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

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

Introduction

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

The uncertainty had a name.

Order 600.

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

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

But something unusual happened as that battle intensified.

Documents originating inside Shell travelled outside the company.

They reached journalists.

They reached environmental campaigners.

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

The provenance of those documents can now be reconstructed.

1. 18 September 2006: Russia moves against the permit

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

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

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

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

That distinction matters.

There was an announced governmental decision to invalidate the approval.

But the procedural position remained fluid.

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

Sakhalin Energy did not quietly accept the decision.

Its response was unusually specific.

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

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

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

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

The established point is narrower:

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

3. The Government then paused

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

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

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

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

This is an important procedural detail.

The September confrontation is sometimes compressed into the statement:

Russia revoked Shell’s permit.

The actual chronology was less tidy.

The Ministry moved to invalidate the approval.

Sakhalin Energy contested the legal basis.

Foreign governments objected.

Then Trutnev allowed work to continue pending further investigation.

The permit had become leverage inside an unresolved regulatory process.

That last sentence is commentary.

The chronology is documented.

4. Mitvol denied politics had anything to do with it

The obvious allegation was already circulating internationally.

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

Oleg Mitvol rejected that interpretation.

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

Sakhalin Energy denied breaching the regulations. The Guardian

This remains the correct evidential formulation.

Mitvol said it was environmental enforcement.

Critics suspected a political and commercial purpose.

Neither position becomes proven merely by repetition.

5. Shell said it was rapidly clearing the complaints

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

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

But another inspection was already under way.

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

The regulatory target was therefore moving.

Shell’s position was essentially:

we are fixing the identified problems.

Russia’s position was:

we are still finding problems.

6. Then came the internal Shell emails

Running alongside the official inspections was a separate documentary story.

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

Bouman had seen presentations concerning the planned Lunskoye wells.

His email was plainly cautionary rather than definitive.

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

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

“schedule driven.” Shell2004

He was careful to acknowledge uncertainty.

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

But his conclusion was unmistakable:

“I get this sinking feeling.” Shell2004

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

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

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

In a later email, he identified several specific concerns:

limited seasonal access to the platform;

gas plumes associated with large faults;

the possibility of fault reactivation;

well reliability;

cuttings injection;

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

These were technical questions being raised internally.

They were not findings that the wells were unsafe.

They were not evidence that a blowout was inevitable.

And they were not an environmental judgment.

The distinction is essential.

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

It is not proof that the feared event would occur.

8. Van Spronsen’s reply supplied important context

Engel van Spronsen did not dismiss Bouman.

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

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

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

It is an internal professional discussion.

Bouman was worried about technical risk.

Van Spronsen explained regulatory and project constraints.

The correspondence reveals uncertainty and pressure inside the design process.

It does not by itself establish negligence.

9. Dow Jones checked the emails

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

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

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

This matters enormously for evidential purposes.

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

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

10. 7 August: the first approach to Oleg Mitvol

The regulatory connection actually began before the September permit crisis.

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

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

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

This was not the transmission of the Bouman emails.

It was an initial approach.

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

11. 17 October: an offer of confidential information

On 17 October, Donovan faxed Mitvol again.

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

The following day, the information was sent.

12. 18 October: the Shell emails go to Moscow

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

It is headed:

“Shell Insider Information Regarding Sakhalin.”

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

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

At this stage, one must distinguish two things.

The authentic internal Shell emails raised technical concerns.

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

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

The strongest evidence is the original correspondence itself.

13. The link to Rosprirodnadzor was independently reported

The most important corroboration appeared outside the Donovan archive.

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

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

That is a significant independent checkpoint.

The sequence was no longer simply:

Donovan says he sent documents to Mitvol.

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

14. Sakhalin Energy supplied a technical rebuttal

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

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

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

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

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

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

That response must sit beside the original emails.

The internal engineers had raised concerns.

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

15. Russia was making much wider allegations

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

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

That figure was a Russian government assertion.

It should not be written as:

“Shell damaged 529 rivers.”

The documentary formulation is:

the Ministry said 529 rivers required restoration.

That distinction may appear small.

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

16. The Argus interview

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

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

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

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

That was Mitvol’s interpretation.

It was not a court finding.

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

17. There is an apparent discrepancy in the contemporary record

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

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

Those accounts do not sit comfortably together.

There may be an innocent explanation.

They may concern different communications.

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

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

Or the reporting may simply be inconsistent.

The available archive does not resolve the discrepancy.

Accordingly, this instalment does not.

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

18. 29 November: another document is offered

The documentary exchange continued.

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

This proves the offer was made.

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

It does not establish that Russian investigators relied upon it.

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

Those propositions would require separate evidence.

19. Meanwhile the regulatory threat became more serious

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

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

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

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

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

20. Then the ownership negotiations accelerated

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

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

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

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

Again, both sides of the contemporary record need preserving.

Observers suspected regulatory leverage.

Mitvol said ownership was irrelevant to enforcement.

21. Ten days later, Shell surrendered majority control

On 21 December 2006, the transaction became official.

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

Gazprom would acquire:

50 per cent plus one share

of Sakhalin Energy for:

$7.45 billion in cash.

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

Mitsui would fall to 12.5 per cent.

Mitsubishi would fall to 10 per cent.

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

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

Those are authenticated corporate facts.

22. What the emails prove

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

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

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

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

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

Those propositions are well supported.

23. What the emails do not prove

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

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

They do not prove that Shell deliberately endangered the environment.

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

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

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

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

That is significant enough.

There is no need to claim more.

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

There is another equally important boundary.

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

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

International lenders had already raised environmental concerns.

Independent scientists had challenged aspects of the project.

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

The political context therefore does not erase the environmental record.

25. Nor can the political context be erased

The opposite simplification is equally unsatisfactory.

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

The original asset-swap concept involved minority participation.

The final agreement gave Gazprom majority control.

Contemporaneous journalists repeatedly interpreted the environmental campaign as leverage.

Western governments expressed concern.

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

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

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

Sakhalin II subsequently reached the English High Court in:

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

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

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

But it did not adjudicate the Bouman emails.

It did not determine Russian environmental violations.

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

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

The judgment is relevant institutional context.

It is not retrospective proof of the Russian case.

Documentary Findings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commentary

There is something unusual about this particular documentary chain.

It begins inside Shell.

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

Another senior technical figure answers him.

The correspondence leaves the corporation.

A financial news organisation checks it.

One of the authors confirms it.

A campaigning website sends it to a foreign regulator.

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

The exchange is reported by Interfax and Argus.

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

That is not a theory.

That chain can be reconstructed from documents.

What cannot be reconstructed with equal certainty is causation.

Did the emails materially alter the Russian investigation?

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

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

Or did they do several of these things at once?

The archive does not yet provide a definitive answer.

That uncertainty is itself part of the historical record.

The importance of provenance

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

Instead, the provenance has several layers.

The correspondence bears the names of Shell personnel.

Bouman reportedly confirmed authenticity to Dow Jones.

Sakhalin Energy gave a substantive technical response.

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

Mitvol publicly identified its source.

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

That does not prove every allegation surrounding the emails.

It does make the documentary trail unusually strong.

The permit war was therefore about more than a permit

By late 2006, several different contests had converged.

There was a legitimate environmental debate.

There was a technical engineering debate.

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

There was a dispute over project costs.

There was a geopolitical struggle over Russian energy assets.

There was a negotiation with Gazprom.

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

On 21 December, one of those contests was resolved.

Gazprom got control.

The others did not disappear quite so neatly.

Source Record

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

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

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

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

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

Reuters — Russia calls time-out in campaign against Shell

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

Reuters — Shell awaits more Sakhalin environmental claims

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

Archive document — Email to Oleg Mitvol, 7 August 2006

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

Archive document — Fax to Oleg Mitvol, 17 October 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

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

By December 2006 the permit war had reached its climax.

Shell faced unresolved environmental claims.

The Russian government was still disputing project costs.

Gazprom wanted a controlling stake.

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

Then the participants entered the Kremlin.

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

The environmental dispute was discussed.

The project budget was discussed.

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

Gazprom would pay $7.45 billion.

Shell would lose half of its 55 per cent stake.

Russia’s state-controlled gas company would obtain:

50 per cent plus one share.

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

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 27 SEPTEMBER 2026 was first posted on September 27, 2026 at 7:57 pm.
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• 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #38 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 13, 2026 thru Sat, September 19, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler & Doug Bostrom, Sep 19, 2026.
• Energy Transition is No Longer About Climate Change 'Global Energy analyst Jeff Currie tells Bloomberg the Energy Transition is “TurboCharged” – but it’s not about climate, and maybe never was. By far the biggest growth in energy consumption is going to come from the developing world in Asia and Africa, and those countries are no longer willing to be held hostage to fossil fuels.'' This is Not Cool, greenman3610, Sep 19, 2026.
• Jensen Huang talks about AI and climate change like a supervillain With AI, he says, ‘in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first.‘ The Verge, Justine Calma, Sep 24, 2026.

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• Suncor Helped Lead Climate Denial Group Spreading ‘Uncertainties’ With a U.S. Supreme Court decision looming on whether the company can be held liable for climate deception, internal documents show a campaign to question science. Desmog, Geoff Dembicki, Sep 21, 2026.
• Judge Dismisses Unusual Climate Suit Claiming Oil Giants Broke Antitrust Law The lawsuit, filed by Michigan, claimed oil companies colluded to obstruct solar power and to misrepresent climate risks, making energy costlier. NYT, Karen Zraick, Sep 22, 2026.

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• For Climate-Vulnerable Countries, Debt Costs 25 Times More Than Climate Action As climate disasters intensify, mounting debt is leaving vulnerable countries with less money to prepare, recover and invest in climate action. Inside Climate News, Alissa de Chassey, Sep 19, 2026.
• `Way Too Hot`: Britain`s Hospitals Were Not Built for 96-Degree Summers Patients and workers in one of the country’s largest hospitals sweltered in a heat wave last month. Experts say the whole country must urgently adapt. New York Time, Megan Specia and Andrew Testa, Sep 21, 2026.

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• Skeptical Science New Research for Week #39 2026 Skeptical Science's latest weekly survey of research on anthropogenic climate change, climate change impacts, and how we're dealing with it all. Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Sep 23, 2026.
• `Robust little` vessel begins treacherous 22,000km journey around Antarctica in the name of climate science World news The Guardian, Petra Stock, Sep 25, 2026.

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

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (2 items)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Next Trump cut their climate jobs. This secretive network found them new ones. Sachi Kitajima Mulkey & Kate Yoder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Next The plan to make climate science harder to erase Kate Yoder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headline News:

• “Brazil’s Energy Mix Goes Green Even As Oil Production Climbs” • Brazil is continuing to expand its renewable energy capacity thanks to favorable national policies and support from foreign investors. The South American giant has developed an impressive green energy industry in recent years, even as its oil and gas production expands. [OilPrice.com]

Solar farm (Kleber Reudo, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped)

• “A Month After Floods In Nepal, Thousands Are Still Missing And Families Face A Long Recovery” • A month after devastating floods swept through parts of Nepal, thousands are displaced. Also, rescuers continue searching for thousands others are still missing, including many believed trapped in six hydropower project tunnels. [ABC News]
• “Germany Makes First Explicit Fossil-Fuel Exit Pledge, Targets 80% Renewable Power By 2030” • Germany has committed to ending its use of fossil fuels by 2045. As part of that effort, it wants renewables to supply 80% of its power by 2030, up from 55%, while also adding 12 GW of new onshore wind and reaching 215 GW of solar capacity. [The Cool Down]
• “Al Gore On The Global Climate Crisis: ‘We’re Going To Win This’” • Two decades after the release of his groundbreaking documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has admitted he was surprised by the ferocious, ongoing backlash from the fossil fuel industry and its political allies. But the former US vice-president insists he still has optimism. [Mother Jones]
• “Scientists Launch Workaround After Trump Administration Dismantles National Climate Assessment” • After the Trump administration dismantled key parts of the federal process behind the next National Climate Assessment, major scientific groups hastened to keep the work alive. Their work is to keep up a crucial stream of climate information. [Yahoo]

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

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 26 SEPTEMBER 2026 SLF-2007-069 The Sakhalin Papers LIX: The 120-Day Test — When Shell’s $20 Billion Project Was Put Out for Public Judgment In December 2005, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development decided that Sakhalin II’s environmental and social documentation was sufficiently developed to enter formal public consultation. That was not project approval and it was not a loan decision. During the following 120 days, critics challenged the project in London, Moscow, Sakhalin and Hokkaido over whales, salmon rivers, seismic risk, oil-spill preparedness and consultation itself. Sakhalin Energy maintained that it was complying with Russian law and improving its environmental controls. Then, before the financing question could be resolved, the argument changed character. Russian regulators moved against a crucial environmental approval, Gazprom was seeking entry into the project, and EBRD said the resulting legal uncertainty prevented it from progressing its financing decision.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-069
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal institutional record: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Sakhalin II records and Independent Recourse Mechanism file
Authenticated corporate record: The Shell Sustainability Report 2006
Contemporaneous reporting: AFP, Oil & Gas Journal, RIA Novosti, The Guardian, El País
Campaign submissions: WWF, Friends of the Earth, The Corner House and Friends of the Earth Japan
Later judicial context: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)
Evidence standard: EBRD determinations are distinguished from campaign-group interpretations of them. Sakhalin Energy statements are attributed to the company. Russian environmental allegations are distinguished from contemporaneous claims that regulatory action was being used to influence Gazprom’s entry into the project. No court identified in this file determined that the 2006 Russian enforcement campaign was either fabricated or politically motivated.

Introduction

The previous file ended with an audit.

This one begins with a public examination.

By December 2005, prospective lenders had been examining Sakhalin II for years. The project had already accumulated controversy over western gray whales, salmon rivers, pipeline construction, oil-spill preparedness and contractor performance.

Yet construction continued.

The project cost had doubled to approximately $20 billion.

And Shell remained the 55 per cent shareholder in Sakhalin Energy. Shell News

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development now faced a question.

Was the project ready to move from technical assessment into the final stage of public scrutiny before a financing decision?

Its answer was:

Yes — but only for consultation. 1. “Fit for the purpose of consultation” did not mean approved

On 14 December 2005, EBRD decided that Sakhalin II’s environmental and social documentation was:

“fit for the purpose of consultation.”

Its Independent Recourse Mechanism record preserves that date and decision. EBRD

Contemporaneous Oil & Gas Journal reporting explained the practical consequence: the determination opened a 120-day period of public disclosure and consultation concerning environmental, social, health and safety issues and proposed mitigation measures. Shell News

That phrase has to be handled carefully.

It did not mean the project had passed every environmental test.

It did not mean EBRD had approved financing.

And it did not mean all earlier deficiencies had disappeared.

It meant the documentation had reached the point at which the Bank considered public consultation capable of proceeding.

2. EBRD itself had already identified procedural shortcomings

The environmental organisations later relied heavily upon wording from EBRD’s own December 2005 press release.

Their April 2006 submission to the UK Export Credits Guarantee Department reproduced EBRD’s acknowledgment that procedures prescribed in its Environmental Policy:

“were not fully followed in the planning phases”

in relation to important aspects of Sakhalin II.

The same submission quoted EBRD as saying that the decision-making process for the siting of an oil-production platform had not been in conformity with the Bank’s policy. WWF Europe

That evidence requires a qualification.

The wording is preserved in a contemporaneous campaigning submission citing the EBRD press release; the original release is no longer readily retrievable through the Bank’s current website.

But it materially changes the historical picture.

The consultation did not begin because EBRD had concluded that nothing was wrong.

It began despite the Bank having identified planning-stage shortcomings which it believed subsequent documentation had addressed sufficiently to permit consultation. WWF Europe

3. London heard the first arguments

By March 2006, consultation had already taken place in London.

A later submission by WWF, Friends of the Earth and The Corner House records that critics supplied the London meeting with a list of approximately 100 press articles concerning Sakhalin II and its environmental and governance controversies. WWF Europe

The significance was not the number itself.

The consultation was becoming a forum in which prospective lenders were being asked to assess not simply an engineering project, but the credibility of Shell and Sakhalin Energy’s environmental management.

That was precisely what the 120-day procedure was designed to expose to challenge.

4. Moscow produced six hours of opposition

In March, the consultation moved to Moscow.

AFP reported that lawyers, environmentalists, geologists and community representatives spent approximately six hoursarguing that Sakhalin II should not receive EBRD financing.

Their objections included western gray whale risks, salmon spawning rivers, seismic instability and alleged breaches of Russian law. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Those were allegations made by project opponents.

Sakhalin Energy did not accept them.

A company representative responded that while opponents were entitled to pursue legal challenges, the company was confident that it would be found to be complying with the law. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

That exchange captures the 120-day process in miniature.

The critics were not merely demanding mitigation.

Some were saying the project should not qualify for EBRD support at all.

Sakhalin Energy was saying the project remained lawful and manageable.

5. The consultation extended beyond Russia

The Moscow report said consultation had already occurred in London and would continue on Sakhalin and in Hokkaido, Japan. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Hokkaido was especially significant because Sakhalin lies only tens of kilometres from northern Japan and a major marine spill could have transboundary consequences.

Friends of the Earth Japan records an EBRD consultation meeting in Hokkaido on 10 April 2006. 国際環境NGO FoE Japan

The organisation strongly criticised how that meeting had been conducted and argued that local concerns had not been given sufficient weight.

That was FoE Japan’s assessment of the consultation process, not an EBRD finding.

But the fact that Hokkaido was included at all demonstrates that Sakhalin II’s environmental risk was no longer treated as exclusively Russian.

6. Oil-spill planning remained one of the hardest questions

WWF’s February 2006 submission argued that Sakhalin Energy still lacked an adequate comprehensive response plan for a major spill under winter sea-ice conditions.

It maintained that conventional response techniques such as booms could be severely constrained by ice and that dispersant use raised separate ecological concerns. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Those were WWF’s assertions.

They should not be converted into a finding that no spill plan existed.

As earlier files have documented, lender records show that Sakhalin Energy had produced contingency plans and that EBRD experts had reviewed oil-spill arrangements during Phase I. EBRD

The dispute was therefore more precise:

not whether Sakhalin Energy had any oil-spill planning,

but whether the planning was adequate for the scale, remoteness and winter conditions of Sakhalin II.

7. The whale issue had not gone away either

WWF continued to argue during the consultation that the protections for the western gray whale were insufficient.

The organisation said independent whale specialists remained unconvinced that the project could proceed without significant risk to a population then estimated at roughly one hundred animals. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Shell’s later 2006 Sustainability Report presents the company side.

It says Sakhalin Energy had rerouted the offshore pipeline approximately 20 kilometres farther from the whales’ feeding grounds, imposed vessel controls and acoustic monitoring, and helped establish a long-term scientific advisory panel convened by the World Conservation Union, now IUCN. Shell

Both facts belong in the archive.

Scientific criticism continued.

Mitigation measures also changed.

8. The salmon rivers provided Shell with an uncomfortable admission

The pipeline crossed approximately 180 sensitive salmon rivers.

Shell’s own 2006 Sustainability Report records that some contractors had failed to follow required low-impact crossing techniques during the winter of 2004–05.

Sakhalin Energy stopped work, strengthened controls, sought outside expertise and brought in independent observers and environmental-agency representatives to monitor subsequent crossings. Shell

Shell also acknowledged that some rivers experienced more sedimentation than planned, while maintaining that the likely effects on spawning habitat were limited and temporary. Shell

This was therefore not an argument in which Shell simply denied every environmental problem.

Its own reporting acknowledged failures and remedial measures.

The dispute was over their seriousness and whether remediation was sufficient.

9. The project was already being built while the public was being consulted

This was one of the fundamental tensions.

Environmental organisations argued that meaningful consultation was difficult when construction was already far advanced.

By April 2006, WWF and its partners described the project as already roughly two-thirds constructed. WWF Europe

That matters because consultation normally implies the possibility of changing what is proposed.

But substantial infrastructure, pipelines and offshore facilities were already committed.

The consultation therefore operated partly as an examination of mitigation for decisions already taken.

That was one reason opponents questioned whether the process could genuinely influence the project.

10. 21 April 2006: the consultation period closes

WWF recorded 21 April 2006 as the closing date of EBRD’s consultation.

Its final submission again urged the Bank not to finance Sakhalin II without stronger environmental safeguards, particularly concerning the western gray whales. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

At this point the next expected step was relatively straightforward.

EBRD would digest the submissions.

Its technical and environmental teams would continue their work.

And eventually the Bank’s board would decide whether to lend.

But Sakhalin II was about to stop behaving like an ordinary project-finance case.

11. There was already another negotiation in the background

While EBRD was conducting its environmental consultation, Shell was separately negotiating with Gazprom.

Contemporaneous reporting records that Shell had signed a memorandum of understanding under which Gazprom was expected to obtain 25 per cent of Sakhalin Energy in exchange for Shell receiving an interest in a major Siberian gas field. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

The prospective transaction was commercial.

But it placed the Russian state-controlled gas champion directly beside the environmental financing process.

And another problem was developing.

Sakhalin II’s cost estimate had doubled.

12. The $10 billion project became a $20 billion project

The cost escalation was enormous.

Contemporaneous reporting records Sakhalin II’s projected cost increasing from roughly $10 billion to $20 billion. Shell News

That increase affected more than Shell’s shareholders.

Under the production-sharing agreement, development costs were recoverable from project revenues before Russia received some of the profits it expected.

The cost revision therefore had implications for the Russian state.

It also disrupted the commercial logic of the contemplated Gazprom asset swap.

Contemporaneous reporting described Gazprom as dissatisfied that the economic basis of the earlier arrangement had changed. El País

Environmental controversy and commercial negotiation were now moving toward each other.

13. September 2006: the regulatory confrontation erupts

In September, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources moved against a crucial environmental approval for Sakhalin II.

RIA Novosti reported that the Ministry annulled the project’s Sakhalin Environmental Expert Review, originally approved in 2003, citing environmental concerns including landslide risks around pipeline construction. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

The action threatened substantial delays.

A Sakhalin Energy executive warned publicly that withdrawal of the approval could delay the project by 17 months and put thousands of jobs at risk. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

This was no longer a lender asking questions.

It was the Russian state exercising regulatory power over a project already deep into construction.

14. Were the environmental objections genuine — or leverage?

This is where the documentary record must resist a tempting simplification.

Environmental concerns surrounding Sakhalin II were real and long pre-dated the 2006 ownership dispute.

EBRD, independent scientists, environmental groups and even Shell’s own reports had documented problems concerning river crossings, whales, spills and contractor compliance.

It would therefore be inaccurate to dismiss every Russian environmental complaint as invented.

But contemporaneous observers also interpreted the sudden escalation of regulatory action as pressure on Shell to improve the terms on which Gazprom could enter Sakhalin II.

El País reported explicitly that Russia was pressuring Shell while Gazprom sought a stake and noted that the original asset-swap understanding had been destabilised by the project’s cost doubling. El País

The Guardian later described months of pressure from Russia’s natural-resources and environmental authorities preceding the ownership negotiations. The Guardian

Those were contemporary interpretations.

They were not judicial findings.

15. The Russian government denied that interpretation

Russian officials publicly rejected accusations that foreign investors were being driven from the energy sector.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the environmental inspections did not necessarily mean termination of the production-sharing agreement and described claims that Russia intended to squeeze out foreign investors as groundless.

Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev likewise said the authorities hoped to avoid shutting the project but insisted that environmental violations had to be corrected. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

That position must be recorded alongside the allegations of political pressure.

The Russian government said the issue was regulatory compliance.

Critics and market observers suspected strategic leverage.

The surviving record establishes the simultaneity of environmental enforcement and ownership negotiations.

It does not, by itself, prove the motive behind every regulatory decision.

16. The EBRD process is overtaken by events

By 26 September 2006, the financing process had stalled.

AFP reported that EBRD had expected to reach a decision on potential financing during the summer or by September.

Instead, the Bank said that uncertainty surrounding the project’s legal position:

“does not allow the EBRD to progress.” Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

This is an important turning point.

The 120-day public consultation had been completed.

The environmental submissions had been gathered.

But the lender could not proceed toward a decision because the legal and regulatory status of the underlying project had become uncertain.

The environmental financing process had collided with Russian state action.

17. That did not amount to an EBRD environmental rejection

This distinction is crucial because the later history is often compressed.

EBRD did not announce in September 2006:

Shell has failed our environmental test and we refuse to lend.

It said the Russian legal uncertainty prevented the financing process from progressing. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Environmental issues remained central to the Bank’s assessment.

But the immediate obstacle had changed.

The project itself was now being challenged by the state whose resources it was developing.

18. By the end of 2006, control was moving

The eventual outcome is documented in an SEC filing.

On 21 December 2006, Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi signed a protocol under which Gazprom would acquire 50 per cent plus one share of Sakhalin Energy for $7.45 billion.

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

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

Shell’s own 2006 Sustainability Report later called the year:

“tumultuous.”

It welcomed Gazprom’s entry and presented the new ownership arrangement as helping the project move toward completion. Shell

The corporate language was conciliatory.

The change in control was undeniable.

19. The later court record supplies an independent institutional frame

Two years later, the English High Court considered a dispute over access to British government environmental information relating to proposed ECGD support.

In Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), Mr Justice Mitting recorded that Shell had held the majority stake when British support was originally sought, while Gazprom subsequently acquired a 50 per cent interest.

He also recorded that approximately US$650 million of UK-backed project finance had been under consideration and described the project as potentially having major effects on western gray whale habitat. vLex

The case did not decide whether the Russian regulatory pressure of 2006 had been politically motivated.

It did not decide whether EBRD should have financed Sakhalin II.

And it did not adjudicate whether individual environmental allegations were correct.

Its value here is narrower.

It confirms that the financing and environmental controversy surrounding Sakhalin II became serious enough to generate formal litigation over what the British government knew.

Documentary Findings Established

EBRD decided on 14 December 2005 that Sakhalin II’s documentation was fit for public consultation, thereby opening the final 120-day disclosure and consultation process. That was not a loan approval. EBRD

Consultation occurred internationally, including meetings in London and Moscow, with further consultation in Sakhalin and Hokkaido. The Moscow meeting included extensive opposition from environmentalists, lawyers, scientists and community representatives. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

EBRD’s December 2005 position, as reproduced in contemporary submissions, acknowledged that some procedures required by its Environmental Policy had not been fully followed during project planning. WWF Europe

WWF and other organisations opposed financing and raised concerns over whales, oil-spill preparedness, salmon rivers, indigenous communities, seismic risk and the effectiveness of consultation. Those were campaigning assessments, not judicial findings. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Shell’s own reporting acknowledged contractor failures at some sensitive river crossings and described subsequent remedial controls, independent monitoring and mitigation measures. Shell

The 120-day consultation closed in April 2006. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Russia’s environmental authorities moved against a key Sakhalin II environmental approval in September 2006 while Gazprom was simultaneously pursuing entry into the project. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

EBRD then delayed its financing decision because the project’s legal position had become uncertain. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

On 21 December 2006, a protocol was signed under which Gazprom would obtain 50 per cent plus one share for $7.45 billion and Shell’s stake would fall from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent. SEC

Shell and Sakhalin Energy’s stated position

Sakhalin Energy maintained during the consultation that it was complying with Russian law and that environmental issues were being addressed. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

Shell’s authenticated reporting records strengthened river-crossing controls, outside expert involvement, independent monitoring and measures to protect western gray whales. Shell

After the 2006 ownership agreement, Shell publicly welcomed Gazprom’s participation and portrayed the restructuring as a step toward completing the project and meeting environmental and community commitments. Shell

The critics’ stated position

Environmental organisations argued that Sakhalin II still failed to meet EBRD standards and that major risks remained unresolved despite years of review.

Some also argued that meaningful consultation was compromised because much of the project was already under construction before the final 120-day process began. WWF Europe

Those assessments remain attributed to the organisations making them.

The Russian government’s stated position

Russian officials said the 2006 inspections and environmental enforcement concerned compliance with the project’s obligations.

They rejected claims that the purpose was to force foreign companies from Russian energy projects or to terminate the production-sharing agreement. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Those were the Russian government’s stated explanations.

Not established

It is not established that EBRD approved Sakhalin II environmentally in December 2005.

It is not established that EBRD rejected Sakhalin II on environmental grounds after the 120-day consultation.

It is not established that every environmental criticism made by NGOs during consultation was correct.

It is not established that Sakhalin Energy was free of environmental non-compliance; Shell’s own reporting acknowledged some contractor failures.

It is not established that Russia’s September 2006 regulatory action was fabricated solely to obtain control of Sakhalin II.

It is not established that the Russian enforcement campaign was entirely divorced from the commercial negotiations with Gazprom.

It is not established by any court record identified here that Shell was unlawfully coerced into selling control.

And the 2008 English High Court case did not adjudicate the motives of the Russian government, EBRD’s financing merits or Shell’s environmental liability.

Commentary

The 120-day consultation is important because it marks the last moment when Sakhalin II still looked primarily like an environmental-finance problem.

The questions were difficult but recognisable.

Were the whales adequately protected?

Could oil be contained under sea ice?

Were salmon rivers being crossed properly?

Were contractors obeying the rules?

Could local communities influence decisions?

Did the project satisfy the standards required for public-backed finance?

Those were questions a development bank was equipped to examine.

Then the ground moved.

The same environmental issues that international lenders had been scrutinising became instruments within a confrontation involving the Russian state, a strategic gas asset, a production-sharing agreement, a doubled project budget and Gazprom’s demand for entry.

At that point, environmental governance and energy politics became almost impossible to separate.

The most important distinction

The documentary record does not permit either of the two easiest stories.

The first easy story is:

Russia invented environmental complaints and stole Shell’s project.

That ignores years of documented environmental concern preceding the ownership battle.

The second is:

Russia simply enforced environmental law and Gazprom’s acquisition was unrelated.

That ignores the extraordinary timing, the contemporaneous reporting, the simultaneous ownership negotiations and the eventual transfer of control.

The evidence supports a more disciplined conclusion.

Environmental problems existed.

Regulatory pressure escalated dramatically.

Gazprom wanted into the project.

The earlier asset-swap economics had been disrupted by the doubling of costs.

And within months, Shell surrendered majority control.

Those facts can be established.

The precise mixture of environmental enforcement, commercial bargaining and state strategy behind them remains a matter requiring evidence, not assumption.

What the 120-day test actually achieved

EBRD never reached the simple yes-or-no conclusion many participants expected during the consultation.

But the process was not meaningless.

It forced disclosure.

It created records.

It exposed project assumptions to outside challenge.

It required Shell and Sakhalin Energy to respond publicly to issues involving whales, rivers, spills and local communities.

And it preserved an evidential trail later available to parliaments, courts, journalists and this archive.

The loan decision was overtaken by politics.

The documents survived.

Source Record

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Independent Recourse Mechanism record preserves the 14 December 2005 determination that Sakhalin II documentation was fit for consultation and records the wider accountability process. EBRD

EBRD — Sakhalin II Independent Recourse Mechanism record

Contemporaneous Oil & Gas Journal reporting explains that the EBRD determination triggered the 120-day disclosure and consultation period and notes the project’s rising cost and continuing environmental controversy. Shell News

Oil & Gas Journal — Sakhalin II Phase 2 clears EBRD consultation hurdle, December 2005

AFP’s March 2006 account records the six-hour Moscow consultation, the objections raised by lawyers, environmentalists, scientists and community representatives, Sakhalin Energy’s response, the preceding London consultation and planned meetings in Sakhalin and Hokkaido. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

AFP/TODAY — EBRD urged to refuse Sakhalin II finance, March 2006

The WWF, Friends of the Earth and The Corner House submission of 28 April 2006 reproduces relevant wording from EBRD’s December 2005 press release and sets out the organisations’ criticism of the project. It is advocacy evidence and is treated as such. WWF Europe

WWF/Friends of the Earth/The Corner House — Sakhalin II submission

Friends of the Earth Japan’s contemporaneous submission records the 10 April 2006 Hokkaido consultation and the organisation’s criticisms concerning transboundary effects and consultation procedures. 国際環境NGO FoE Japan

Friends of the Earth Japan — Sakhalin II consultation submission, April 2006

WWF’s statements during and at the close of the consultation document its objections concerning western gray whales, spill response, pipeline construction and EBRD financing. These remain WWF’s assessments. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

WWF — EBRD should not fund Sakhalin II, 28 February 2006

WWF — Consultation closing statement, 21 April 2006

The authenticated Shell Sustainability Report 2006 records Shell’s account of the year, its remedial measures on sensitive river crossings, western gray whale mitigation and the December 2006 Gazprom agreement. Shell

Shell — Sustainability Report 2006

RIA Novosti’s September 2006 reporting records the Russian environmental action, the government’s stated rationale and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s rejection of claims that Russia intended to drive foreign investors out. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

RIA Novosti — Sakhalin II inspections and environmental approval, 27 September 2006

Contemporaneous El País reporting records the parallel Gazprom negotiations, the earlier asset-swap arrangement, the doubling of project costs and international concern over Russian regulatory pressure. El País

El País — Russia pressures Shell over Sakhalin II, 20 September 2006

AFP reported on 26 September 2006 that EBRD had delayed its financing decision because the project’s legal position had become too uncertain to permit progress. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

AFP — EBRD delays Sakhalin II financing decision, 26 September 2006

The SEC filing of December 2006 provides the authenticated corporate terms of the Gazprom protocol: $7.45 billion for 50 per cent plus one share, reducing Shell’s interest from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent. SEC

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

The later judicial context is Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin). Mr Justice Mitting recorded the proposed approximately $650 million of UK-backed finance and the potentially significant environmental implications of Sakhalin II. The judgment concerned disclosure of environmental information and did not adjudicate Russian motives or Shell’s environmental liability. vLex

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

Archive disclaimer: This instalment distinguishes EBRD determinations, Shell statements, NGO submissions, Russian government statements, contemporaneous journalistic interpretation and later judicial context. The coincidence of environmental enforcement and negotiations over Gazprom’s entry is documented; motive is not treated as judicially established. “Fit for consultation” is not represented as environmental approval or financing approval.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Next instalment The Sakhalin Papers LX: The Permit War — When Russia Turned Environmental Enforcement Against Shell’s Flagship Project

By September 2006, the 120-day EBRD consultation was over.

But Russia’s own environmental authorities were only beginning.

Inspectors moved across pipeline routes, forests, rivers and Aniva Bay.

A crucial environmental approval was challenged.

Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev warned that violations had to be corrected.

Sakhalin Energy warned of delays and thousands of lost jobs.

Foreign governments demanded legal certainty.

And behind the environmental confrontation stood an unresolved commercial question:

On what terms would Gazprom enter Sakhalin II?

Within three months the answer would be extraordinary.

Gazprom would not receive the 25 per cent stake originally contemplated.

It would obtain:

50 per cent plus one share.

The next file will reconstruct the September–December 2006 regulatory offensive, separate documented environmental violations from allegations of political coercion, and follow the pressure campaign to the meeting at which Shell finally surrendered control of the project.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 26 SEPTEMBER 2026 was first posted on September 26, 2026 at 11:22 pm.
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The intersection of food and education goes well beyond just school lunches; food systems can be a tool for instruction on a variety of subjects and values, educators, farmers, chefs, and other experts said during the “Future of Food Education” Summit during Climate Week NYC.

The event, presented in partnership with Pilot Light and with support from Nielsen Massey, focused on ensuring that children from a young age are thinking critically about where food comes from, developing tools to fuel their bodies and minds, and reflecting on how they can be change agents for climate action.

“You can teach any subject through food,” says Alexandra DeSorbo-Quinn, Executive Director of Pilot Light. “Food makes learning relevant.”

Watch the livestream recording on Food Tank’s YouTube channel. 

“The food system is flawed; it’s no secret. It’s important to remind ourselves—and our kids—that they are a part of a change. It’s important that we plant those seeds,” says Shanon Morris, Chief Program Officer at Harlem Grown.

In schools, food can give teachers permission to be creative, says Caitlin Arens, Food Education Fellowships Director at Pilot Light. Teaching is a form of food system action, she says. 

To facilitate this, Pilot Light has created the United States’ first-ever Food Education Standards, benchmarks for teaching food systems and using food as a pathway for broader learning.

“We think of those standards as a common language that we can all speak,” says Taylor Meredith, Education Policy Advisor at Pilot Light. “When everybody is speaking the same language in the classroom, that’s when we have impact in the broader community.”

Food education can also take place outside of traditional classroom settings, including on farms and in gardens.

“The power of bringing people together for shared experiences is transformational,” and school gardens bring that to kids, says Lyndsey Waugh, Executive Director of the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation. “Human connections spark around food.”

“If we can eat better, we can teach the next generations to love the garden and the harvest and the things that we can pull from the ground,” says Rev. Linda Carmen Bryant, Co-Founder of San Antonio Million Gardens Project and Pastor of Grant Community AME Church in San Antonio, Texas. “If we get the kids excited (about growing food), they will lead us.”

But teaching kids to grow food is not enough alone. Preparing young people for careers in agriculture also means teaching them business skills and guiding them in navigating financial resources.

“There’s power in the fact that your kids are the next generation. I am not too scared about the next generation of producers; what I am scared about is their ability to access (resources),” says Gerardo Martinez, Founder of Wild Kid Acres and a Marine Corps Veteran.

It’s true that land is becoming more commoditized and more difficult for younger farmers to obtain, says Karen Washington, a Food Justice Advocate, Farmer, and Author—but the solution cannot simply be to give them land without also making sure they can afford access to water, electricity, equipment, and agricultural inputs. Collective ownership makes this more feasible, she says.

“Now is the time to organize. People are forming ecosystems, cooperatives, collaborative organizations; they are doing the work,” Washington says. “Make sure that you’re connecting with your community, connecting with your growers. … The remedy is, know your local farmer.”

And this connection between eaters and food can start in schools, including at lunchtime. In New York City’s public schools, nutrition educators collaborate with students to get feedback on menu items and model healthy eating patterns, says Jeremy Walter, Executive Director of Food & Nutrition Education for New York City Public Schools.

“We’re more and more trying to optimize the cafeteria as a classroom,” says Nancy Easton, Executive Director and Founder of Wellness in the Schools.

In her classroom at P.S. 072 Dr. William Dorney, educator Amanda Torres uses food to teach multiplication and division—but she also wants school to be a place where kids feel empowered to be curious, find their voice, and create change.

“People talk about the past and talk about the future, but what we’re doing now matters,” she says. “We all have the power to change. Don’t wait on anyone to change for you.”

Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

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

Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.

The post The Future Of Food Education Is In Classrooms, On Farms, And Everywhere In Between appeared first on Food Tank.

The Netherlands wants private energy companies to shoulder more of the cost of keeping enough gas in storage for winter — as the country confronts the expensive consequences of becoming increasingly dependent on imported natural gas and LNG.

According to DutchNews, the Dutch government is considering making commercial energy suppliers responsible for building up their own strategic gas reserves rather than continuing to rely so heavily on the government-backed company Energie Beheer Nederland (EBN).

The immediate problem is money.

EBN is reportedly facing losses approaching €1 billion from filling Dutch gas-storage facilities when market conditions provide private traders with little commercial incentive to do the same.

And behind that financial problem sits a much larger question:

Who should pay to guarantee energy security when the market itself does not provide enough incentive to do it?

A billion-euro storage problem

The Netherlands has four major seasonal gas-storage sites at Norg, Grijpskerk, Bergermeer and Alkmaar.

At present, EBN has played a central role in ensuring those facilities are filled sufficiently ahead of winter.

But DutchNews reports that unusually unfavourable market conditions mean the operation could cost EBN around €1 billion.

Normally, gas traders have an incentive to buy gas cheaply during the summer, store it and sell it when winter prices rise.

The economics currently look different.

Prices are expected to decline after autumn, meaning a trader buying expensive gas now could potentially lose money by storing it for later sale.

From a commercial perspective, therefore, leaving storage capacity unused may make sense.

From the perspective of national energy security, it may not.

That is the conflict the Dutch government is now trying to resolve.

Government: Why should taxpayers carry the bill?

The cabinet is considering shifting more responsibility to private energy suppliers.

DutchNews says companies including Essent, Eneco and Vattenfall could be required to maintain their own reserves, broadly following a model already operating in Austria.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs has questioned whether Dutch taxpayers should continue paying for storage needed partly to ensure suppliers can meet customer demand during winter.

The underlying policy question is straightforward.

Gas storage is effectively an insurance policy.

Nobody particularly wants to pay the premium when supply is plentiful.

But when temperatures plunge, pipelines fail or geopolitical events disrupt supplies, the value of that insurance suddenly becomes obvious.

The government is now asking whether private companies that sell gas should bear more of the cost of maintaining that security.

The storage target has already been lowered

The debate comes at an awkward moment.

The Netherlands recently reduced its winter gas-storage target.

Gasunie confirmed on 11 September 2026 that the government had lowered the national filling objective from 115 terawatt hours to 93 TWh.

The original 115 TWh target was based on Gasunie Transport Services calculations of the gas required to keep customers supplied during the coldest winter experienced in the previous 30 years.

Gasunie was careful not to suggest that the lower target automatically meant shortages were coming.

But it made the consequence clear:

the Netherlands would be less well prepared for an exceptionally cold winter.

DutchNews subsequently reported that the percentage target had effectively fallen from around 74% to 64%, while storage was then approximately 57.5% full.

That does not amount to an immediate supply crisis.

It does show how delicately economics, weather and security of supply are now intertwined.

Groningen changed everything

There is considerable historical irony here.

For decades, the Netherlands was one of Europe’s great natural-gas producers.

The enormous Groningen gas field made the country a major exporter and helped underpin European energy supplies.

But extraction caused increasingly serious earthquakes and associated damage in the province of Groningen.

Production was progressively curtailed and ultimately ended.

The underground infrastructure created during the era of abundant domestic gas did not disappear.

The Netherlands still has substantial storage capacity.

What changed was the source of the gas being put into it.

As DutchNews notes, storage caverns that once sat within a country exporting Groningen gas must increasingly be filled with imported gas.

That is a profound reversal.

Enter LNG

The Netherlands has responded to the loss of Groningen production and the collapse of much of Europe’s former dependence on Russian pipeline gas by greatly expanding its ability to import liquefied natural gas.

LNG can arrive by tanker from suppliers around the world, be converted back into gaseous form at European terminals and fed into the pipeline network.

It has become a crucial part of European energy security.

But flexibility has a price.

DutchNews identifies imports of LNG from the United States as an important contributor to current Dutch gas costs.

That illustrates one of the fundamental changes in Europe’s post-Groningen, post-Russian-pipeline gas system.

Gas security increasingly depends not simply on wells and pipelines close to home, but on:

global LNG production;

ocean-going tankers;

international commodity prices;

regasification terminals;

storage facilities;

and competition with buyers elsewhere in the world.

The Netherlands is therefore exposed far more directly than before to the international gas market.

Where Shell fits into the picture

There is an obvious Shell dimension — but it needs to be described carefully.

The reported Dutch government proposal is not specifically a measure directed at Shell.

DutchNews identifies major commercial suppliers such as Essent, Eneco and Vattenfall when discussing companies that could face mandatory storage obligations.

Shell nevertheless remains highly relevant to the wider story.

Natural gas and LNG have become central to Shell’s global strategy.

Shell buys, produces, transports and trades gas internationally and has repeatedly identified LNG as one of the businesses in which it intends to grow.

Indeed, as we have just reported separately, Shell is currently considering another enormous expansion of its LNG position through Phase 2 of LNG Canada, while its recently completed acquisition of ARC Resources has substantially increased its access to Canadian gas reserves.

So while the Dutch storage proposal should not be portrayed as a Shell-specific measure, it is part of the same global gas system in which Shell is one of the largest commercial participants.

Energy security has a price

The Dutch dilemma also exposes something that is sometimes obscured by discussions of energy markets.

Security of supply is not free.

Maintaining reserve capacity costs money.

Holding gas underground that might never be needed in a particular winter costs money.

Building LNG terminals costs money.

Keeping pipelines available costs money.

Maintaining backup infrastructure costs money.

And somebody ultimately pays — whether through taxes, energy bills or obligations placed on energy suppliers.

The Netherlands has so far used EBN and therefore public money to shoulder much of the risk involved in filling strategic storage.

The government is now questioning whether that balance should change.

The taxpayer or the supplier?

There are arguments on both sides.

Requiring private suppliers to hold strategic gas could place the cost more directly on companies benefiting from the security those reserves provide.

But commercial companies will not simply absorb substantial additional costs indefinitely.

Some portion could ultimately be reflected in energy prices paid by consumers.

Government-funded storage, on the other hand, spreads the cost through the public finances.

Either way, maintaining resilience has a price.

The real debate is therefore not whether someone will pay.

It is who pays, how much, and through which mechanism.

Europe learned the value of stored gas the hard way

That question has acquired much greater importance since Europe’s energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Gas storage went from being an obscure part of energy infrastructure to a strategic national concern almost overnight.

European governments discovered that apparently mundane percentages showing how full underground caverns were could influence:

wholesale prices;

industrial production;

household energy bills;

government spending;

and geopolitical leverage.

The Netherlands’ latest dispute over storage costs is another consequence of that transformation.

A new Dutch energy reality

The old Dutch gas model was relatively simple.

Produce enormous quantities at Groningen.

Supply the domestic market.

Export the surplus.

Maintain infrastructure around an abundant indigenous resource.

That world has gone.

Today’s Netherlands increasingly relies upon gas originating elsewhere, including expensive LNG transported across oceans.

It must then decide how much of that imported gas to hold in reserve against a difficult winter.

Gasunie says the reduced storage target does not automatically put supply at risk.

But it also says plainly that the Netherlands will be less prepared for a very cold winter than it would have been under the previous target.

And when filling those stores could leave the state-backed operator facing losses approaching €1 billion, the political question becomes unavoidable.

The Dutch government increasingly appears to have an answer:

energy companies that depend upon secure winter supplies should shoulder more of the cost of providing them.

Whether the industry agrees — and how much of that cost eventually reaches consumers — could become the next significant chapter in the Netherlands’ rapidly changing gas story.

Sources: DutchNews, 25 September 2026; Gasunie, 11 September and 26 August 2026.

Dutch Government Looks to Industry to Shoulder Gas-Storage Costs as LNG Dependence Grows was first posted on September 26, 2026 at 6:48 pm.
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Shell Monaca Gets New Air Quality Approval — Weeks After $15 Million Pollution Settlement

Shell’s giant plastics complex in Pennsylvania has received another significant environmental approval — just weeks after the company agreed to a $15 million settlement over air-quality violations at the same facility.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has issued Air Quality Plan Approval PA-04-00740D for Shell Polymers Monaca, the huge ethane-cracker and polyethylene complex in Beaver County.

On its face, this is a permit story.

Placed alongside the plant’s recent history, however, it becomes rather more interesting.

Only on 4 September 2026, Pennsylvania DEP announced that Shell Chemical Appalachia had formally acknowledged violations involving emissions and other environmental requirements occurring between 2023 and August 2026.

Shell agreed to pay a $7.5 million civil penalty and contribute a further $7.5 million to a new Beaver County Environment and Community Fund.

Now the same regulator has approved modifications to air-pollution control systems and associated equipment at the plant.

That does not mean DEP has excused or overlooked the earlier violations.

Quite the opposite: the approval forms part of an increasingly detailed regulatory framework surrounding a facility that has experienced repeated environmental compliance problems since beginning production.

What has DEP approved?

The approval — PA-04-00740D — was originally put forward for public review earlier this year.

DEP said the proposal would authorise several changes and improvements at Shell Polymers Monaca.

Among them were:

• updates to flare systems intended to meet newer federal air-quality standards;
• permanent upgrades to the wastewater-treatment plant designed to improve removal of oils, grease and air pollutants; and
• administrative changes reflecting the plant’s final construction and operating configuration.

DEP said during the proposal stage that it had reviewed expected emissions, pollution controls and potential impacts on air quality and public health, and concluded that the proposed changes met applicable state and federal standards.

The department held a public information meeting on 19 March 2026 and a formal public hearing on 7 April.

The permit was therefore not issued quietly or without scrutiny.

But the timing is striking

The new approval arrives against an extraordinary compliance background.

On 4 September, DEP announced a consent order and agreement covering violations extending from 2023 through August 2026.

According to the department, Shell formally acknowledged exceeding total emission limitations for air contaminants and violating other environmental requirements.

The settlement requires Shell not only to make payments but also to undertake further operational improvements.

DEP specifically required Shell to submit plans to improve the plant’s elevated flare system and complete upgrades to the wastewater-treatment plant.

Those two areas are particularly noteworthy because they overlap directly with subjects covered by the newly approved Air Quality Plan.

In other words, the permit and the enforcement action should not be viewed as entirely separate stories.

Together, they show DEP simultaneously allowing improvements to the facility while requiring Shell to address the consequences of earlier compliance failures.

$15 million — and not the first settlement

The September agreement requires Shell to pay a $7.5 million civil penalty.

A further $7.5 million will establish the Beaver County Environment and Community Fund.

DEP says that, once the legally required portion of the civil penalty directed to Potter Township is included, the latest agreement will provide $9.375 million in direct community benefit.

This is also not Shell Monaca’s first major air-quality enforcement settlement.

In May 2023, DEP reached another agreement with Shell after the company exceeded air-emission limitations during commissioning.

That earlier agreement included a civil penalty of approximately $4.9 million and a further $5 million commitment for environmental mitigation projects benefiting communities around the plant.

The regulatory history is therefore becoming substantial.

Shell Polymers Monaca only began polyethylene production processes in fall 2022.

Within four years, the site had already generated multiple major enforcement agreements, extensive public scrutiny and continuing permit modifications.

The Monaca plant

Shell Polymers Monaca is one of the largest petrochemical investments in Pennsylvania.

The complex uses ethane derived from natural gas to manufacture polyethylene, one of the world’s most widely used plastics.

The site contains ethane cracking furnaces, polyethylene production units and three gas-fired electricity-generating turbines.

Its scale was one reason the original project attracted enormous attention.

Supporters emphasised jobs, industrial investment and the development of a petrochemical industry based on Appalachian shale gas.

Environmental organisations and neighbouring residents raised concerns about air pollution, greenhouse-gas emissions, plastics production and potential health impacts.

Those competing arguments did not disappear when construction ended.

If anything, the plant’s operating history has intensified scrutiny.

Flare problems remain central

Flaring has repeatedly featured in Shell Monaca’s regulatory story.

Industrial flares are safety devices designed to burn off gases that cannot safely remain within a process system.

But excessive or poorly controlled flaring can also produce substantial emissions.

DEP’s latest settlement requires further improvement of Shell’s elevated flare system.

The newly approved Air Quality Plan likewise incorporates updates intended to bring flare systems into compliance with newer federal standards.

That convergence is important.

It suggests that flaring is not simply a historic commissioning problem but remains part of the plant’s continuing environmental-control programme.

Wastewater too

The wastewater-treatment system is another recurring issue.

DEP’s March description of the proposed air permit specifically included permanent upgrades intended to improve removal of oils, grease and air pollutants from wastewater treatment.

The September enforcement settlement separately requires Shell to complete wastewater-treatment upgrades.

And DEP is also considering renewal of the plant’s wastewater discharge permit.

That permit covers regulated discharges affecting waters including the Ohio River, Rag Run, Poorhouse Run and Raccoon Creek.

So while this latest development concerns an air-quality approval, the wider regulatory picture extends well beyond air emissions.

Safety scrutiny as well

Environmental regulation is not the only area in which Shell Polymers Monaca has recently been under examination.

The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board recently issued its final report concerning the November 2025 explosion and fire at the complex — a report we covered separately.

That investigation dealt with process safety rather than environmental permitting.

The distinction matters.

But together the various proceedings reveal a facility being examined simultaneously from several directions:

air emissions;

wastewater;

process safety;

flare performance;

pollution-control equipment;

and operating permits.

Each involves a different regulatory mechanism.

Collectively, however, they form the operating history of the same enormous industrial complex.

Approval does not erase the compliance record

There is an important point of interpretation here.

The issuance of Air Quality Plan Approval PA-04-00740D should not be portrayed as Pennsylvania DEP declaring the Shell plant environmentally trouble-free.

That is not what a plan approval means.

The department’s task is to determine whether the proposed modifications satisfy applicable regulatory requirements.

DEP concluded that they did.

At the same time, the department has separately documented and penalised past violations.

Those two facts are perfectly capable of existing together.

Indeed, that is precisely what environmental regulation is supposed to do: punish violations where appropriate while requiring facilities to install, modify and operate pollution controls that meet current standards.

The more revealing question is why a relatively young facility has already required such sustained regulatory intervention.

A plant still finding its feet

Shell Polymers Monaca was promoted as a technologically sophisticated, world-scale petrochemical facility.

Yet its first years of operation have involved repeated emissions problems, multimillion-dollar settlements, process-safety scrutiny and continuing modifications to pollution-control infrastructure.

That does not mean every regulatory approval represents another violation.

It does mean each new approval deserves to be read against the plant’s documented history.

PA-04-00740D may therefore be best understood not as the closing of a chapter but as another stage in the long process of bringing Shell’s Pennsylvania plastics complex into stable regulatory compliance.

The permit has been issued.

The monitoring, enforcement and public scrutiny are plainly not over.

Sources: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; PA Environment Digest; Pennsylvania DEP Shell Polymers Monaca facility records.

The headline is deliberately restrained. “Gets New Air Quality Approval — Weeks After $15 Million Pollution Settlement” states the contrast without implying that DEP’s approval itself represents misconduct. Pennsylvania Government

Shell Monaca Gets New Air Quality Approval — Weeks After $15 Million Pollution Settlement was first posted on September 26, 2026 at 2:41 pm.
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Jeff Hough did not pull any punches. What his fellow Republican county commissioners were about to do, he said to the packed courthouse, would violate America’s founding ideals. He quoted the Declaration of Independence to make his case. 

The three-person commission was about to vote on an ordinance that would ban utility-scale solar and wind development in Bannock County, Idaho. 

“We cannot deny the entire county the opportunity to exercise their property rights,” Hough said. “That goes against the principles this country was founded on.” 

A few minutes after Hough’s emphatic speech, the ordinance passed by a 2–1 vote. Hough was the lone dissenter.

Since that consequential vote in March 2024, Hough has become the chair of the county commission and has dedicated himself to overturning that ordinance. He will soon have a chance to make that happen. This fall, Hough and the other two commissioners are set to vote on an ordinance with new language that would allow the development of solar and wind, along with nuclear energy, in the county.

The Bannock County vote is a test case of whether — and how — a community can revisit its assumptions about the costs and benefits of clean energy and decide to welcome development it once swore off.

In 2025, nearly 1 in 4 U.S. counties had some kind of ban, moratorium, or impediment to clean energy development, up from 15 percent of counties in 2023. More than 60 percent of counties with bans are rural, according to a Daily Yonder and Canary Media analysis of data from USA Today and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. (The Daily Yonder defines “rural” using criteria from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.)

Bucking this national trend and reversing the ban would put Bannock County back in play at a moment when Idaho needs all the energy it can get. Idaho Power, the state’s largest utility, expects electricity demand to grow by 1 gigawatt by 2030, a roughly 26 percent leap from current levels.

“The need to build stuff now is critical to Idaho’s economic future,” said Aaron Menenberg, the Idaho policy manager for Renewable Northwest, a nonprofit working to decarbonize the region’s grid. “We can’t afford to say no to anything.”

Bannock County, nestled in a valley a few hours north of Salt Lake City and 100 miles west of Wyoming’s Teton Range, is a prime location for new power plants. It’s home to the Populus substation, a critical juncture for getting electrons onto the grid and into Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and the Pacific Northwest. Building new power plants near a substation is cheaper, and those savings can help bring down costs for utility customers. 

But the biggest opportunity for county residents, as Hough sees it, is not utility-bill savings: It’s economic development. In recent years, Bannock County’s population has grown far more slowly than Idaho’s. The county’s rural communities, meanwhile, are watching essential services disappear, and drought worsened by climate change is making it difficult for family farms to stay afloat. 

County Commissioner Jeff Hough poses for a photograph in Pocatello, Idaho. Otto Kitsinger

Hough believes renewables would bring money into the community. Bannock County’s neighbors offer local proof: In 2024, projects in nearby Power and Bingham counties generated $909,000 and $639,000 in tax revenue, respectively. Hough wants to send a message — to the renewables industry and others — that Bannock County is “open for business,” too. 

“Rural America is in a transition state,” Hough said from his office in Pocatello, the county seat, in July. “How do we make or help rural America … transition to this new way of life, so that they can thrive and prosper?”

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Not everyone shares Hough’s vision of prosperity. In south Bannock County, Hough’s campaign has met with fierce opposition. Two camps exist: On one side are residents who are willing to lease their own land to solar energy developers or stand by their neighbors’ right to do so. On the other are those who are skeptical of renewables and believe that leasing land to developers is equivalent to selling out — many of them do, however, support nuclear.

Steve Criddle, a third-generation farmer and lifelong resident of south Bannock County, voiced his support for solar in 2024 before the ban passed. He described the situation today simply: “It’s confrontational.”

Bannock County’s moratorium on solar and wind stemmed from an unlikely source: Hough himself.

It was the fall of 2023, and he had just attended a conference of the Idaho Association of Counties in Boise.

Rebecca Falcon and her cat, Baby, in her living room in Downey, Idaho. Otto Kitsinger

At the conference, the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a 1-GW development slated for more than 57,000 acres of federal land in southern Idaho, dominated the conversation. County leaders from around the state were concerned about clean energy developers running roughshod over their communities. (President Donald Trump’s Interior Department canceled Lava Ridge in August 2025.)

The discussion got Hough thinking. Months before the conference, he had learned that several developers, including Chicago-based Hecate Energy and Moab, Utah–based Balanced Rock Power, were approaching landowners about solar projects in Bannock County.

When Hough returned from Boise, the cautionary tale of Lava Ridge fresh in his mind, he took action. 

“I realized that we didn’t have any kind of ordinance,” Hough said. “So I knew they’d come in and do whatever they wanted.”

On October 12, 2023, spearheaded by Hough, the county commissioners voted unanimously to enact a six-month moratorium on large-scale energy projects. The idea was not to ban solar and wind, but simply to give the county time to regulate the developments and ensure they balanced economic opportunity with responsible land stewardship. A public hearing on the topic was set for the following February, and the commissioners would vote on the future of the moratorium in March.

A building on the outskirts of Downey, Idaho, a rural community in south Bannock County. Otto Kitsinger

But Hough’s moratorium took on a life of its own. In the months that followed, a group of concerned residents organized to make it permanent.

Rebecca Falcon led the charge. A decades-long resident of Downey, a town in south Bannock County, Falcon had been approached by Balanced Rock in September 2023 about leasing a portion of her 80 acres for solar. Appalled, she turned the company away. But Balanced Rock’s proposed Harmon Solar Project (aka Harmon I), a 300-megawatt solar facility with a 1,200-megawatt-hour on-site battery energy storage system, included her neighbors’ land. Stopping it would take more than just Falcon saying no.

Falcon and another neighbor, Dez Hauser, who had also turned away Balanced Rock, encouraged other concerned community members to show up to the February 2024 public hearing about the future of the moratorium.

By the time the hearing rolled around, residents had sorted themselves into two groups: for solar and against it. The meeting attracted such interest that it was moved from the county courthouse to a local high school auditorium in south Bannock County. The venue was still packed.

More than two dozen speakers, nearly all of them from south Bannock County, showed up to say their piece. The vast majority testified in opposition to solar. 

Steve Criddle, a lifelong resident and farmer who considered leasing land to Hecate Energy for solar development. Otto Kitsinger

The commissioners convened the next month to decide what to do with the moratorium. Hough voted to repeal it. The other two commissioners voted to extend it. The commissioners framed it as an additional pause to study the potential effects of large-scale renewable energy development in the county. Yet as the controversy mounted through the spring and summer of 2024, the county declined to take further action. 

The ban stayed in place. Falcon, Hauser, and the other opponents had won. 

Dale Lish, a grain farmer based in Downey, was frustrated with the decision. Recently retired from a career at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lish became familiar with solar while working on projects in Idaho and Washington through the Rural Energy for America Program. He spoke in favor of the energy source at the same hearing where Falcon and Hauser expressed their concerns. 

“The approach was just no to everything, which bothered me,” Lish said of the county’s decision, in a June interview on his property. “A straight-out ban — I don’t think that’s American. I think we, as private-property owners, ought to have a chance to do what we want within reason.”

The Old Downey Theatre, located on Main Street in the south Bannock County community. Downey has seen many services and small businesses close in recent years and currently lacks a grocery store or hospital. Otto Kitsinger

In 2023, Lish signed a one-year contract with Hecate to option about 400 acres of his land for solar development. Hecate declined to renew the contract in 2024 because of the county’s ordinance. 

The company has since pulled out of the county altogether. Representatives from Hecate did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

For the two and a half years since that March vote, Hough has been beating the drum of private-property rights while also trying to educate the community on Idaho’s power needs and how they might be met in Bannock County.

While the commission won’t vote until later this fall on the new ordinance, which is still undergoing public review, at least one of Hough’s colleagues may have changed his tune. Ernie Moser, an incumbent who supported the ban in 2024, said in an interview in June that his fears about solar and wind are “not as big” as they were two years ago. Still, Moser, who’s retiring from the commission at the end of this year, stressed that he wants “to do it right” when it comes to revisiting the county’s energy policy. The other commissioner, Ken Bullock, declined to comment. 

Lytton Bastian signed a contract in 2021 to lease Balanced Rock Power his “least productive piece of ground.” Otto Kitsinger

May’s primary elections offered another indication of the county’s divided views. In the Republican primary, Hough faced a challenger from south Bannock County with an anti-solar platform, and though he won his race by 14 percentage points overall, his opponent captured 70 percent of the vote in Downey. No Democrat is running in the race, so Hough won’t face competition in the November general election. 

This year’s results mirror those of 2024, when former county commissioner John Crowder, who voted for the ban in March of that year, won big in Downey but lost to Ken Bullock, an ally of Hough’s. 

“In south Bannock County, it’s a supermajority of residents that do not want this,” Crowder said about solar development. 

Steve Criddle can trace his family’s roots in Downey back to 1876, when his ancestors first filed paperwork for water rights. His grandfather farmed grain, including wheat. Criddle’s father did the same. He’s kept the agricultural heritage alive himself, but because of a changing climate, grain farming is no longer enough to sustain him. 

Lytton Bastian and one of his children in front of the land that he has agreed to lease to Balanced Rock Power for the Harmon Solar Project. Otto Kitsinger

“We don’t get enough moisture anymore,” Criddle said. The fields where he grows crops without irrigation now hardly produce enough to make ends meet. He’s turned some of his land over to cattle grazing and has worked odd jobs over the years to hold on to the farm. 

On a sunny day in late June, Criddle drove me down a dirt road in his wife’s pickup truck. We were headed to one of his alfalfa fields. Three years ago, he said, the field produced some 800 bales of hay. This year, it produced only a dozen. 

“The drought’s been tough,” Criddle told me. Before last year, he’d never had to buy hay for his cows. This year, he’ll likely have to buy hay again, as more than 87 percent of the county is now experiencing extreme drought conditions after a winter with record-low snowfall. 

Lish, who also grows crops without irrigation, said that wells in the valley are limited. 

Transmission lines running across the valley in Downey, near Rebecca Falcon’s property. Otto Kitsinger

“That’s the Achilles’ heel of this area. There’s just a lack of groundwater, and then, of course, sparse rainfall,” he said. To accumulate enough moisture to grow wheat, Lish leaves his fields fallow every other year, allowing the soil to stock up on water. 

While Criddle and Lish have fought to hang on to their land over the past six decades, climate change and the loss of small-scale farming have reshaped their community. 

“You don’t have family farms anymore,” said Criddle’s wife, Keedrin. “The families can’t survive on a farm.”

As neighbors sold their land to corporations or moved out of Downey altogether, the town’s services have struggled to stay open. Over the years, the rural hospital closed, along with the town’s bank, pharmacy, movie theater, grocery store, and farm-equipment shop. Gone too are the dairies and granary. 

Rebecca Falcon points out the location of the Harmon Solar Project in Downey on a printed map. Otto Kitsinger

So when representatives from Hecate knocked on the Criddles’ door in 2023 proposing a lease for solar development, Steve and Keedrin heard them out. And while the couple didn’t sign a contract, they realized how such a lease could bring them a stable source of income, which they could use to hire help and reinvest in the long-term sustainability of the farm. 

The Criddles now have 11 grandchildren, with another one on the way. Steve thinks often about what he’ll leave for the next generations.

“I don’t want my kids to have to work this hard,” he said. 

Lish, who did sign a contract with Hecate, said the decision didn’t come easily. But, he added, it would have been “kind of irresponsible” to not consider the opportunity. With solar, the per-acre income projections were four to five times higher than with wheat alone, Lish said.

Solar panels in Power County, Idaho, which has seen substantial tax revenue from clean energy developments. Otto Kitsinger

“Lots of people have lots of opinions on what you’re going to do to your ground. I get that, and I can appreciate it. But we love this land too, and we’re not going to do something that’s going to be harmful,” Lish said. “We’re just looking at something that’s going to help us continue on to multiple generations.”

A few years earlier, Lytton Bastian, another farmer in Downey, had found himself contemplating the same questions. 

Bastian, who was born and raised in Bannock County, is a multigenerational farmer and father of six. He owns over 2,000 acres in the valley. Balanced Rock was interested in 840 of those acres adjacent to the Populus substation, a parcel Bastian currently uses as a gravel pit and as cattle pasture for a month each fall and spring. In 2021, he signed a five-year contract with Balanced Rock that includes modest quarterly payments. If the ban lifts and Balanced Rock installs solar, the payments would increase. 

Bastian’s neighbor is Falcon. She criticized his decision to lease to Balanced Rock, saying that he sold out to make more money than he could with agriculture.

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“My biggest issue is that it’s all ag land,” Falcon said. “They’ll take the grain; they’ll take the hay; they’ll take the cattle; they’ll take it all.” 

Bastian said he only went through with the contract because Balanced Rock wanted his “least productive piece of ground.” An irrigated parcel would have been out of the question, he said. “Any normal farmer will not sell out good prime ground, because that’s hard to come by.”

At the February 2024 hearing at the high school, Bastian was among the few local farmers who spoke in favor of solar.

For Bastian, the stakes are getting higher. His contract with Balanced Rock is up at the end of this year. He thinks the renewal hinges on the county overturning the ban. Otherwise, he fears that the company could go the way of Hecate and look elsewhere.

“If the ban is lifted, the short answer is yes, we will move forward with our project,” said Katarina Bagri, a senior manager of development at Balanced Rock who’s leading the Harmon Solar Project, which includes Bastian’s land. “If there’s still a ban, there’s not many options, so we’ll just have to see what are the options left.” 

Linda Engle of the Portneuf Resource Council, an environmental nonprofit advocating to lift Bannock County’s ban on renewables. Otto Kitsinger

It’s not just individual landowners who stand to miss out if the ban continues. Property tax payments from solar development would also deliver revenue to help the town bring back much-needed local services, like a grocery store. Balanced Rock, anticipating that the ban would be lifted, offered the city of Downey $100,000 in direct payments last fall via a community benefit program.

If Balanced Rock is unable to build, the city will not receive this money. Hough addressed this directly in an op-ed published in the local paper in February. Counties with bans in place, he wrote, “will watch the projects — and the money — go elsewhere.”

Just outside Downey, the northbound portion of Interstate 15 stretches over a pass and opens onto a sprawling valley. Golden fields give way to towering peaks. It’s part of why Falcon, who grew up in Utah, moved to Idaho: The landscape is all mountains and rolling hills. The idea that solar panels could become part of the view is unthinkable. 

“I think, my goodness, why do you have to build it where we live?” Falcon said. 

Falcon and her husband, Rudy, bought their 80-acre parcel of land in Downey more than three decades ago. That was before the Populus substation was built within view of their house. Now, transmission lines crisscross their land and that of their neighbors. 

“It is the ugliest thing on this planet,” Falcon said about the substation. “I wish it wasn’t there.” 

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In the coming years, two new high-voltage transmission lines will join the existing lines running through Populus. They’re part of the yearslong Energy Gateway project being built by PacifiCorp, one of the largest utilities in the West. The goal is to improve the region’s power transportation and reliability as energy demand grows, said Jonathan Whitesides, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power, a division of PacifiCorp that operates in Idaho. 

As much as Falcon doesn’t like looking at the substation, she understands the need for transporting power. Rudy works for the Bonneville Power Administration and is often on the road in Washington and Oregon building substations himself. But solar, to Falcon, is a different story. She said that she struggles with the amount of land it requires to produce power, a talking point that’s been popularized by the fossil fuel industry. 

She and Hauser, her Downey neighbor, have continued to speak out against solar since the 2024 ban. Hauser is active on community Facebook pages, and Falcon runs an email chain to share information with friends and neighbors. “I wasn’t willing to be quiet about it,” Hauser said. 

For years, the women have regularly filed public records requests with Bannock County and the federal government. That’s how they discovered that a month after Bannock County voted to maintain its ban, Balanced Rock applied for federal authorization for a second solar project, called Harmon II. The project, like Harmon I, was slated for 300 MW, and its application outlined solar and battery energy storage development on approximately 1,300 acres of public land administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Bannock County. Harmon II was proposed on land adjacent to Harmon I, which had stalled because of the county’s ban. 

In July, Bagri from Balanced Rock acknowledged that the company had been sitting on the application. “All of our focus is on the private land, [the] initial 300 megawatts. So once we make progress with that, we’ll figure out whether we want to pursue an expansion,” she said. In August, Balanced Rock officially withdrew its application for Harmon II.

In Pocatello, the county seat, residents are more favorable toward clean energy than those in Bannock County’s rural communities. Otto Kitsinger

Falcon and Hauser saw the second project as evidence of a lack of transparency from the developer. 

“The public has a right to know this will change this valley for 50 years,” Falcon said. “We will have left that mess to our children and grandchildren, because who’s going to guarantee who owns it in 50 years to decommission it and clean it up? You can’t make those kinds of guarantees.”

Bagri said the guardrails the county was considering in early 2024 — which are now baked into the ordinance the commissioners will vote on this fall — include provisions on decommissioning. The draft ordinance stipulates that in order to get projects permitted, developers must pay into a bond and submit a plan for the removal of all energy infrastructure at the end of the project’s lifetime. Bagri said these plans involve restoring project sites “back to as close to preconstruction condition as possible.” Today, project lifetimes range from 35 to 40 years, she said.

Still, for Hauser and Falcon, the feeling of disempowerment persists. Falcon pointed to other counties across the state, including Ada County, home to Boise, that have taken matters into their own hands to “put a limit” on development. In Ada County, solar is now prohibited on prime farmland, as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In southeast Idaho, some of Bannock County’s neighbors, like Caribou County, have also banned utility-scale solar, though others, such as Power and Bingham counties, have embraced it. 

“If you don’t build in the brakes, they will run you over,” Falcon said. 

E.J. Zita on her property in Robin, Idaho, where she keeps horses and has installed solar to power ranch operations. Otto Kitsinger

For all their ire toward solar, Falcon and Hauser see promise in nuclear energy. That puts them in the majority: In January, Bannock County surveyed residents to gauge public opinion on nuclear energy. Over 700 people responded, with 90 percent indicating favorable views toward the industry. 

Hough was surprised by the results. “I didn’t think our community could agree on anything,” he said.

Southeast Idaho is home to Idaho National Laboratory, or INL, which leads the nation’s advanced nuclear research. As part of the Trump administration’s embrace of nuclear energy, the lab was given priority in May 2025 to expedite construction of on-site microreactor test beds. The U.S. Department of Energy announced in July that INL will receive $60 million as part of a public-private partnership to use AI in nuclear energy development and operation. Buzzy nuclear startup Oklo aims to build its first fission reactor there. 

Plus, next door in western Wyoming, the Bill Gates–backed TerraPower is building what it hopes will be the country’s first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant. The project, now under construction in rural Kemmerer, is expected to be completed in 2030 and will supply PacifiCorp with up to 500 MW of power. 

The excitement around INL and the TerraPower project leave many in Bannock County wondering when their big opportunity might come along. In July, the Bannock County commissioners hosted a public educational forum with INL to discuss how the county could get involved with small modular reactors (SMRs), microreactors, and nuclear manufacturing. 

Falcon and Hauser were both in attendance. They said they’d much rather see the development of nuclear energy in Bannock County than renewables. “If you can have 30 acres with a semitruck-size nuclear plant on it, why wouldn’t you do that? Why would you give up thousands of acres to solar?” Falcon said. 

E.J. Zita with her horses in Robin, Idaho. Otto Kitsinger

But the construction of SMRs and the broader nuclear revival touted by Trump remain highly uncertain prospects. 

Only two next-generation nuclear projects in the U.S. have received construction permits: TerraPower’s Kemmerer 1 and Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Neither has an operating license, however. 

Even if more projects obtain licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission amid Trump’s push to streamline permitting, the SMR industry is far from a sure thing. Most companies are proposing first-of-a-kind projects rife with engineering and economic unknowns. There’s little to no supply chain for the type of fuel many SMRs are designed to use. The United States’ first fully licensed SMR project was canceled in 2023 over cost concerns. Only two commercial SMRs operate in the world today — one in Russia and one in China. 

Dustin Manwaring, a Republican state representative for Pocatello and a land-use and development attorney for Balanced Rock, is an ally of Hough’s. He said the commissioner wants to usher in a future where Bannock County leads Idaho’s burgeoning nuclear industry.

“[It’s] a worthy, noble thing to do,” Manwaring said. “If you take a step away, I don’t know how realistic that is. I love that he’s trying.”

In the near term, Hough recognizes that bringing nuclear power to Bannock County could take years. That’s why he doesn’t want to turn down other types of economic development — like solar and wind — in the meantime. “Everybody’s claiming nuclear is the future, which it is, but nuclear is 10 years away, maybe, so you’ve got to have something to help get you there,” Hough said.

Wade Egan, former chair of the county’s volunteer planning and development council, at his home near Pocatello. Otto Kitsinger

Some clean energy advocates, like Linda Engle with the Portneuf Resource Council, the region’s environmental nonprofit, are optimistic that the support for nuclear energy could help overturn the ban. “With the nuclear piece in there, hopefully it gets passed,” Engle said.

For all the community debate, the future of clean energy in Bannock County ultimately rests on the decision of the three commissioners. To Commissioner Moser, who in 2024 voted in favor of the ban, the choice isn’t black-and-white. 

Hanging on the walls in Moser’s office are two landscape paintings depicting Idaho’s wilderness. In one, a crisp blue stream is flanked by forest and purple mountain cliffs; in another, two people perch on a log, fishing rods in hand, waiting patiently for a catch. Moser has arranged the paintings, which were created by his now-grown son, so he can see them while sitting at his desk. On another wall, a second pair of paintings depicts the American Revolution. In a snowy forest scene, George Washington kneels beside a horse, praying.

Five days before the Fourth of July, Moser sat in his office, considering the paintings. “I love our country, the freedoms that we enjoy — 250 years is amazing,” he said. “God created this for us. I’m a steward now. I’ve been called to take care of it.”

It is this ethos that guides Moser, a south Bannock County native, as he contemplates the county’s new energy ordinance. 

Moser’s fears have to do with solar site cleanup and the risks of battery fires. Moser is not alone in these concerns; they are often cited by solar opposition groups, which point to rare but devastating instances of battery fires in California. Such anxieties are also spreading nationwide. In December 2025, the volunteer fire departments in Downey and Lava Hot Springs, another rural community in south Bannock County, sent letters to the county commissioners warning that they were unprepared to fight battery fires and would need special equipment and training to do so. 

Rebecca Falcon on her land in Downey, with transmission lines behind her. Otto Kitsinger

Bagri said Balanced Rock has tried to ease concerns about decommissioning and fire risk. During the numerous public hearings in 2024, representatives from both Hecate and Balanced Rock responded to the community’s concerns. “They addressed every one of those fears head-on, concisely with facts, and I thought they communicated very well,” said E.J. Zita, a rancher in Robin, Idaho, who’s had residential solar on her property for over a decade. But she said the anti-solar camp had dug in. “People didn’t listen; they just didn’t hear it.”

Despite his fears, Moser said he understands the weight of his responsibility. 

That’s why he’s tried to educate himself about Idaho’s energy needs over the past two years. In 2025, Moser visited a 40-MW solar project in neighboring Power County, a 20-minute drive west from Pocatello. The visit was organized for the Bannock County commissioners by Balanced Rock. The same year, Moser and Hough attended the energy academy hosted by Idaho Power in Boise and had conversations with Rocky Mountain Power. Language in Bannock County’s new draft ordinance requires energy developers to help local fire departments with training and equipment for dealing with battery fires. 

In June, Moser said he recognized that there’s a need for growth in Bannock County. He’s not the only one whose opinion has shifted. Wade Egan, the former chair of the county’s volunteer planning and development council, was “neutral” about the ban passing in 2024. Egan grew up next door to Dale Lish in Downey and now farms around 5,000 acres in the area. He has friends on both sides of the issue.

This time around, though, Egan is pro-solar. Echoing Hough, Egan said he sees it as a matter of property rights. “I really do believe the right to control and own personal property is as fundamental as speech,” he said. 

Moser, meanwhile, is focused on getting things right for future generations. Pointing to the landscape paintings in his office, he spoke about the Idaho wilderness that he wants his son, and grandchildren, to enjoy. 

“It’s not a personal choice. It’s hard choices,” Moser said. “We wake up at two o’clock in the morning thinking about them, and it isn’t a simple deal.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A rural Idaho county banned renewables. It’s having second thoughts. on Sep 26, 2026.

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It was during the dictatorship of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier, from 1956 to 1986, that Tèt Kole took shape, long before its official birth.

The post Haiti: Haitian Peasant Movement “Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen” Celebrates 40 Years of Struggle appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Happy birthday, Marion Nestle!

At Climate Week NYC, Food Tank held a 90th birthday celebration to honor the legendary food policy expert, writer, thinker, and Professor Emerita of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. 

During the evening, Marion received the Rodale Institute Organic Stewardship Award for Lifetime Achievement in Education.

“Marion really is a total badass who, for decades, has told some of the most powerful industries in the world exactly what they didn’t want her to say, and she said it loudly—with footnotes,” says Renée Baran, Dean of Education at the Rodale Institute. 

Watch the entire livestream of the event, hosted in partnership with New York University and the Rodale Institute, on Food Tank’s YouTube channel. 

Throughout the celebration, Marion’s food system friends and colleagues joined the stage to offer toasts:

“Marion is a changemaker. Marion is a force of nature…She has taught us how to think about food, argue about food, question and challenge food, and how to eat.”

—Jennifer Berg, Clinical Professor and Department Chair of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University

“(Food) is sociology, agriculture, history, and community, but above all, it’s politics. Today it’s obvious, but 30 years ago, it certainly was not…It’s because of Marion that we have a new generation of food people.”

—Ruth Reichl, Author and Former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet

“Marion can walk into a supermarket and see an entire political economy. Marion’s voice is needed now more than ever.”

—Frances Moore Lappé, Author and Co-Founder of the Small Planet Institute

“Marion, as we say in the business, gives a good quote…but she also tells the truth.”

—Kim Severson, National Food Culture Reporter at The New York Times

“Marion occupies a place no one else does in our understanding of the world. Years ago I called her matchlessly lucid, and she hasn’t changed a bit.”

—Corby Kummer, Executive Director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, Senior Editor at The Atlantic, and Senior Lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science

“Marion has never been interested in telling people what they want to hear. She asks the uncomfortable questions. She follows the money. She looks at who has power, who doesn’t, and why. And she has spent decades helping all of us understand that food is never just about what is on our plates.”

—Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank

Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

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

Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.

The post Raising A Toast To Food Politics Expert Marion Nestle On Her 90th Birthday appeared first on Food Tank.

The climate crisis moves quickly. That means our solutions need to move even faster, panelists said during Climate Week NYC.

The Summit “Acting at the Speed of Crisis: Challenges & Opportunities for Food Security and Rapid Response,” held in partnership with RAAPID and Arrell Food Institute, brought global leaders together to explore how we can use fast-moving tech to build resilience.

“There are a lot of evolving crises where, if we work together, bringing in both the tech side and the local expertise…we can move faster to get not only early warnings but action when we need it,” says Inbal Becker-Reshef, Managing Director of Microsoft AI for Good Lab, Founder & Co-Director of NASA Harvest, and Founder of RAAPID.

Watch the livestream recording on Food Tank’s YouTube channel. 

“It’s easy to get numb to these issues…and the underlying assumptions of the global food trading system are getting eroded,” says Evan Fraser, Executive Director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. “We need the data to anticipate where the problems are going to lead.” 

Indeed, says Simon Winter, Vice President for Reimagining Humanitarian Nutrition Security at RF Catalytic Capital, “the prevalence and availability and access to very advanced data is increasing.” But to be able to analyze this data and actually turn information into action, panelists said, we need to work with technological tools like artificial intelligence (AI)—not against them.

“A big part of the challenge is the fact that (we have) vastly more information than human beings can look at, so we need AI,” says Andrew Zolli, Chief Impact Officer at Planet. “Human attention is the scarcest resource we have right now.”

As an example, Planet Remained and the Hewlett Foundation presented a case study of Grapevine, a way to create and replicate city-level policy using AI tools. Broadly speaking, if we don’t adopt AI, we’ll be entering at a disadvantage compared to oil and plastic industries that already do use the tools, says Adam Met, Musician of Multi-Platinum band AJR, Founder and Executive Director of Planet Reimagined, and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. 

“When you gather enough of this data…it makes it easier and easier for a city to say, OK, my city looks like this other city, to be able to implement it,” Met says. “This tool allows them to do it from home,” metaphorically speaking.

Dave Turk, Program Director of Environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, echoes the value of AI for making the right choice be the easy choice.

“Especially when you get to the local level, it just gets down to pragmatism and problem solving,” Turk says. “The power of AI done right is to make it super efficient.”

Better information-gathering can also help us respond to geopolitical conflicts and wars on a global scale, other panelists explained. 

“We are in a very tight situation right now globally,” says Máximo Torero Cullen, Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). “In the case of agriculture, AI is an opportunity.”

For example, because a significant portion of agricultural lands in Ukraine are occupied or impacted by the Russian war, “satellite data is of crucial importance,” H.E. Taras Vysotskyi, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, told us via video remarks.

“Globally, we are seeing an increase in the weaponization of food,” says Michael Werz, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Food security is one of the few areas where AI doesn’t totally freak me out.”

But technological tools like AI are only valuable if they’re used well and paired with other solutions, says David Beasley, Trustee of The Rockefeller Foundation and the Former Governor of South Carolina and Former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme. 

“You’ve got to make sure you have good data; bad data can create a lot of harm,” he says. “You get data, and if you don’t use it strategically, what good is it?”

Better data might help us know where to target our philanthropic dollars and policy resources—but, of course, we can only accomplish these goals if funding and legislation already exist. Just as we need action on strengthening our data collection, we need action on these other social factors, too. 

“We have more data, and that data allows us to predict crises better, but unfortunately it doesn’t give us the capacity to act,” says Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, Founder and CEO, Food Systems for the Future. “What does (enable action) are the permissions from government and finance, and that speed has not changed with data.”

We have to be both optimistic and realistic, panelists said: Data can guide us in changing behavior, but data alone does not change behavior. Data can highlight the climate protections that local and renewable energy provide; data can highlight how critical plant-rich diets are toward tackling the climate crisis—but we’re still responsible for building momentum, says Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group.

“It doesn’t just magically happen,” she says.

Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

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Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.

The post Data And AI Tech Can Speed Up Our Responses To Climate Change, Not Replace Them appeared first on Food Tank.

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