resources with reciprocal access to international assets. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Judicial boundary

The High Court litigation concerning Sakhalin II dealt with environmental-information disclosure.

It did not adjudicate the motives behind Gazprom’s acquisition or the legality of the ownership transfer. vLex

Not established

No public document examined here establishes a secret quid pro quo between Shell’s loss of control in 2006 and subsequent Russian opportunities.

No court finding identified here establishes that Shell was unlawfully coerced into signing either the 2006 or the 2010 agreements.

The 2010 protocol itself did not guarantee that contemplated projects would proceed.

Commentary

The remarkable feature of the 2010 protocol is not that Shell continued doing business in Russia.

Large energy companies routinely continue operating after disputes with host governments.

What is remarkable is the scale of the reconciliation.

Shell did not merely preserve its reduced Sakhalin stake.

It agreed to explore a relationship extending from Siberian upstream production to European downstream markets and potentially into Shell projects elsewhere in the world.

The company that had lost control of Sakhalin II was contemplating giving Gazprom access to its own international portfolio.

There is a hard commercial logic behind that apparent contradiction.

Shell could not manufacture another Russian resource base.

Gazprom could not instantly manufacture Shell’s international LNG expertise, markets, technology and global project portfolio.

Each possessed something the other wanted.

The imbalance exposed at Sakhalin II had therefore not destroyed the relationship.

It had redefined it.

In 2005, Shell had hoped to trade part of Sakhalin II for Russian gas reserves.

In 2006, Gazprom instead obtained control of Sakhalin II under radically different terms.

By 2010 the concept of reciprocal access had returned — but on a much larger scale.

The language was no longer merely:

Sakhalin.

It was:

strategic global cooperation.

With hindsight, the phrase carries an obvious historical weight.

But the archive should resist hindsight.

In November 2010, Shell publicly regarded deeper cooperation with Gazprom as an opportunity.

Russia was part of Shell’s growth strategy.

Sakhalin II was producing valuable LNG.

Gazprom possessed resources Shell wanted.

And Shell was prepared to build upon the partnership created in the aftermath of one of the bitterest corporate confrontations it had experienced.

The Kremlin crisis had not ended the relationship.

It had changed the terms on which the relationship would continue.

Source Record

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Form 6-K for December 2010 contains the authenticated Shell announcement of the Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation, its proposed scope, the Miller and Voser statements, and Shell’s accompanying political-risk disclosures. SEC

US SEC — Royal Dutch Shell plc Form 6-K containing the 30 November 2010 Gazprom agreement

Royal Dutch Shell’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2010 results subsequently identified the Gazprom protocol as an Upstream portfolio development and recorded the contribution of Sakhalin II to rising LNG sales. PR Newswire

Royal Dutch Shell plc — Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2010 Results

Royal Dutch Shell’s December 2006 Form 6-K records Gazprom’s acquisition of control, Shell’s reduced shareholding, Shell’s continuing technical role and the Area of Mutual Interest arrangement. SEC

US SEC — Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi Sign Sakhalin II Protocol, December 2006

The Guardian reported contemporaneously on the historical irony of the global cooperation pact and the commercial logic seen by analysts. The Guardian

The Guardian — Shell and Gazprom sign ‘global co-operation’ pact, 30 November 2010

Contemporaneous Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal reporting preserved in the Donovan archive records Gazprom’s explicit exchange principle and Shell’s plans for broader cooperation. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com archive — Shell, Gazprom to Combine Beyond Russia, 30 November 2010

Bloomberg reporting at the end of December 2010 recorded discussion of possible Sakhalin LNG expansion and possible future asset exchanges, while noting that no such project had yet been confirmed. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com archive — Shell, Gazprom May Expand Sakhalin LNG by 2015, Governor Says

The relevant judicial background remains Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), judgment of Mr Justice Mitting dated 17 March 2008. vLex

Archive disclaimer: Statements concerning future cooperation establish what Shell and Gazprom publicly contemplated in November 2010; they do not establish that every proposed opportunity proceeded. Corporate statements, journalistic interpretation and judicial findings are kept separate. No inference of a secret quid pro quo is presented as established fact.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Next instalment SLF-2007-077 — The Sakhalin Papers LXVII: From Protocol to Joint Venture — Shell and Gazprom Neft Move Into Western Siberia and Beyond

The November 2010 protocol was only a framework.

Seven months later, the framework began acquiring machinery.

On 16 June 2011, Gazprom Neft and Shell signed basic terms for examining a new joint venture.

Its proposed reach was striking:

western Siberia;

other Russian regions;

and:

third countries.

By September, Alexey Miller and Peter Voser were discussing implementation of the arrangement and the creation of the new venture. Contemporary Gazprom records later described the 2010 protocol as providing cooperation across exploration, production, processing and distribution in Russian and international markets. Oreanda News

The next file will examine how the grand language of “strategic global cooperation” began turning into concrete corporate structures — and whether Sakhalin II had become the template for Shell’s wider Russian strategy.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 3 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 3, 2026 at 8:33 pm.
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A new residential development south of Denver is the testing ground for an unusual partnership that could transform home heating and cooling across the country. 

Dandelion Energy, a geothermal startup, and Lennar, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, recently completed construction of nearly 100 homes at the base of Colorado’s Front Range, each equipped with its own ground-source heat pump. The systems use less electricity than even the most efficient air-source heat pumps, potentially helping Colorado meet its climate goals while reducing peak energy demand and eliminating the need for new gas pipelines. 

Ground-source heat pumps draw on steady temperatures belowground to help heat and cool buildings. However, the projects’ custom designs and drilling requirements—homes typically require one or more boreholes drilled several hundred feet deep—are pricey. Drilling alone often costs more than $10,000.

Dandelion, a company that got its start at X—a “moonshot” research and development subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company—says it can complete geothermal heating and cooling projects twice as fast and at half the cost of similar installations.

Geothermal startup Dandelion Energy and homebuilder Lennar recently completed nearly 100 homes with geothermal heating and cooling at the Ken Caryl Ranch housing development in Littleton, Colorado. Phil McKenna / Inside Climate News

The company is “taking a kind of mass market and maximally efficient lens to what has historically been a bespoke kind of custom, high-end product,” said Dan Yates, Dandelion Energy’s CEO and chairman.

Earlier this year at Lennar’s Ken Caryl Ranch development, Dandelion’s drill team demonstrated a lightweight rig designed to quickly move from lot to lot, drilling boreholes and installing polyethylene pipe across the sprawling housing development before building foundations are poured.

Each home gets a single bore between 200 and 500 feet deep, where temperatures are approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. Water circulating through the pipe is warmed or cooled by the surrounding earth before a heat pump installed in the basement of each new home provides additional heating or cooling depending on the time of year.

Dandelion’s drilling team can complete boreholes for one or more homes per day. If they had to drill a similar installation elsewhere for a single building, they could lose an entire day simply transporting the rig to and from the site.

Geothermal startup Dandelion Energy and homebuilder Lennar recently completed nearly 100 homes with geothermal heating and cooling in Littleton. Phil McKenna / Inside Climate News

Installing the devices across dozens of similar new homes at once also eliminates the need for custom plans for each building and avoids potentially costly retrofits to the buildings’ heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.

The end result is a highly efficient heating and cooling system that Dandelion says outcompetes air-source heat pumps and conventional gas heating systems. This is especially true during cold snaps, when energy demand peaks and ground-source heat pumps use a quarter as much electricity as air-source heat pumps, Yates said. 

It’s “the only system that actually reduces peak demand and electrifies homes at the same time,” he said.

The Ken Caryl Ranch development is part of a larger initiative the company launched with Lennar in 2025 to install geothermal heating and cooling at more than 1,500 homes in Colorado over two years. Dandelion hopes to scale up to 10,000 homes per year nationwide in the coming years.

“Our mission at Dandelion is to mainstream geothermal, and we think that the time has finally arrived for that to happen,” Yates said. 

Just over a million U.S. homes have ground-source heat pumps, with approximately 100,000 new installations each year, according to a 2025 U.S. Department of Energy report. The agency found that geothermal heating and cooling could reach 7 million homes by 2035. Doing so would reduce winter peak energy demand by more than 40 gigawatts nationwide, resulting in roughly $4 billion in annual savings in U.S. electric grid costs, according to the report. 

Ground-source heat pumps currently make up just a small fraction of new home heating and cooling systems. By contrast, 3.6 million air-source heat pumps were sold in the U.S. last year, outpacing gas furnace sales for the fourth year in a row, said Yara van Ingen, an associate with BloombergNEF’s building decarbonization team.

Ground-source heat pumps are economically viable across the continental United States, according to a study published this month in the journal iScience that considered incentives, energy costs and local climate and subsurface conditions. 

“It is technically possible everywhere, and there is economic potential across all states,” said Juliet Simpson, a former research engineer at the National Laboratory of the Rockies and the study’s lead author.

A primary challenge for ground-source heat pumps is their upfront cost, which averages around $25,000 for a typical new home, according to the Energy Department report. Van Ingen added that space constraints, especially in dense urban environments, as well as permitting requirements that vary across the U.S. can also complicate borehole drilling. 

Dandelion and Lennar, an investor in the geothermal company, are among those working to lower costs. But incentives and policy changes also help. An energy efficiency program by Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest gas and electric utility company, provides approximately $25,000 per home for new, high-efficiency buildings with a ground-source heat pump to offset added building and heat pump costs.

“For large neighborhoods with hundreds of homes, builders may receive seven-figure rebate amounts,” an Xcel spokesperson said in a written statement.

Geothermal pipes run through the basement of each building. Phil McKenna / Inside Climate News

The rebates help Xcel advance its climate goals and meet Colorado’s Clean Heat Standard requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 22 percent below 2015 levels by 2030.

Colorado also provides a $2,000 tax credit for ground-source heat pumps and requires homebuilders to pay for new gas service expansion pipes, costs that are not incurred if developers build all-electric homes.

Policies that incentivize high-efficiency electric heating and cooling while discouraging fossil fuel use in homes are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, said Will Toor, executive director at the Colorado Energy Office.

Other states and utility companies also offer incentives for ground-source heat pumps, including Maryland, where Dandelion recently announced plans to install the technology in 129 new homes. In addition, commercial ground-source heat pump projects are now eligible for federal tax credits that cover 30 percent or more of total installation costs. 

“The economics just look better and better,” Jessica Silber-Byrne, senior manager of thermal energy networks for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a nonprofit organization working to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in buildings. “There is a combination of both incentives and market signals that suggest that this is about to really take off.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New Colorado neighborhood could offer glimpse into the future of home energy use on Oct 3, 2026.

The post Environmental Health & Antiracism: Change Makers, Place, and Crossroads for Health Equity appeared first on ANHE.

Headline News:

• “US Senate Proposes New Permitting Framework. Should It Become Law?” • Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island was instrumental in getting a bill before the Senate that will alter radically how permitting for energy projects in the US gets done. In this hyper-partisan era, Democrats and Republicans worked together on proposed legislation. [CleanTechnica]

Solar array (Dennis Schroeder, NREL)

• “G7 Agrees To 100 Million Barrel Emergency Oil Release Under US Pressure” • After Trump threatened a ban of diesel exports, G7 countries agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves over four months in a coordinated effort to bring down soaring energy prices, with a particular focus on diesel. [Euronews]
• “OpenAI Reveals Another Hack Into A Government Agency In Australia” • OpenAI, a company based in California, revealed a hack into a second Australian government agency, a week after the disclosure of an initial hack fueled public backlash against the ChatGPT-maker. OpenAI issued an apology for the security breach last week. [ABC News]
• “Italy’s Firefighting Planes Return Home After Summer Of Battling Blazes All Across Europe” • After a gruelling summer skimming lakes and coastlines to dump thousands of tonnes of water on wildfires burning across a parched Europe, Italy’s fleet of bright yellow and red Canadair planes finally returned home to a base near Rome for maintenance. [Euronews]
• “Amazon To Invest $1 Billion Into Communities Amid A Backlash Against Data Center Rollouts” • Amazon is investing more than $1 billion over five years into communities where it operates data centers for education, job training, and other local priorities as it reacts to a growing backlash to the tech industry’s rollout of the massive buildings. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Audubon Southwest and the City of Phoenix are bringing the community together around a shared vision: making Phoenix a place where birds can thrive. The initiative Bird-Friendly PHX invites...

New Mexico is the fourth most biodiverse state in the country, but prolonged drought, high wildfire risk, decreased snowpack, and longer, hotter summers are straining habitats and water supplies. As...

CRA Meeting

The first CRA meeting of the month will be on Zoom, October 2 at 5pm Pacific Time. The agenda and link will be sent to the mail list. If you need the link, email admin@climaterailalliance.org.

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

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

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

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

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

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 2 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-075 The Sakhalin Papers LXV: The “New Heartland” — Why Shell Deepened Its Gazprom Partnership After Losing Control In December 2006 Shell agreed to surrender control of Sakhalin II. By April 2007 Gazprom owned 50 per cent plus one share. Yet within two years Shell was not retreating from Russia. It was signing twenty-year gas agreements with Gazprom, discussing Sakhalin III, exploring Yamal LNG opportunities and establishing a working group to pursue additional Sakhalin resources. Shell’s 2009 Annual Report went further still: Russia had become a new corporate “heartland.” The documents establish the expansion of the relationship. They do not contain a single internal memorandum explaining why Shell chose that course. But Shell’s public statements, Gazprom’s records and the commercial structure make the strategic calculation unusually visible.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-075
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal authenticated records: Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2009; Shell SEC filings; Gazprom corporate releases of 8 April and 18 September 2009
Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, UPI, AFP and The Times
Judicial context: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)
Evidence standard: The agreements, meetings, ownership interests and Shell’s description of Russia as a new “heartland” are treated as established documentary facts. Contemporary descriptions of Shell having been forced or pressured to surrender control remain attributed to journalists and other observers. No public court judgment identified here determined that Gazprom’s acquisition resulted from an unlawful bargain. Explanations of Shell’s strategic motives are commentary unless explicitly attributed to Shell.

Introduction

The obvious assumption after the Sakhalin confrontation would have been retreat.

Shell had entered the crisis controlling 55 per cent of Sakhalin Energy.

It emerged with 27.5 per cent.

Gazprom held 50 per cent plus one share.

Approximately 402 million barrels of oil equivalent of proved reserves attributable to Shell shareholders had disappeared from Shell’s economic position.

The Russian state-controlled gas company was now in charge.

And yet the documentary record shows something striking.

Shell did not respond by keeping Gazprom at arm’s length.

It did the opposite.

Within months of Russia’s first LNG cargo leaving Sakhalin, Shell and Gazprom were discussing new projects.

Within weeks they signed agreements lasting until 2028.

By September they were considering expansion elsewhere around Sakhalin.

Yamal was on the table.

Sakhalin III was being discussed.

And Shell itself was describing Russia as a new strategic heartland.

The question is therefore not simply:

What did Shell lose at Sakhalin II?

It is also:

Why did Shell decide that Gazprom remained a partner it wanted? 1. 18 February 2009: Shell immediately looks beyond Sakhalin II

The starting point is the inauguration of Russia’s first LNG plant on 18 February 2009.

That same day Reuters interviewed Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer.

His comments are important because they came at the symbolic moment when the project Shell had once controlled was entering commercial LNG operation under Gazprom control.

Van der Veer said Shell intended to discuss further energy projects with Gazprom in Russia’s Far East.

Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi were also being considered in connection with potential LNG development on the Yamal Peninsula.

Van der Veer placed the relationship in the wider context of Shell’s long experience of working with state-controlled national oil companies.

Working with state companies, he said, was normal in Shell’s experience. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

That was not the language of corporate withdrawal.

It was the language of continued access.

2. Less than two months later came a twenty-year agreement

On 8 April 2009 Alexey Miller and Jeroen van der Veer met at Gazprom headquarters in Moscow.

Gazprom’s official record says they announced a package of LNG and pipeline-gas agreements.

Shell Eastern Trading and Gazprom Global LNG would each purchase LNG from Sakhalin Energy.

Deliveries were to begin in 2009 and continue until:

2028.

At plateau, each company was to purchase approximately:

one million tonnes of LNG a year.

The transaction also included a twenty-year pipeline-gas arrangement under which an equivalent volume of gas would be delivered to Shell in Europe. Gazprom

This was not merely Shell retaining the shares it had been left with.

It was the creation of a new long-term commercial relationship after the ownership confrontation.

3. Sakhalin LNG was being connected to Shell’s global gas portfolio

The April transaction was geographically much broader than Sakhalin Island.

Gazprom affiliates were to take capacity that Shell held at Sempra’s Energia Costa Azul LNG import terminal in Baja California, together with associated pipeline capacity into Southern California.

Gazprom’s own explanation was that the arrangement would help it sell Sakhalin LNG into the United States and other Pacific markets.

For Shell, the linked pipeline-gas agreement strengthened the flexibility of its European supply portfolio.

A cargo produced in Russia’s Far East had therefore become part of a commercial arrangement spanning:

Russia;

Japan and the Pacific LNG market;

Mexico;

California;

and European pipeline gas.

The relationship was becoming international rather than merely Russian. Gazprom

4. Van der Veer explicitly called for further expansion

Gazprom’s authenticated release records Van der Veer describing the April contracts as an important milestone.

More significantly, he said Shell looked forward to expanding its relationship with Gazprom in gas and LNG activities:

“both in Russia and internationally.”

Miller and Van der Veer also discussed further LNG cooperation inside Russia. Gazprom

The wording matters.

The Shell-Gazprom relationship was no longer being confined to managing the consequences of Sakhalin II.

Both companies were publicly discussing what came next.

5. Sakhalin III appeared almost immediately

Two days later, AFP reported another development.

Gazprom official Stanislav Tsigankov described Shell as a strong potential partner for Sakhalin III.

According to the contemporary report, Shell had “very good chances” of participating once the relevant licence arrangements were in place.

The same report noted the obvious historical tension: cooperation between Shell and Gazprom had deteriorated severely during the Sakhalin II ownership confrontation.

Yet Gazprom was now publicly contemplating Shell’s involvement in another major Far Eastern resource project. Dawn

That is an extraordinary turnaround if the story is reduced to the proposition that Shell had simply been driven out of Russia.

It had not.

Shell had lost control of one project.

It was seeking access to others.

6. Peter Voser confirmed that Shell was looking beyond Sakhalin II

On 29 April 2009, then chief financial officer Peter Voser told analysts that Shell and Gazprom were examining further opportunities around Sakhalin.

Contemporaneous Bloomberg reporting quoted Voser saying the partners intended to look for additional opportunities in the Sakhalin area.

The report again mentioned Gazprom’s consideration of Shell as a potential Sakhalin III participant. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Voser would become Shell chief executive in July.

The strategic direction therefore did not disappear with Jeroen van der Veer’s retirement.

It continued under his successor.

7. June: Gazprom called Sakhalin a model for Yamal

The relationship broadened again in June.

At the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Alexey Miller met Van der Veer.

A contemporaneous account of the Gazprom statement records Miller describing the Sakhalin II partnership as an example of mutually beneficial cooperation.

He then went further.

The experience gained at Sakhalin II, Miller said, could provide a basis for further LNG cooperation on the:

Yamal Peninsula.

That was strategically significant.

Yamal was not an incremental addition to Sakhalin II.

It represented one of Russia’s enormous future gas provinces in the Arctic.

Gazprom was therefore pointing to Sakhalin II — including Shell’s technology and LNG experience — as a possible template for a much larger future relationship. Oreanda News

8. September: the new Shell chief executive meets Miller

Peter Voser became chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell on 1 July 2009.

On 18 September, little more than two months into the job, he met Alexey Miller at the Sochi investment forum.

This time the record is particularly clear because Gazprom’s original corporate release remains available.

The companies reviewed Sakhalin II.

They noted that oil and LNG production was running ahead of the original 2009 projection.

Then the discussion moved beyond the existing project. Gazprom

9. The 2007 agreement contained a route to more Sakhalin development

Gazprom’s September statement referred to an Area of Mutual Interest Agreement dating from 2007.

That agreement had been signed alongside the restructuring through which Gazprom obtained control of Sakhalin Energy.

By September 2009, Miller and Voser were discussing the possibility of expanding activity elsewhere on the Sakhalin shelf under that framework.

They agreed to establish a working group to examine issues associated with development of Sakhalin fields. Gazprom

Contemporaneous Dow Jones reporting said the cooperation could extend to the Kirinsky block, which Gazprom held within the Sakhalin III area. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Two years after losing control of Sakhalin II, Shell was therefore discussing how to participate in resources beyond it.

10. Gazprom was building its own Sakhalin III position at the same time

The context is important.

On 2 July 2009 Gazprom announced the start of exploration drilling at the Kirinskoye field within Sakhalin III.

Gazprom described the development as part of Russia’s Eastern Gas Program and said the field would help supply the Sakhalin–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok gas system.

At that stage Gazprom said Kirinskoye contained tens of billions of cubic metres of gas and millions of tonnes of condensate.

It was not simply an extension of Sakhalin II.

It belonged to the next phase of Russia’s Far Eastern gas development. Gazprom

For Shell, access to such acreage would mean that the Gazprom relationship could become a route back into major Russian resource growth.

11. UPI described the September talks as expansion, not damage control

Three days after the Miller-Voser meeting, UPI reported that the companies were discussing LNG development and additional Sakhalin resources.

The report recalled the twenty-year April agreement and noted that Sakhalin II production was exceeding initial expectations.

Most importantly, it recorded the decision to move forward with a working group concerned with further Sakhalin development. UPI

The historical sequence is therefore consistent across Gazprom’s own record and independent contemporary reporting.

February:

talk of more projects.

April:

twenty-year commercial agreements.

April:

Sakhalin III discussed.

June:

Yamal cooperation raised.

September:

formal working group for additional Sakhalin opportunities.

That is not accidental continuity.

It is an expanding relationship.

12. Then came Yamal

Less than a week after the September Sakhalin meeting, Vladimir Putin gathered executives from major international energy companies to discuss development of the Yamal Peninsula.

Contemporaneous reporting said Peter Voser indicated Shell was prepared to undertake a feasibility study concerning an LNG plant at Yamal.

The wider significance was obvious to journalists at the time.

Russia possessed vast Arctic resources.

Gazprom possessed privileged access to them.

But international companies possessed capital, project-management capacity and specialist technologies that Russia could use. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Shell possessed one capability of particular value:

decades of LNG experience.

Sakhalin II had just demonstrated it on Russian territory.

13. Shell’s annual report gave the strategy a name

The most revealing Shell document came later.

Royal Dutch Shell’s Annual Report and Form 20-F for 2009 was filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 16 March 2010. SEC

In its Upstream strategy section, Shell listed its established production “heartlands” — countries such as Australia, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, the UK and the United States.

Then it added:

“Russia represents a new heartland”

because Sakhalin II had come on stream in 2009. Shell Plc

The phrase is difficult to reconcile with any notion that Shell regarded the 2006–07 confrontation as grounds for abandoning Russia.

Quite the reverse.

Russia had moved into Shell’s strategic core.

14. The same annual report contained an extraordinary warning

The same document also provides an important counterweight.

Shell’s risk section warned investors that operating internationally exposed it to political and legal instability.

Among the possibilities Shell specifically identified were:

forced divestment of assets;

expropriation;

cancellation of contractual rights;

rewriting of leases;

changing environmental regulation;

and governmental action affecting hydrocarbon entitlements.

Shell also warned generally about the risk of renegotiation of agreements involving governmental entities. Shell Plc

This was not written specifically about Russia.

It was Shell’s global risk disclosure.

That distinction must be maintained.

But historically the juxtaposition is striking.

The same annual report that called Russia a new heartland warned shareholders that political developments could produce precisely the kinds of ownership and contractual disruptions that international oil companies fear.

15. Sakhalin II also taught Shell the value of having the state company inside the project

Here we move from documented fact to interpretation.

No internal Shell memorandum located for this instalment says:

We lost control because Gazprom was outside the project, therefore our future Russian strategy must depend upon partnering Gazprom.

That conclusion should not be presented as a discovered corporate instruction.

But contemporary observers made a closely related point.

When Shell and Gazprom eventually formalised broader cooperation in 2010, analysts noted that foreign energy companies operating with Gazprom appeared to have better prospects in Russia than those attempting to develop strategic resources independently.

That assessment cannot be converted into Shell’s private reasoning.

But it fits the public behaviour visible throughout 2009. The Guardian

Shell did not attempt to restore its old dominant position.

It attempted to make the new relationship work.

16. The economics made withdrawal unattractive

Another part of the explanation requires no speculation.

Sakhalin II was producing.

Its LNG trains had ramped up rapidly.

Its oil and gas production was substantial.

Its LNG was sold into premium Asian markets.

Shell still owned 27.5 per cent.

It retained technical involvement.

And through the April agreements Shell was acquiring long-term LNG volumes for its global trading portfolio.

Walking away would therefore have meant abandoning a valuable producing position as well as possible access to future Russian resources.

The commercial incentive to remain engaged was substantial.

17. Gazprom also needed things Shell possessed

The relationship was not one-sided.

Gazprom possessed reserves and political access.

Shell possessed technologies, LNG operating experience, international trading capability and participation in infrastructure outside Russia.

The April 2009 transaction illustrates this exchange particularly well.

Gazprom gained access to Shell-linked terminal and pipeline capacity connected with the North American market.

Shell gained long-term LNG and pipeline-gas portfolio flexibility.

Gazprom could learn from an experienced international LNG operator.

Shell could retain a route into Russia’s resource base. Gazprom

Their interests were not identical.

They were complementary.

18. The High Court record remains a useful restraint on hindsight

The English High Court judgment delivered the previous year remains relevant because it fixes an independent point in the chronology.

Mr Justice Mitting recorded that Sakhalin II had originally been developed by a consortium in which Shell held the majority stake and that Gazprom had subsequently assumed a controlling interest.

He also recorded the proposed approximately $650 million of British export-credit support and the potentially serious environmental consequences associated with the project.

The case concerned disclosure of government environmental information.

It did not adjudicate why Gazprom obtained control.

It did not find that Russia had coerced Shell.

It did not rule that the ownership transfer was unlawful.

And it did not examine Shell’s later decision to deepen cooperation with Gazprom. vLex

That legal boundary remains important.

The chronology is powerful enough without converting interpretation into judgment.

19. What can safely be said about Shell’s strategy?

The public evidence permits several conclusions.

Shell considered Russia strategically important after losing control of Sakhalin II.

Shell actively pursued further cooperation with Gazprom.

Shell entered long-duration commercial arrangements with Gazprom and Sakhalin Energy.

Shell examined additional Sakhalin opportunities.

Gazprom publicly considered Shell for Sakhalin III.

The companies discussed Yamal LNG.

Shell’s own annual report called Russia a new heartland.

Those propositions are established.

What cannot be stated as documented internal fact is the precise reasoning process inside Shell’s executive committee or board.

No document examined for this instalment records a formal calculation such as:

Accept Gazprom dominance in exchange for future Russian access.

That may be an attractive interpretation.

It remains an interpretation.

Documentary Findings Established

On 18 February 2009 Jeroen van der Veer told Reuters that Shell intended to discuss further Russian projects with Gazprom after the start-up of Sakhalin II LNG. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

On 8 April 2009 Gazprom and Shell announced agreements under which Shell Eastern Trading and Gazprom Global LNG would each purchase approximately one million tonnes of Sakhalin LNG annually at plateau.

The supply arrangements were scheduled to continue until 2028.

The package also contained a twenty-year pipeline-gas arrangement benefiting Shell’s European supply portfolio and arrangements involving North American LNG import capacity. Gazprom

Gazprom subsequently identified Shell as a potential participant in Sakhalin III. Dawn

Peter Voser publicly confirmed in April that Shell and Gazprom were examining additional opportunities around Sakhalin. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

In June 2009 Alexey Miller publicly suggested Sakhalin II experience could support future Shell-Gazprom cooperation in LNG development on Yamal. Oreanda News

On 18 September 2009 Miller and Voser agreed to establish a working group to study further Sakhalin field development under the existing Area of Mutual Interest framework. Gazprom

Contemporary reporting identified the Gazprom-controlled Kirinsky block as one possible area of cooperation. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Shell’s 2009 Annual Report described Russia as a new upstream “heartland” following Sakhalin II start-up. Shell Plc

Established risk disclosure

Shell’s same annual report warned generally that political and regulatory developments in countries where it operated could lead to forced divestment, expropriation, cancellation of contractual rights and other adverse changes.

That disclosure was global and was not specifically labelled as a description of Russia. Shell Plc

Established judicial context

The High Court recorded the transition from Shell majority control to Gazprom control and the substantial environmental issues associated with Sakhalin II.

The judgment concerned environmental-information disclosure.

It did not determine the political motive for Gazprom’s acquisition. vLex

Not established

It is not established that Shell’s board formally adopted a policy of accepting Gazprom control in return for access to new Russian projects.

It is not established that Shell was promised Sakhalin III or Yamal participation as consideration for surrendering control of Sakhalin II.

It is not established that the Area of Mutual Interest Agreement guaranteed Shell participation in any specific future field.

It is not established that the environmental enforcement campaign of 2006 was legally improper.

It is not established that the later Shell-Gazprom cooperation erased, resolved or vindicated the environmental controversies that preceded the ownership restructuring.

Commentary

There is a temptation to tell the Sakhalin story as though December 2006 were the ending.

Shell lost control.

Gazprom won.

The Kremlin prevailed.

Curtain.

The documents show something considerably more complicated.

For Shell, Sakhalin II did not become a reason to abandon Russia.

It became the foundation of a different Russian strategy.

The old model had been:

Shell controls the project.

The emerging model was:

Gazprom controls access to strategic Russian resources; Shell brings technology, LNG expertise, international markets and capital; both sides look for projects where those interests overlap.

Whether Shell liked the circumstances that produced that new model is a different question.

Its behaviour is less ambiguous.

Shell stayed.

Shell signed twenty-year contracts.

Shell discussed Sakhalin III.

Shell discussed Yamal.

Shell created working groups with Gazprom.

And Shell called Russia a new heartland.

There is also a deeper irony.

Shell’s own annual report warned investors about political risks including forced divestment and contractual renegotiation.

Those risks belonged to the generic vocabulary of international petroleum investment.

But Shell had just lived through a transaction in Russia in which its controlling position had been cut in half during an extraordinary period of regulatory, environmental and political pressure.

Yet rather than mark Russia as commercially untouchable, Shell elevated it into the strategic heartlands of the company.

That suggests the scale of the prize.

Russia possessed resources international oil companies could not reproduce elsewhere.

Gazprom possessed access Shell could not independently obtain.

Shell possessed technology and global LNG capabilities Gazprom wanted.

Sakhalin II had exposed the imbalance of political power between them.

It had not eliminated their commercial interdependence.

And by late 2009 both companies were already building upon it.

The confrontation had produced not divorce, but a new marriage contract.

Source Record

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Annual Report and Form 20-F 2009 is the principal authenticated Shell source. It describes Russia as a new upstream “heartland” following the start-up of Sakhalin II and contains Shell’s contemporaneous global disclosures concerning political, contractual and forced-divestment risks. Shell Plc

Shell-hosted Annual Report and Form 20-F 2009

The SEC filing index confirms Royal Dutch Shell’s 2009 Form 20-F was filed on 16 March 2010. SEC

US SEC — Royal Dutch Shell plc Form 20-F for 2009

Gazprom’s authenticated 8 April 2009 corporate release records the Shell and Gazprom LNG purchases, the 2028 contractual horizon, the European pipeline-gas agreement, the North American terminal arrangements and the stated intention to expand cooperation. Gazprom

Gazprom — Gazprom and Royal Dutch Shell sign LNG and natural gas contracts, 8 April 2009

Gazprom’s authenticated 18 September 2009 release records the Miller-Voser meeting, successful Sakhalin II ramp-up, the 2007 Area of Mutual Interest Agreement and creation of a working group for further Sakhalin development. Gazprom

Gazprom — Working meeting between Alexey Miller and Peter Voser, 18 September 2009

Reuters’ contemporaneous 18 February 2009 interview recorded Van der Veer’s intention to pursue further cooperation with Gazprom following Sakhalin II start-up. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Bloomberg reporting of 29 April 2009 recorded Peter Voser saying Shell and Gazprom were examining further opportunities around Sakhalin. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

UPI’s 21 September 2009 report independently recorded the decision to pursue a working group for further Sakhalin development. UPI

The principal judicial source remains Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), judgment of Mr Justice Mitting dated 17 March 2008. vLex

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

Archive disclaimer: Corporate statements about cooperation and future projects establish what Shell and Gazprom publicly said and did. They do not establish undisclosed motives, private assurances or any political quid pro quo. Contemporary descriptions of the 2006–07 ownership restructuring as forced or coercive remain attributed descriptions rather than judicial findings.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Next instalment SLF-2007-076 — The Sakhalin Papers LXVI: “Strategic Global Cooperation” — Four Years After the Kremlin Crisis, Shell Signs a Worldwide Pact with Gazprom

The relationship developing through 2009 did not stop at Sakhalin.

On 30 November 2010, Peter Voser and Alexey Miller signed something much more ambitious:

a Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation.

Shell’s own announcement said the companies would examine joint oil and gas opportunities in western Siberia and Russia’s Far East.

Gazprom could participate in Shell upstream projects outside Russia.

The cooperation would extend into downstream markets in Russia and Europe.

Peter Voser said the agreement demonstrated the “strong partnership” the companies had built. PR Newswire

Contemporary reporting immediately noticed the irony: less than four years after Shell had lost control of Sakhalin II, it was signing a global partnership with the company that had taken control. The Guardian

The next file will examine how a bruising Russian ownership confrontation became, in Shell’s own language, a strategic global partnership — and what each side expected to obtain from the other.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 2 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 2, 2026 at 8:15 pm.
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This article Iran’s teachers movement perseveres against all odds was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Sunlight filtered through the trees separating the headquarters of the Plan and Budget Organization in Tehran as 300 teachers gathered outside to protest on Sept. 6. Their demands were simple: salaries that keep pace with inflation, fair pay scales and improved health and welfare services.

They knew they were taking an enormous risk. 

For years, educators across Iran have taken to the streets to demand fair wages, better working conditions, the release of detained teachers, the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free education for all children and to peaceful assembly and association. For years, they have faced arrests, enforced disappearances, prosecutions on national security charges, dismissals, imprisonment and solitary confinement. 

Teachers and teachers’ union activists played a prominent role in the January 2026 uprising, when people across the country called for freedom and an end to the Islamic Republic system of government. In response, they were heavily targeted. By July, at least 60 had been arrested, prosecuted or imprisoned. At least 14 have been killed. Still, against all odds, Iranian teachers have kept their movement alive.

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The Iranian teachers’ movement is not organized through a single union. Local and provincial teachers’ associations operate across the country, while an umbrella network called the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, or CCITTA, links many of them. The structure allows teachers to organize locally while coordinating actions across the country.

Some of these actions, like protests and public statements, are impossible to miss. Others are less confrontational and more relational: debating movement priorities, supporting imprisoned colleagues and their families, building solidarity with other social movements, or simply getting together to hike or read or watch a film. Together, they knit together a movement that has proven resilient against virtually every form of repression, from internet shutdowns to detentions and killings, while continuing to press its demands.

‘A continuation of my responsibility as a teacher’

Mohammad Habibi became a teacher in 2003. For him, it was never just a job; it felt like a social responsibility. But he soon realized that quality education for students could not be fully achieved without protecting teachers’ rights. So he joined the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association and later took on several roles within the CCITTA. He is currently its spokesperson. 

“My trade union activism wasn’t separate from teaching,” he said. “I saw it as a continuation of my responsibility as a teacher. Teachers have a duty that goes beyond teaching textbooks. They must defend the right to education, student dignity, educational justice and freedom of thought.”

Like Habibi, the nine teachers interviewed for this story described demands that encompass both their own rights and those of their students. They want salaries and pensions that reflect the real cost of living, job security, meaningful participation in education policy, freedom of expression and association, and the release of their imprisoned colleagues.

But they’re also calling for free, high-quality and equitable public education for all children, regardless of ethnicity or gender, while opposing the privatization and commercialization of education.

For Esmaeil Abdi, the former general secretary of the Tehran Teachers’ Trade Association, who spent nearly nine years in prison for his activism, the fight against privatization is inseparable from the fight for equality. “If education becomes a commodity whose quality depends on a family’s economic ability, social inequality is reproduced from one generation to the next,” he said.

Teachers also advocate for every child’s right to receive education in their mother tongue alongside Persian, arguing that Iran’s linguistic and cultural diversity should be reflected in its schools.

Over the years, the movement has won concessions on some of these demands, like pension increases, the implementation of the Teacher Ranking Law (specifying pay tiers) and corresponding salary increases, and a voice in the management of their retirement fund. However, even when policies change, implementation may be incomplete. 

“But the significance of this experience lies not only in the material results of these demands,” said Eskandar “Soran” Lotfi, a Kurdish teachers’ union activist and former CCITTA spokesperson. “It also shows that sustained and organized protests by teachers have succeeded in bringing issues that the government initially refused to accept into the sphere of public policymaking and decision-making.” 

Abdi shared a similar view: “Despite repression, the teachers’ movement has succeeded in keeping issues such as free public education, teachers’ rights and educational inequality at the center of public debate.”

While maintaining its organizational independence, the movement has built solidarity with workers, students and women’s rights activists. This has happened despite what Laeya Mohammadi, a teacher activist using a pseudonym for fear of reprisal, describes as the “government’s attempts to divide teachers from other movements, including by claiming teachers hold a higher social status than [other groups], like workers.” 

Much as they would later take part in the January 2026 protests, teachers participated in the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, in which hundreds of thousands protested the repressive government after the morality police killed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Four years later, that struggle still shapes the aspirations of teachers like Habibi, who hopes for a future in which female teachers and students are no longer compelled to obey the country’s veiling law and instead have full autonomy over choices as personal as what they wear.

Previous Coverage

‘Only democracy can solve this problem’ — a conversation with Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi

Teachers’ broader social commitments have also surfaced when their students are at risk. Beginning in late 2022, girls across Iran began reporting illnesses after suspected poisonings at schools, with cases eventually spreading across many cities and provinces. As the incidents continued amid conflicting official explanations and growing concern over students’ safety, the CCITTA called nationwide protests in March 2023. Teachers and parents demonstrated across the country. In some locations, security forces teargassed and arrested protesters.

Shadi Taban, a teacher who spoke under a pseudonym, was among those who participated. For her, the issue reflected a principle reaching well beyond teachers’ own working conditions.

“Our red line is the students,” she said.

That red line was crossed during the January 2026 uprisings when the government killed more than 200 schoolchildren. Teachers took it upon themselves to protest their students’ deaths and honor their memories through the “Empty Desks” campaign. Despite widespread internet shutdowns and the difficulty of accessing information, Iranian teachers were able to collect and share the names, photographs and stories of around 240 children who had lost their lives. 

Abdi believes that this record-building could one day help establish truth, accountability and redress for the state-committed abuses. “We see this as an important part of a future process of transitional justice,” he said. 

After the U.S. military struck a school in Minab in February 2026, killing 150 people, including 120 children, teachers launched another documentation campaign. Titled “Abandoned Backpacks,” it symbolized the children who never returned to school. 

But the significance of the campaigns transcends symbolism. “For us, these were also efforts aimed at seeking justice, preserving collective memory and defending children’s right to life and education,” Lotfi said. 

Social organizing and consensus-building 

One of the movement’s most fundamental structural challenges is that independent trade unions lack legal recognition in Iran. According to Lotfi, this creates obstacles before organizing even begins. Teachers cannot openly and formally recruit members or build a stable financial structure through membership dues to support research, education and organizing. Meetings and assemblies often occur only in private spaces.

The movement is therefore forced into a permanent contradiction: Much of its organizational work must happen informally, even as its demands are voiced publicly.

When those demands do become public, their spread encounters another barrier.

Pirouz Nami, who established the Teachers’ Trade Association of Khuzestan in 2012, said state-affiliated media often suppress teachers’ actual demands while portraying their activism as the product of foreign manipulation or hostile forces. “Within Iran, if any newspaper attempts to report the truth, it faces closure or prosecution,” Mohammadi explained. International coverage, Nami added, can create a different problem: sporadic attention that captures individual protests or arrests but misses the movement’s longer-term structures, relationships and organizing work.

In the face of such expansive challenges, teachers have developed an equally expansive repertoire of strategies. But those strategies remain peaceful, despite the repression and violence they are met with.  

“One cannot seek freedom, justice and human dignity through methods that violate those very values,” said Habibi, who has himself been arrested and beaten for protesting.

“Teachers have a duty that goes beyond teaching textbooks,” says Mohammad Habibi, teacher and Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations spokesperson. (Education International)

Teachers organize strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins and letter-writing campaigns; issue joint statements; document rights violations; and use social media to raise public awareness. One teacher, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, recalled more theatrical actions he had participated in. In one, teachers collectively burned payslips; in another, they built a coffin for the education system and carried it through the streets in a mock funeral procession.

The decision to take action at all is one that’s shaped collectively before anyone takes to the streets.

Several teachers described decision-making within the CCITTA as a democratic process built around discussion, consensus and majority voting. Lotfi said consensus is woven into organizing from the earliest stage. Before a demand becomes a slogan, teachers discuss, analyze and write about it. Workshops and longer discussion sessions may follow, with supporters and opponents debating the idea.

“This transforms a demand from a simple slogan into an issue that teachers … can collectively defend,” Lotfi said.

Opposition to the privatization and commodification of education, for example, was not always universally shared. But as Iran’s once all-public education system gradually shifted toward greater private-sector involvement, a small group of teacher activists began arguing that privatization was undermining the constitutional guarantee of free public education. They discussed the consequences of this trend through written materials, meetings and debate. Over time, the idea gained broader support. Today, opposition to privatization, as well as advocacy for free, public and equitable education, have become some of the movement’s central priorities. In fact, according to Habibi, “It is because of teachers’ protests that the privatization of public education has proceeded much more slowly than successive governments would have liked.” 

Alongside the demonstrations and strikes visible to the public and the state, teachers continually work to strengthen relationships within the movement. “Even activities that don’t seem directly related to our demands form a part of social organizing,” Lotfi said. Teachers meet online and in person. They organize hiking groups, walking groups, cultural programs and social gatherings. That work, Abdi said, helps build a movement that “doesn’t depend on one individual and preserves and reproduces its capacity to act, even under pressure.”

The trust created through those relationships can become crucial when repression strikes.

Solidarity with detained teachers

In May 2022, Lotfi was arrested when returning to his hometown, Marivan, ahead of a planned Teachers’ Day protest there.

“My tenant had informed my family beforehand about what was happening,” he recalled. “The security forces had surrounded my home. But I went back anyway because I had spent years working to create joint action, and didn’t want to miss that moment. I was arrested almost immediately after entering the city.”

State television later portrayed him negatively, including allegations that he had ties to “hostile countries,” which he says are unfounded. Authorities pointed to a friendly meeting between Lotfi and two French teacher trade unionists as evidence of those supposed connections.

His detention activated the networks he had spent years building.

Dozens of teachers demonstrated outside education offices and other government institutions. Teachers circulated statements and written appeals demanding his release. When Lotfi began a hunger strike to protest his detention and pressure to confess to ties with the French citizens, dozens of teachers began solidarity hunger strikes of their own. He was finally released on bail in August 2022, but was rearrested in October, during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. 

The wave of support he received was not unique to him.

Several teachers described a similar response whenever a colleague is detained or imprisoned: Associations issue public statements, raise awareness through social media and news outlets, and organize gatherings outside education offices and courthouses to pressure authorities for their colleagues’ release. Teachers also provide financial and emotional assistance to detainees’ families and try to secure legal support. The movement does not act alone. Habibi said volunteer lawyers, journalists and civil society activists have repeatedly stood alongside teachers, despite the consequences that solidarity can carry.

At the same time, teachers aligned with state authorities participate in what Lotfi described as mechanisms of control and repression. “They might spread rumors about activists, like portraying them as affiliated with foreign governments,” he said. The result can be fear and mistrust, discouraging even sympathetic teachers from publicly supporting detained colleagues.

For detained teachers, repression spills into the lives of their loved ones, who are left to absorb its emotional and material costs.

A teacher who requested anonymity because he is out on bail pending trial, described his wife being arrested alongside him this past spring, amid a broader crackdown on teachers’ union activists.

“Both my wife and I were beaten,” he said. “They blindfolded and handcuffed me and put me in a vehicle.”

During the two months he spent in detention, he said, a judicial officer threatened to reopen what he called “Glass Room No. 100.” The teacher described it as a place where protesters were raped with glass bottles — a form of sexual torture Amnesty International has independently documented against other detainees in Iran.

Like the other teachers interviewed, Nami endured years of threatening phone calls, surveillance at work and in the classroom, pay cuts, arrests, torture, solitary confinement and ultimately job dismissal. Watching his family endure the consequences alongside him, he said, doubled the weight. During Nami’s detentions, his wife had to manage the household and care for their eldest son, who has a severe physical disability, entirely on her own, while also living with rheumatism and diabetes.

Mohammadi testified about her detention experience to the women’s committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. She told them that when the Ministry of Intelligence summoned her, she went without informing her family. Security agents nevertheless tracked her children through her phone, causing them severe distress. After her arrest, authorities threatened her family against reporting her imprisonment to the media. 

“But on a social level, going to prison under this regime no longer carries a social stigma,” she said. “On the contrary, people wear it as a badge of honor, proud to have stood up against the state.”

Building strength under wartime conditions

Challenges intensify during internet shutdowns and periods of war, like Iran is experiencing now. Habibi said teachers struggle to communicate, share information and coordinate activities; even maintaining contact with the families of imprisoned colleagues becomes difficult.

The danger extends to communication devices themselves. Lotfi said authorities sometimes seize activists’ phones and computers during arrests and searches and later use information stored on them in judicial proceedings, making secure communication a constant concern.

Even under these conditions, public action has not disappeared entirely. 

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The Sept. 6 protest was one of the movement’s most recent public demonstrations, unfolding amid a broader wave of protests across the country that included actions by railway workers, nurses, unemployed youth and retirees over grievances like unpaid wages and the mishandling of pension funds.

But wartime conditions, intense repression and the imprisonment of many active organizers have forced teachers to retreat from frequent street demonstrations.

“We are trying to preserve our relationships and collective spirit through lower-risk activities happening across the country, such as group walks, hiking trips, film screenings, book discussions, and educational and cultural gatherings,” Habibi said. 

One such lower-risk activity is a screening of “When We Fight” (a documentary about the 2019 Los Angeles teachers’ strike), planned for World Teachers’ Day on Oct. 5, possibly followed by a virtual conversation between Iranian teachers and American educators featured in the film about organizing strategies and shared experiences.

The CCITTA continues to provide financial support to imprisoned teachers, who currently number 15 by Habibi’s count, although resources have been strained by the uptick in arrests since January 2026 and payments have become smaller. The fund cannot take international donations, due to the government’s sensitivity to connections outside the country, so it is financed by voluntary donations from teachers, who risk having their bank accounts frozen in retaliation. “Still, each time this happens, a new account is created, and teachers begin making donations again,” Habibi said.

The CCITTA is also continuing its Empty Desks project. And as schools reopen, teachers, including Taban, are campaigning for the reinstatement of colleagues who were dismissed for their protest activity. In late September, teachers, parents and civil society activists launched a petition demanding the reinstatement of all dismissed teachers, rallying in particular around Kurdish teacher-activists Majid Karimi and Ghias Nemati. The two had briefly returned to their classrooms after a higher administrative body overturned earlier decisions barring them from service, only for education authorities to impose new penalties that again removed them from teaching. 

“Although our methods might change because of the circumstances, our commitment to defending teachers’ rights, public education and civil society remains unchanged,” Habibi said.

This article Iran’s teachers movement perseveres against all odds was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

• Native tribes denied greater say in water decisions with Newsom veto
• Newsom Vetoes Sacred Sites and Tribal Water Bills Despite Overwhelming Votes
• Tribal advocates say Newsom apologized for state history, then vetoed their bills
• Governor Newsom Ignores Water-Sector Consensus and Fails to Make Water Affordable in California 

Newsom’s final legislative session has ended with broken promises, and sweeping vetoes of critical legislation. On September 30th, Governor Newsom vetoed AB 2218, Water policy: California Native American tribes. The bill, authored by Assemblymember Ash Kalra and co-sponsored by the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok and the Karuk Tribe, passed both chambers of the California Legislature with unanimous support: 28-0 in the Senate and 56-0 in the Assembly. Despite Newsom’s work with tribes on stewardship and landback initiatives, this decision highlights the State’s inability to translate words into actionable change.

In his veto message, Governor Newsom reiterated his administration’s recognition of “the historical harms perpetrated against Native peoples and tribal governments in California.” He attempts to rationalize this veto and continuing trend of leaving tribes out of important water decisions, arguing that passing this bill would undermine water policies addressing climate change, create duplicate work, and potentially disrupt important regulations, policies, permits, and grant criteria moving forward.

Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians Vice Chair Malissa Tayaba responded directly to this decision, stating, “Newsom’s veto of AB 2218 is a backhanded betrayal of California Tribes and a direct contradiction of his apology and promises of reconciliation. For nearly 200 years, California has made decisions about our waters without us, disregarding the tribes whose cultures, communities and lifeways depend on them. Newsom had instead aligned with ‘special water interests that profit from extractive and exploitive water management.’” 

The Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee reported on the veto, depicting the long history of exclusion in California, and the importance of AB 2218 in providing Tribes a greater role in decisions affecting California water resources. Karuk Tribe Chairman Russell “Buster” Attebery said tribes “need to be at the table when decisions are being made,” and the bill was an important step toward changing that. The article also highlights California’s troubled water history dating back to the Gold Rush, when Tribes were forcibly removed from their lands and left without meaningful rights to the water resources they depended on. 

In a continuing trend of vetoing important legislation, the Community Water Center’s bill, SB 1125: Water Rate Assistance Program, was another casualty of Governor Newsom’s September 30th legislative decisions. The groundbreaking legislation would have established a statewide Low-Income Water Rate Assistance Program, the first of its kind in the nation. Authored by Senator Caroline Menjivar, the bill would have addressed water affordability and helped ensure that families across California have access to safe and affordable water.

Read more about each bill and the Governor’s vetoes below:

• Native tribes denied greater say in water decisions with Newsom veto
• Newsom Vetoes Sacred Sites and Tribal Water Bills Despite Overwhelming Votes
• Tribal advocates say Newsom apologized for state history, then vetoed their bills
• Governor Newsom Ignores Water-Sector Consensus and Fails to Make Water Affordable in California 

Reabold Resources has announced its takeover offer for Union Jack Oil has lapsed.

At the today’s deadline, the bid was supported by holders of just over 13% of Union Jack share capital.

Reabold said in a statement this evening it had not received sufficient acceptances from Union Jack investors by 1pm.

Extract from Reabold Resources statement, issued at 5.15pm, 2 October 2026

The offer was conditional on receiving acceptances from holders of at least 75% of Union Jack’s existing share capital.

Reabold said that at 1pm today (2 October 2026), it had received acceptances from about 13.02%.

The statement said:

“As such, the Acceptance Condition has not been satisfied and the Offer has now lapsed”.

It added that the offr would have addressed challenges facing Union Jack and would have allowed shareholders to “participate in a better-capitalised platform with enhanced access to funding and a wider portfolio of assets”.

Reabold said it reserved the right to make a further offer if it were recommended by the Union Jack Board or a third party announced it intended to make an offer for Union Jack.

At the time of writing, Union Jack has not made a formal statement on the outcome of the takeover bid.

The offer, first made in June 2026, was backed by Union Jack’s then executive chairman, David Bramhill, and the company’s board. They had urged Union Jack shareholders to accept the offer.

But Mr Bramhill and two other directors were removed from the board on 24 August 2026 at a special meeting of shareholders.

They were replaced by Craig Howie and John Americanos, who opposed the Reabold takeover bid.

On 11 September 2026, in a circular to investors, the new Union Jack board recommended rejection of the offer. The board described the offer as “opportunistic” and said it “significantly undervalues Union Jack’s current project portfolio”.

Union Jack has the largest individual interest (40%) in the Wressle oil field in North Lincolnshire, PEDL180 and PEDL182.

It also has a 16.665% share in the West Newton oil and gas licence, PEDL183, in East Yorkshire and interests in PEDL5, PEDL209, PEDL241 and EXL294.

Last month, there were clashes between Union Jack and Reabold over West Newton, where there are plans for lower-volume fracking before the end of the year.

Union Jack said West Newton remained “an undeveloped gas and condensate discovery that has yet to establish sustained commercial production”. It also said “the outcome of the proposed stimulation” was not known.

Reabold Resources said it “strongly rejects” the suggestion that West Newton lacked “strategic merit”, It accused the new Union Jack board of “highly selective views” on the field.

BALTIMORE, MD — The Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) selected yesterday the Chalk Point Storage Project (Prince George’s County, 400 MW) and Jade Meadow III Battery Storage (Garrett County, 40 MW) under the Round 1 solicitation of the Next Generation Energy Act (NGEA). A coalition of clean energy and environmental organizations thanks the Commission for its work throughout the Case 9866 process and welcomes the approvals as a step forward for Maryland’s grid but calls on the PSC to do more.

What yesterday’s decision means:

• Progress on reliability and affordability: The selected project(s) will add 440 MW of transmission-connected, 4-hour battery storage, helping stabilize supply and demand and insulate ratepayers from peak pricing.
• Local benefits: The Chalk Point Storage Project and Jade Meadow III Battery Project are expected to bring construction jobs, permanent maintenance positions, and steady tax revenue to Prince George’s County and Garrett County. 
• Next step is construction approval: The approved project(s) must still secure PSC construction approval, including additional public hearings on safety, siting, and environmental review, expected in late 2026 and into 2027.

The state’s grid — under mounting strain from PJM capacity constraints and rising demand — needs every cost-effective storage resource it can bring online. 

In response to yesterday’s decision, advocates released the following statements: 

“The proposals in this docket represent several years of state policymaking pertaining to grid reliability and a state storage program. 440 MW is a significant increase to our grid’s capacity. At a time when electricity affordability is a paramount concern for Marylanders, storage can reduce overall electricity system costs and can prevent rate increases by improving grid efficiency, maximizing low-cost renewable energy, and strengthening system reliability,” said Rebecca Rehr, Director of Climate Policy and Justice, Maryland League of Conservation Voters.

“Maryland should celebrate these first-round approvals, but we cannot stop at 440 megawatts when the state has set a 3,000-megawatt energy-storage goal by 2033 and sought 800 megawatts in this round alone,” said Brittany Baker, Maryland Director at Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “The Commission should build on this progress with an ambitious Round 2 that brings substantially more storage online, prioritizes responsible siting and community engagement, and gives Maryland households the reliable, affordable clean-energy grid they deserve.”

“While we commend the Commission approving these two projects for Energy Storage Capacity Credits, it missed a critical opportunity to deploy more clean capacity,” said Josh Tulkin, Sierra Club Maryland Chapter Director. “Maryland urgently needs to add more storage to the grid to combat rising electricity prices, improve reliability, and meet its climate targets. The approval of only two projects does not meet the urgency of this moment. The Commission should approve credits for more storage capacity in Round 2, including projects like the large, six-hour Oystercatcher project.”

As the PSC gears up for Round 2 solicitation, due to launch by January 1, 2027, advocates look forward to consideration of more energy storage projects that deliver the additional storage capacity Maryland needs to meet its reliability and climate goals.

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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, and Washington, DC.

Maryland LCV educates and activates people to take equitable and just political actions for clean water, healthy air, and climate-resilient communities.

Founded in 1892, the Sierra Club is America’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization. The Maryland Chapter has over 70,000 members and supporters, and the Sierra Club nationwide has approximately 800,000 members.

The post Maryland PSC Approves Two Battery Storage Projects; Coalition Urges Continued Progress Toward Grid Reliability Goals appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.