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New research from the University of Copenhagen suggests that previously overlooked property of ghost particles may be a key part of the explanation for why some stars explode, while others collapse into black holes.

Project will focus on English oaks and aims to help trees adapt to keep pace with threats.

 

Australia is lagging behind traditional allies and failing to take the climate threat seriously, according to a distinguished group of former senior security officials, in an open letter published in metropolitan newspapers today . Signatories to the letter include former Defence Force Chief, Adm. Chris Barrie, and Air Vice-Marshall John Blackburn, former Air Force Deputy Chief.

Australia faces a summer of deadly heat, with an unprecedented “super” El Niño underway forecast to bring record global temperatures over the next year. Climate disruption, extreme heatwaves and drought threaten Australians’ health and livelihoods, our energy and transport systems, water security, crops and livestock, and food prices.

The Australian Government has said little about these threats. A 2022 Office of National Intelligence report on climate and security risks remains hidden. There has been no systemic policy action.

• Open letter: https://www.aslcg.org/open-letter/
• Newspaper full-page statement: https://www.aslcg.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/ASLCG_OpenLetter_AClimateSecurityPlan.pdf
• Webinar: https://events.humanitix.com/climate-security-has-the-penny-finally-dropped

The letter published by the security leaders group says that: “One of Australia’s closest security partners, the United Kingdom, has moved decisively to put climate risk at the heart of its foreign and security policy, and has established a dedicated high-level climate security taskforce. Its planning includes food and water security, supply chains, economic disruption and regional instability. Australia should now urgently take comparable steps.”

The UK has established its first dedicated Climate Security Taskforce, bringing together security, military and academic expertise to identify gaps, assess risks and strengthen national preparedness. The UK Government explicitly linked overseas climate shocks to domestic food prices, supply chains and national security.

Specific actions the Government should take include:

• Tell Australians the risks — Release a public version of the 2022 climate-security assessment.
• Build climate-threat intelligence and early warning capacity — Create dedicated capability to detect emerging risks to food, water, energy, infrastructure and regional stability.
• Prepare for food and price shocks — Stress-test Australia’s food system and plan for shortages, supply disruption and rising prices.
• End the fossil-fuel contradiction — such as the Beetaloo Basin, and accelerate decarbonisation. Since 2022, 37 new, expanded or extended fossil-fuel projects have been approved by the Australian Government
• Establish a Climate Security Taskforce — Bring together defence, intelligence, climate, emergency, food and economic expertise.
• Put climate risk at the centre of national-security planning — Develop an overarching national-security strategy with climate disruption and human security at its core.

Next Wednesday 7 October webinar: Lessons from the UK: https://events.humanitix.com/climate-security-has-the-penny-finally-dropped

On the face of it, NSW wind development looks like an epic policy disaster. Hosts are ready for the party, the bar is open, the music is playing, but no-one has shown up.

The post New auctions are the last chance saloon for NSW wind, and its ability to replace coal appeared first on Renew Economy.

These organizations are available to help farmers through the process of succession planning. North Carolina Organizations NC Farmlink Roanoke Sustainable Forestry Project Land Loss Prevention Project Regional / National Organizations Carolina Farm Stewardship Association USDA NRCS Federation of Southern Cooperatives Black Family Land Trust

The post Links & Information: Farms in Transition appeared first on RAFI.

Figure out what your soil needs: The Dirt on Soil Testing, RAFI’s guide to testing your soil OrganiCalc, an online worksheet for calculating the right quantities for soil amendments Learn about soil amendment strategies: Soil Health, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Strategies for Farm Soil Amendment, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Choosing a Soil Amendment, Colorado […]

The post Links & Information: Soil Amendments appeared first on RAFI.

Union nurses with California Nurses Association celebrated a hard-fought victory today as Governor Gavin Newsom signed a CNA-sponsored bill, AB 1979 authored by Assemblymember Mia Bonta (AD-18), into law. The new law establishes landmark protections for patients and health care workers against the unsafe use of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in health care.

Sign up for Planted Pathways: The FOCN Book Club. Our first book is Africulture: How the Principles, Practices, Plants, and People of African Descent Have Shaped American Agriculture by Michael Carter Jr. Fill out this form to request technical assistance on Farm Service Agency loans.

The post Links & Information: Farmers Connection Winter 2027 appeared first on RAFI.

In our latest, we talk with author and historian Aaron Leonard about the Federal Government’s long war against American communism. Listen in: Guest bio// Aaron J. Leonard is a writer…

The last of 83 turbines has been installed across a two-stage wind farm part owned by a developer that has had two other projects "called in" by the state LNP government.

The post Final turbine goes up at huge Queensland wind farm, but two projects remain stuck in state planning purgatory appeared first on Renew Economy.

Survey finds that three quarters of landlords either support or do not oppose introducing new energy efficiency standards for renters.

The post Most landlords support minimum energy standards for renters, survey finds appeared first on Renew Economy.

One of Australia's big four aluminium smelters has secured a government bailout alongside a five-year power deal at a "globally competitive and lowest-possible price."

The post Aluminium smelter secures five-year power deal and $200 million state-federal bailout appeared first on Renew Economy.

Submit public comment on Oregon data centers Ally Harris Wed, 09/30/2026 - 3:50 pm

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink

The 2026-27 El Niño is on track to be the strongest event in the instrumental record. The latest (September 2026) runs of the 14 seasonal forecast models that I track over at the Climate Dashboard put the event’s peak at around 4.1C in the Niño 3.4 region (with the middle 80% of ensemble members between 3.4C and 4.6C), well above the prior record of 2.75C during the 2015-16 El Niño.1

I’ve previously written about how unprecedenteted this event will be. The question I get asked most often now is a more practical one: what does it actually mean for the weather where I live?

I recently published a piece in Nature on the impacts of El Niño and what countries should do to prepare. But I can only fit so much in a short journal article, and there is vast scientific literature on regional El Niño impacts that has accumulated over the past few decades.

This post walks presents a map of higher-confidence El Niño impacts, with an in-depth discussion of each different region. Some of the canonical El Niño impacts show up in nearly every strong event on record, while others turn out to be closer to a coin flip when looking at the record of past events.

Expected regional impacts of the 2026-27 El Niño. Shading shows confidence from the teleconnection literature and the observed record of strong events. Shapes show where at least 80% of 13 seasonal forecast models agree on the sign of the rainfall or temperature anomaly (NMME and Copernicus C3S, September 2026 initialization). Regional impacts beyond the models’ forecast range (e.g. summer 2027) are drawn by hand. Each label shows how many of the eight strong El Niños since 1957 went the expected way and how many of this year’s models agree.

If you want to dig into a particular region, I’ve put togehter an interactive version of this map over at the Climate Dashboard. Clicking on a region brings up how it fared in each of the eight past strong El Niños, what each of this year’s forecast models shows, and a short summary of the relevant research. You can also replay any past strong event across the whole map, step through the forecast season by season, or click anywhere to see the raw model forecast for that spot. 

Likelihoods but not guarantees

El Niño events shift the odds of different climate outcomes, but not every El Niño has the exact same impacts (Mason and Goddard 2001). As NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts it in their current ENSO discussion: “With an event of this magnitude, the chances of experiencing impacts consistent with El Niño are larger, but they are not guaranteed.”

To get at how much the odds shift, I’ve leaned on three separate lines of evidence for each region. The first is the published literature on El Niño teleconnections (the physical pathways by which a warm tropical Pacific changes rainfall and temperature elsewhere). I’ve assessed these with IPCC-style confidence levels like high, medium-high, and medium confidence. You can find links to the individual studies I’ve relied on below, with more details shown over at the Climate Dashboard when clicking on a particular region.

The second is the current generation of dynamical seasonal forecasts: 13 independent modeling systems (six from NOAA’s North American Multi-Model Ensemble and seven from the European Copernicus Climate Change Service), which let us see where the models agree and disagree with the teleconnection literature during this particular event.

The third is the past performance during strong El Niño events. For every region on the map I went back to the eight strong events since 1957 (1957-58, 1965-66, 1972-73, 1982-83, 1997-98, 2009-10, 2015-16 and 2023-24) and checked how often that region was drier or wetter than a typical ENSO-neutral year.2 The figure below shows the results. Each cell is one past event, colored by how dry or wet it was relative to neutral years, with a check mark wherever it landed on the expected side.3

Each cell shows rainfall (or temperature) in one of the eight strong El Niños since 1957 (Nov–Jan Oceanic Niño Index ≥ 1.5 °C), for the season shown on the impacts map, relative to ENSO-neutral years after removing long-term trends. Checks mark events on the expected side of the neutral-year median. Data from GPCC v2025, Berkeley Earth, GHCN-Daily stations (Hawaii and Western Pacific islands) and GPCP (Central Pacific islands, 1979 onward only). Model agreement is from the September 2026 forecasts.

A few things jump out here. Across the 26 regions on the map, 86% of region-events went the expected way (176 of 205). The two biggest east Pacific events, 1982-83 and 1997-98, gave the expected impacts in every single region. The two earliest events delivered in only 68% of regions, which likely reflects both sparser rain gauge networks in the 1950s and 60s and genuine differences between events.

That being said, the teleconnection literature draws in part from these same events, particularly 1982-83 and 1997-98, so these hit rates partly restate the evidence the literature was built on. It’s also worth noting that no past event looks like the one forecast for this winter. All eight of these are “strong” events, and 2026-27 is forecast to be well beyond any of them. In the regions with the most reliable signals that probably means larger impacts. But it also means we are extrapolating well outside the training data here.

Asia, Australia and the Pacific

The western tropical Pacific is where El Niño’s fingerprint is clearest, because it is where the atmosphere’s rising branch of the Walker circulation normally sits. When that rising air shifts east toward the central Pacific, the islands and archipelagos that normally sit under it dry out.

Close-up of the impacts map for Asia, Australia and the Pacific. Each card shows how many of the eight strong El Niños since 1957 went the expected way and how many of this year’s forecast models agree.

Indonesia and the Maritime Continent are the single most reliable El Niño impact on the planet. September through December was drier than the median neutral year in all eight past strong events, and in six of them it was drier than any neutral year in the record. Past strong events resulted in around 73% of normal rainfall, and all 13 models agree on drought this autumn. The main risk for the region is fire. Burning on drained peatlands responds very nonlinearly to drought, and the fires during the 1997 El Niño released an estimated 3 to 9 billion tonnes of CO2, equivalent to 13% to 40% of global fossil fuel emissions that year. The haze from the 2015 fires has been linked to around 100,300 excess deaths across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

The Philippines has an equally consistent record, dry from December through April in all eight strong events (with a median of 58% of normal rainfall). This is driven by an anomalous high pressure system that sets up over the western North Pacific during El Niño winters (Lyon and Camargo 2009). Every one of the 13 models shows it this year.

The western Pacific islands, from Palau and Guam through Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, were drier than normal (i.e. than in a typical neutral year) in all eight events. These islands also see sea level drop as the warm water sloshes east, which can expose and kill shallow reef flats (Widlansky et al. 2015).

On the other hand, the central Pacific islands of Kiribati and Tuvalu get deluged. Satellite-era data show September to May rainfall there wetter than in any neutral year in each of the five strong events since 1982, with a median of around double normal.

Southern China tends to be wetter from winter through spring, fed by moisture flowing around the same western Pacific high pressure system. The observed record is weaker than for the Philippines, with 5 of 8 strong events wetter than normal, though the big events were very wet (1982-83 brought around 200% of normal rainfall and 2015-16 164%). The models are in strong agreement (12 of 13) on heavier than normal rainfall this year.

The Yangtze basin is generally expected to experience heavy summer rain in the year after a strong El Niño, when the Indian Ocean warms up and acts as a “capacitor” that sustains the western Pacific high pressure system into summer. That signal was real in 1998, the year of catastrophic Yangtze floods. In June and July, when the East Asian monsoon rain band normally sits over the basin, it was wetter than normal during 6 of 8 past strong events, including all six since 1972. However, next summer is beyond the range of any current seasonal forecast, so no model-based odds are available.

The southern Mekong basin (Cambodia, southern Laos and southern Vietnam) was drier than normal in March to May of the year after the El Niño peak in 7 of 8 strong events, with a median of around 71% of normal rainfall. The teleconnections literature suggests that the ENSO drought signal in mainland Southeast Asia is “most consistent and expressed over the largest areal extents during March-May of the year when the ENSO events decay.” The models show a bit less agreement this year (only 4 of 6 models that extend through May show drying) and the literature notes the relationship varies between events, so it shows up on the map as only medium confidence.

In India, the the textbook example of El Niño is a weaker than normal Indian monsoon. North and central India were drier than normal in all eight years during which strong El Niño events developed, and the 2026 monsoon was running around 12% below normal by mid-August. But that season is already behind us; the monsoon in the year after a strong El Niño was drier than normal in only 1 of 8 cases (1966), with the other seven running between 102% and 115% of normal. Part of this is that strong El Niños often flip into La Niña by the following summer, and part of it is that eastern Pacific events like this one appear less effective at suppressing Indian rainfall in the first place (Kumar et al. 2006). Either way, the data do not support calling for a weak 2027 monsoon.4

Sri Lanka’s northeast monsoon (October to December) was wetter than normal in all eight strong events, with a median of 126% of normal (Zubair and Ropelewski 2006). However, Sri Lanka was also on the wet side in 8 of 12 La Niña years, so the island’s autumn rain is less tied to El Niño specifically than the count might suggests. Southern India shows a similar observed record (7 of 8), but it is not on the map because this year’s models disagree about it (only 5 of 13 show a wet signal).

Southeast Australia (Victoria and Tasmania) was drier than normal between September and November in 7 of 8 strong events, with a median of 81% of normal and a severe 44% in 2015. The El Niño dry signal is concentrated in spring, when it is reinforced by the positive Indian Ocean Dipole that often accompanies El Niño (Cai et al. 2009), and it has a habit of reversing in summer. In 2023-24, national rainfall ran 20% below average in spring before summer came in 19% above average. And for eastern Australia more broadly, this year’s models show little signal at all (only 10 of 13 lean dry, which is not significant). It’s worth noting that the 2019-20 Black Summer fires, often associated with El Niño in the public mind, happened during a record positive Indian Ocean Dipole with only borderline El Niño conditions.

Africa

El Niño’s effects on Africa run through the Indian Ocean. This year a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (warm water off East Africa, cool water off Sumatra) has been developing alongside it. That combination points in opposite directions for the two halves of the continent.

Close-up of the impacts map for Africa. Each card shows how many of the eight strong El Niños since 1957 went the expected way and how many of this year’s forecast models agree.

Southern Africa probably the most potentially disasterious impact on the map, because summer rain there feeds the maize crop that tens of millions of people depend on. December to February was drier than normal in 6 of 8 strong events, consistent with Pomposi et al. (2018), who estimate an around 80% chance of below-normal rain in a strong El Niño. The two clear misses were early in the record (1957-58 and 1965-66). The largest recent failure was 1997-98, when the expected regional drought failed to materialize. That has been attributed to regional circulation features (the Angola Low and Botswana High) that vary independently of ENSO, and it isn’t something we can rule out this year. But the most comparable recent case suggests we will see a bigger impact this year: in 2023-24, with an Indian Ocean Dipole almost as strong as 1997’s, southern Africa had the driest season of all eight events (69% of normal), prompting a $5.5 billion regional humanitarian appeal for more than 61 million people. All 13 models show drought this coming summer.

The Horn of Africa (southern Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia) was wetter than normal between October and December in all eight strong events, with 1997 at 241% of normal and 2023 at 175%. Here the Indian Ocean Dipole matters more than El Niño itself. In model studies the influence of the dipole on the short rains is “overwhelming as compared to that of ENSO,” and World Weather Attribution’s analysis of the catastrophic 2023 floods found “no significant role of ENSO but a significant influence of the IOD.” Because strong eastern Pacific El Niños tend to come with positive dipole events, the hit rate here is really a record of the two acting together. That is also what it looks like will occur this year, as all 13 models show a wet season.

The Sahel is not on the map. Its El Niño signal mostly falls on the summer rainy season of the developing year (which for this event was 2026), and even then it was drier than normal in only 3 of 8 strong events. The literature agrees this is one of the weakest teleconnections, with El Niño explaining only a small share of Sahel rainfall variability (Pomposi et al. 2020).

South America Close-up of the impacts map for South America. Each card shows how many of the eight strong El Niños since 1957 went the expected way and how many of this year’s forecast models agree.

The Amazon was drier than normal between October and May in 7 of 8 strong events, and in each of the last five (from 1982-83 onward) it was drier than any ENSO-neutral year in the record. All 13 models agree for this season. But the Amazon is also strongly impacted by longer-term climate changes. A World Weather Attribution study found that “the severity of the [2023-24] drought… is largely driven by climate change,” with El Niño and warming contributing about equally to the rainfall deficit but the drying trend almost entirely due to warming. Fire risk also depends heavily on land management practices, as the large majority of Amazon fires are set by people.

Northern South America (Colombia, Venezuela and the Guianas) was drier than normal in December to February in all eight strong events, with a median of 71% of normal (Poveda et al. 2011). All 13 models agree this year. Northeast Brazil’s March to May rainy season was drier than normal in 6 of 8 events (Hastenrath 2011). That signal depends on tropical Atlantic temperatures as well as the Pacific, which is why it shown as only medium-high confidence. It also has a dashed outline on the map, because after the last El Niño the 2024 rainy season came in right at normal (100%).

The coast of northern Peru and Ecuador is where El Niño got its name, and where its impacts can be most violent. Normally a desert, the coast floods when the ocean just offshore warms enough to support deep convection. Only 1982-83 and 1997-98 brought truly extreme rains, with the coastal grid cells averaging more than double normal rainfall from December to April. Other strong events ranged from somewhat below to somewhat above normal, and in 2023-24 the expected coastal rains largely failed after Peru had set aside around $1.2 billion for flood preparation. What distinguished 1982-83 and 1997-98 was very warm water right along the coast. This year looks more like those two events than the others; in mid-September the far eastern Pacific (the Niño 1+2 region) was running 4.6C above normal, compared to 3.5C in 1997, 2.1C in 2015 and 2.6C in 2023 at the same point. I’ve rated this high confidence provided that coastal warmth persists as predicted by current models.

Southeastern South America (Uruguay, northeastern Argentina, southern Brazil and Paraguay) was wetter than normal between September and February in 7 of 8 strong events (Grimm and Tedeschi 2009), while the 2023-24 season was close to normal. The devastating Rio Grande do Sul floods of May 2024 came much later – in the autumn after the El Niño’s peak – though one attribution study found the El Niño approximately doubled their likelihood (albeit with a very wide uncertainty range).

The Altiplano, the high plateau shared by southern Peru, western Bolivia and northern Chile, gets most of its rain from December to March, and El Niño tends to suppress it. A warmer tropical atmosphere strengthens the upper-level westerly winds over the Andes, which cuts off the easterly flow that normally carries Amazon moisture up onto the plateau (Garreaud and Aceituno 2001). All 13 models show a dry summer this year, one of the strongest model signals anywhere on the map. The observed record is weaker as only 5 of 8 past strong events were drier than normal. The link is closest over the drier western part of the plateau (Vuille et al. 2000) and weaker toward Lake Titicaca in the north, so I’ve rated the region medium confidence.

In Chile, Montecinos and Aceituno (2003) find that during El Niño “there is a tendency for the occurrence of above-average precipitation between 30° and 35°S in winter [June–July–August (JJA)] and from 35° to 38°S in late spring [October–November (ON)].” October and November were wetter than normal in 7 of 8 strong events (with a median of 170% of normal) and in all six moderate El Niños, and all 13 models agree this year.

Further south, the same literature finds relatively dry summers between about 38°S and 41°S during El Niño, and the observed record agrees (7 of 8 strong events drier than normal from January to March), but this year’s models are split (only 8 of 13 show a drier January and February), so I’ve left it off the map. The Atacama Desert does get rare heavy rains in El Niño years, but historically these have come in the winter of the developing year (Vargas et al. 2000), which for this event has already passed.

North and Central America Close-up of the impacts map for North America, Central America and Hawaii. Each card shows how many of the eight strong El Niños since 1957 went the expected way and how many of this year’s forecast models agree.

The US Gulf Coast and Southeast was wetter than normal between December and February in all eight strong events, with 1982-83 at 151% and 1997-98 at 168% of normal (Ropelewski and Halpert 1986). The strengthened subtropical jet stream also brings wetter winters to Cuba and the Bahamas, which were wetter than normal in all eight strong events, with a median of 163% of normal (Giannini et al. 2000). This year all 13 models agree on wetter than normal conditions in both regions.

Southern California, the US Southwest and northern Mexico were wetter than normal between December and March in 7 of 8 strong events, with 1982-83 and 1997-98 both around double normal. The exception was 2015-16 when coastal southern California ended up at only 60% to 68% of normal despite 9 of 10 seasonal models predicting a wet winter that year. Rerun for 1982-83 and 1997-98, those same models called for wet winters (9 of 9 and 10 of 11), which is what happened. El Niño explains at most around a third of West Coast winter rainfall variability even in strong years, so a lot comes down to where individual storms go.

Northern California is a bit more ambigious. It was wetter than normal between December and March in 6 of 8 strong events, including 2015-16 (120% of normal) when Southern California missed, and 1982-83 and 1997-98 were both well above normal (173% and 156%). All 13 models lean wet this year. The misses were 1965-66 (75%) and 2009-10 (90%). However, the signal is not very specific to El Niño. Northern California was also on the wet side in 7 of 12 La Niña winters, only 2 of 6 moderate El Niños were wet, and the El Niño relationship across all winters since 1950 is weak. Past work has generally found the El Niño rainfall signal is concentrated in Southern California, and I’ve added it to the map as only medium confidence for this year.

Further north, El Niño winters tend to be drier in interior British Columbia and the inland Northwest, with lower snowpack (Shabbar et al. 1997). This was observed in 7 of 8 past events, though the typical dry anomaly is small (~95% of normal), so I’ve assigned it only medium confidence.

Central Canada tends to have mild winters during El Niño, with the strongest warmth just west of Hudson Bay (Shabbar and Khandekar 1996). All eight strong El Niño winters were warmer than the typical neutral winter once long-term warming is removed, and the four since 1997 were strikingly warm (2023-24 was Canada’s warmest winter on record). But La Niña winters were also on the warm side in 7 of 12 cases, and it is sensitive to how the warming trend is removed so I’ve assigned it medium confidence.

Hawaii is usually dry during El Niño winters, particularly in eastern Pacific events like this one (Lu et al. 2020). A composite of long-running Hawaiian rain gauges shows November to March was drier than normal in every strong event since 1972 (six of six, with a median of 69% of normal), though 1957-58 and 1965-66 were both wet. All 13 models show a dry winter this year.

Central America and the southern Caribbean (Costa Rica, Panama and the Caribbean coast of Colombia) tend to be drier during El Niño winters. During the 2023 El Niño, drought restricted traffic through the Panama Canal. But December to February is the dry season across much of this region anyway, and in the places where it normally rains during those months drier conditions only occurred in 5 of 8 past events. The more robust Central American signal is midsummer drought during the developing year (e.g. July and August 2026), which has already passed.

While some of the literature on teleconnections suggests that El Niño drives drier conditions in the Ohio Valley, this year’s models lean wet there (only 3 of 13 show drying), and the observed record is a coin flip as it was only drier in 4 of 8 past strong events.

Europe

Europe is conspicuously absent from the map, which has surprised some people given the summer heat and drought across the continent this year. For most of Europe we simply don’t know what El Niño will do this winter.

Multi-model seasonal forecasts for Europe (top) and the winter North Atlantic Oscillation in each strong El Niño winter since 1950 (bottom).

The textbook late-winter pattern (cold northern Europe, wet south) mostly shows up when a sudden stratospheric warming occurs, which can’t be forecast months in advance (Ineson and Scaife 2009). The link may also have weakened since the 1970s. Past strong El Niño winters split 4 to 4 on the North Atlantic Oscillation, 5 of 8 showed a wet UK and central Europe in autumn, and 5 of 8 had a cold Scandinavian late winter. The models (12 of 13) lean wet for the UK and central Europe from October to December this year, but the shifts are small.

The global picture

Because global temperature lags the tropical Pacific by a few months, 2027 is almost certain to be the warmest year on record. My latest forecast, which combines six global temperature datasets with the 14-model ENSO forecast, gives it a 95% to 96% chance, up from around 85% in April. El Niño-driven drought and fire in the tropics also weaken the land carbon sink, which is why the growth rate of CO2 at Mauna Loa hit a record 3.33 ppm in 2024. A similar spike in 2027 is likely. The fourth global coral bleaching event was driven by the 2023-24 El Niño on top of longer-term warming and affected 84% of the world’s reef area. A stronger event arriving before those reefs have recovered raises the risk of widespread mortality next year.

The most reliable El Niño impacts are clustered around the tropical Pacific and in the Americas. Drought in Indonesia, the Philippines, the western Pacific islands and northern South America, and wet winters from the Gulf Coast to Cuba, have shown up in essentially every strong event since the 1950s, and this year’s models agree. Southern Africa, the Amazon and the Horn of Africa are nearly as consistent. Those are the places where preparation (water storage, food reserves, fire management, flood defenses) is urgently needed now before the rains or droughts arrive.

The impact I’d flag most for policymakers is on food. Of the major climate modes of variability, “only El Niño can force globally synchronous crop failures,” because it simultaneously affects breadbaskets on multiple continents. The map shows drought risk for maize in southern Africa, rice in the Philippines and Southeast Asia and a range of crops in northern South America during the first half of 2027.

Its also worth remembering that this event is forecast to be well beyond anything in the observed record, and the two most similar past events (1982-83 and 1997-98) showed the expected impacts in every region on the map.

I’ll update the map when the October forecasts come in, and I’ve put the code and data to reproduce this analysis on my GitHub here.

1 These numbers are from the September initializations of the 14 models tracked on our Climate Dashboard, with each model weighted equally, and use the same convention as NOAA’s Oceanic Niño Index (each month relative to a centered 30-year climatology). The regional impact forecasts in this post use a slightly different set of 13 models that publish rainfall and temperature fields (NMME and Copernicus C3S). For each region, the model check averages every model over the region’s whole season up to February 2027, the last month all 13 cover; seasons that fall mostly after that use the six NMME models, which run through May.

2 Strong events are those with a November–January Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) of at least 1.5C. For each region I compared its average rainfall (or temperature) in the season on the map to ENSO-neutral years, after removing a long-term trend fitted to the neutral years only. An event counts toward the tally if it lands on the expected side of the median neutral year. Percentages of normal are relative to the 1991–2020 average. The main precipitation data are GPCC’s new Precipitation Analysis Monthly Version 2025. The full methods, including all sensitivity tests, are in the GitHub repository.

3 One note on how to read the numbers here: the counts (like 7 of 8) compare each event with a typical ENSO-neutral year, while the percentages (like 70% of normal) are relative to the 1991–2020 average. These usually tell the same story, but not always, because a few very wet or very dry years can pull the average away from a typical year.

4 This is consistent with the long-standing observation that the ENSO-monsoon relationship has weakened since the 1980s. The strongest El Niño on record at the time, 1997, produced a near-normal monsoon even in the developing year (around 102% of normal in our data for north and central India).

Saturday, October 17, 2026

See updated poster for

10th Annual White Mesa Ute Community Spiritual Walk and Protest against

Energy Fuels’ uranium mill/dump and uranium mines.

New study: Oregon gas rates could rise sixfold without a plan for the energy transition Juan M. Muñoz … Wed, 09/30/2026 - 1:17 pm

Audubon Rockies and the skilled team of wildlife biologists from Precision Wildlife Resources hit the road in 2026 for another year of avian monitoring on ranches that have earned Audubon’s...

Audubon Rockies and the skilled team of wildlife biologists from Precision Wildlife Resources once again hit the road in 2026 for another year of avian monitoring across Audubon Rockies...

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 30 SEPTEMBER 2026 SLF-2007-073 The Sakhalin Papers LXIII: The Reserves Ledger — Did Shell Really Lose 1.06 Billion Barrels? In March 2008, the consequences of Shell’s surrender of control at Sakhalin II surfaced in the language oil companies understand best: proved reserves. Contemporary reports said roughly 1.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent were disappearing from Shell’s books. Shell’s own annual report contained two striking figures — 658 million boe and 402 million boe — which, when added together, appeared to support that conclusion. But they did not describe the same thing. One figure represented minority interests disappearing from a consolidated subsidiary; the other represented reserves being transferred into the equity-accounted investment column. Shell’s actual reduction in proved reserves attributable to its shareholders from the Sakhalin transaction was approximately 402 million boe. The distinction is accounting — but it is not merely cosmetic.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-073
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal authenticated records: Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2006; Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2007
Contemporaneous reporting: Financial Times; JP Morgan/Hemscott; The Observer; Bloomberg; Thomson Financial/AFX; Energy Intelligence
Judicial context: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)
Evidence standard: Shell’s reserve figures and accounting classifications are treated as corporate facts. Contemporary descriptions of a 1.1-billion-barrel “loss” are attributed to the analysts and journalists who used them. No accounting reclassification is treated as a physical disappearance of hydrocarbons. The distinction between reserves surrendered economically and reserves merely moved between reporting categories is maintained throughout.

Introduction

Yesterday’s file ended with the April 2007 transfer of control.

Gazprom had acquired 50 per cent plus one share of Sakhalin Energy.

Shell had received approximately $4.1 billion.

Its interest had fallen from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent.

The project had ceased to be a Shell-controlled subsidiary and became an equity-accounted investment.

That accounting change did not stop at the balance sheet.

It reached directly into Shell’s reserve reporting.

And for Royal Dutch Shell in 2008, the word reserves carried exceptional sensitivity.

Only four years earlier, Shell had been engulfed by one of the most damaging corporate scandals in its history after admitting that billions of barrels had been improperly booked as proved reserves.

So when analysts began calculating how many barrels would disappear following the Sakhalin transaction, this was not an obscure accounting argument.

It went directly to a question investors had already learned to ask:

How much oil and gas did Shell really control?

1. Shell had already told investors what would happen

The starting point is not a newspaper article.

It is Shell’s own 2006 Form 20-F.

At the end of 2006 — after the Kremlin protocol had been signed but before the transaction completed — Shell explained how Sakhalin II appeared in its reserves.

Because Shell controlled Sakhalin Energy, the project was consolidated.

Shell said Sakhalin II carried approximately 0.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent of net reserves attributable to Shell, derived from about 1.5 billion boe recorded for Group companies, partly offset by approximately 0.7 billion boe attributable to minority interests.

Shell then forecast what would happen when Gazprom entered.

Its net share would fall by approximately:

0.4 billion boe.

The approximately 0.4 billion boe remaining to Shell would then be reclassified into the reserves of equity-accounted investments.

That disclosure is crucial.

Before the transaction closed, Shell itself was telling investors that the genuine reduction in its attributable Sakhalin reserves would be about 400 million boe, not 1.1 billion. Shell Plc

2. The ownership arithmetic explains the reserve arithmetic

Before Gazprom’s entry:

Shell owned 55 per cent.

Mitsui and Mitsubishi together owned 45 per cent.

Because Shell controlled Sakhalin Energy, Shell consolidated the subsidiary’s reserves and then deducted the minority shareholders’ portion.

After Gazprom’s entry:

Gazprom owned 50 per cent plus one share.

Shell owned 27.5 per cent.

Mitsui owned 12.5 per cent.

Mitsubishi owned 10 per cent.

Shell no longer controlled the company.

That meant it could no longer present Sakhalin Energy as a consolidated subsidiary.

Its remaining reserves had to appear instead as Shell’s share of an equity-accounted investment.

The hydrocarbons had not moved.

The ownership had.

The accounting followed the ownership.

3. Then came the two numbers

Shell’s 2007 Annual Report records the consequences in unusually precise terms.

As a result of the Sakhalin II divestment:

658 million boe of minority interests were eliminated

and

402 million boe of proved reserves were transferred from Shell subsidiaries to Shell’s share of equity-accounted investments.

Those are the two figures at the centre of this file.

Together:

658 million + 402 million =

1.060 billion boe.

That arithmetic is correct.

The interpretation that Shell therefore “lost” 1.06 billion boe is not. Shell

4. The 658 million barrels did not belong to Shell shareholders

This is the point on which the accounting can become misleading to a non-specialist reader.

The 658 million boe represented minority interests in a subsidiary Shell had previously consolidated.

Those reserves were associated with interests belonging to Shell’s partners.

While Sakhalin Energy remained a Shell subsidiary, the reserves appeared within the consolidated total and the minority portion was separately deducted.

Once Sakhalin Energy ceased to be a subsidiary, that entire consolidation structure disappeared.

The minority-interest deduction therefore disappeared as well.

That is what the 658-million-barrel figure represents.

It was not an additional 658 million barrels of Shell-owned proved reserves handed to Gazprom.

It was the removal of a minority-interest accounting line that was no longer required after deconsolidation.

Shell’s own 2007 report makes this distinction explicit. Companies Market Cap

5. The 402 million barrels are different

The 402 million boe figure matters much more economically.

Shell states that proved reserves attributable to Royal Dutch Shell shareholders reflected a net reduction of 402 million boe relating to Sakhalin.

That was the reserve consequence of Shell cutting its ownership from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent.

Another approximately 402 million boe remained associated with Shell’s reduced interest.

Those surviving reserves did not disappear.

They moved from the subsidiary column into the equity-accounted-investment column.

The result can therefore be expressed simply:

Before the deal, Shell economically owned roughly twice the Sakhalin reserves it owned afterwards.

After the deal, half of its previous economic interest had gone.

The approximate attributable reserve loss was:

402 million boe.

That is the figure Shell itself identified as the net Sakhalin reduction. Companies Market Cap

6. So where did the 1.1-billion-barrel headline come from?

Before Shell published the final annual-report figures, analysts were already attempting to quantify the effect.

On 25 January 2008, Hemscott reported a JP Morgan analysis stating that deconsolidation of Sakhalin II would remove approximately:

1.1 billion boe

from Shell’s proved reserves.

The figure was described as being roughly equivalent to a year of Shell’s worldwide production.

The Wall Street Journal subsequently discussed the same problem.

Then, on 16 March 2008, The Observer reported that about 1.1 billion barrels would be lost from Sakhalin II following Shell’s sale of part of its interest to Gazprom.

That report came one day before Shell released the detailed annual report and strategy material. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

The contemporary reporting was therefore capturing something real:

a very large volume was about to disappear from the consolidated reserve presentation.

But once Shell’s full accounts were available, the distinction became clearer.

Deconsolidation and economic loss were not synonymous.

7. Financial Times had identified the smaller number a year earlier

There is another contemporaneous clue.

On 2 February 2007, shortly after the Kremlin agreement, the Financial Times reported that the sale was expected to cost Shell approximately:

400 million boe

from its reserves.

That figure closely matched Shell’s own disclosure.

So the historical record contained two competing shorthand descriptions:

approximately 400 million boe lost economically

and approximately 1.1 billion boe removed through deconsolidation.

Both arose from the same transaction.

They answered different accounting questions. Royal Dutch Shell Group .com

8. Bloomberg reported the final Shell number

When Shell published its annual report on 17 March 2008, Bloomberg described the Sakhalin impact more carefully.

It reported that Shell had relinquished half its 55 per cent stake and had consequently lost approximately:

402 million boe

of proved reserves attributable to its interest.

Bloomberg also reported something that at first sight seems extraordinary.

Despite Sakhalin, Shell’s total proved oil and gas reserves plus minable oil sands reserves attributable to shareholders had barely changed.

They moved from approximately:

11.942 billion boe at the end of 2006

to

11.920 billion boe at the end of 2007.

A decline of only:

22 million boe.

Less than 0.2 per cent. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

How could Shell lose 402 million barrels at Sakhalin and still finish the year almost level?

Because Sakhalin was only one movement in a much larger reserves ledger.

9. Canada helped offset Russia

Shell had made another major portfolio move.

In March 2007 it acquired the minority interest in Shell Canada that it did not already own.

That transaction effectively brought additional reserves fully into Shell’s attributable position.

Shell’s annual report identifies:

72 million boe of proved oil and gas reserves

and

250 million boe of proven minable oil sands reserves

associated with the Shell Canada minority interest.

Together they represented approximately:

322 million boe.

The Canadian transaction therefore offset much of the 402-million-boe Sakhalin reduction. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

The contrast was striking.

In Russia, Shell had surrendered ownership.

In Canada, Shell had bought out minority shareholders.

One transaction reduced attributable reserves.

The other increased them.

10. Shell also added reserves through development

Shell’s 2007 Annual Report records another major offset.

Its development programme yielded:

1.315 billion boe

of additional proved oil and gas reserves.

That consisted of approximately:

228 million boe within Shell subsidiaries

and

1.087 billion boe within equity-accounted investments.

Shell also recorded additional minable oil sands reserves.

Production, revisions, acquisitions, divestments and year-end price effects all then moved the total in different directions.

The headline year-end number therefore concealed enormous internal movement.

The reserves ledger was not static.

It was a revolving door. Shell

11. The reserve-replacement ratio tells a harsher story

The almost unchanged year-end reserve total can make the Sakhalin transaction look less consequential than it was.

Another Shell metric points in the opposite direction.

At Shell’s March 2008 strategy presentation, Exploration & Production chief Malcolm Brinded was reported as saying:

after the Sakhalin dilution, Shell’s reserve-replacement ratio was 17 per cent.

That meant that once the relevant portfolio effect was included, the headline SEC reserve-replacement calculation looked extremely weak.

Yet Shell simultaneously presented an organic reserve-replacement ratio of 124 per cent, excluding acquisitions, divestments and year-end price effects.

Including price effects, Shell said the organic figure was 109 per cent. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Again, apparently contradictory numbers were all capable of being true.

They measured different things.

12. Why the 17 per cent figure mattered

Reserve replacement is one of the central measures by which an oil company demonstrates that it is replacing what it produces.

A company producing 100 barrels while discovering or booking only 17 replacement barrels is moving in the wrong direction if that pattern continues.

Shell’s organic figure suggested its exploration and development programme was replacing production.

The 17 per cent all-in figure showed what portfolio events — especially Sakhalin — had done to the reported reserve position.

Energy Intelligence attributed much of the collapse in the SEC-filed reserve-replacement ratio to the loss of Shell’s majority Sakhalin II interest.

The distinction did not make the Russian transaction unimportant.

It showed precisely how important it was. Energy Intelligence

13. The post-2004 context cannot be ignored

This discussion occurred only four years after Shell’s reserves scandal.

In 2004 the company had admitted that reserves previously described as proved did not satisfy the applicable standards.

Senior executives departed.

Regulators investigated.

Fines and investor settlements followed.

Trust in Shell’s reserves reporting had been badly damaged.

Consequently, a debate about whether Sakhalin removed 400 million barrels or 1.1 billion barrels could not be dismissed as technical bookkeeping.

Investors had learned that reserve classification mattered.

The 2008 reporting itself repeatedly referred back to the scandal.

Bloomberg noted the sensitivity surrounding Shell’s reserve disclosures and the continuing consequences of the earlier overstatement. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

14. But Sakhalin’s hydrocarbons had not vanished

This distinction must remain explicit.

The transaction did not make oil and gas disappear beneath Sakhalin Island.

It changed who owned the company developing them.

It changed how Shell accounted for its remaining interest.

It changed the quantity of proved reserves economically attributable to Shell shareholders.

And it changed Shell’s ability to exercise corporate control over those resources.

But Gazprom’s acquisition did not physically reduce the Sakhalin reservoirs by hundreds of millions of barrels.

Contemporary descriptions such as “lost reserves” therefore require interpretation.

Shell lost part of its economic entitlement.

It lost control.

It lost the ability to consolidate Sakhalin Energy.

It did not lose every barrel removed from the subsidiary reserve column.

15. The court record provides an independent chronological marker

On 17 March 2008 — the same period in which Shell’s reserve figures were being scrutinised — Mr Justice Mitting delivered judgment in Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth.

The case concerned access to environmental information connected with possible British government support for Sakhalin II.

The judgment recorded that Gazprom had by then acquired the controlling interest in the project.

It also recorded the environmental significance of the project and the controversy surrounding proposed export-credit support.

The High Court did not determine Shell’s reserve accounting.

It did not decide whether 402 million or 1.1 billion boe was the correct journalistic description of Shell’s loss.

Its relevance here is narrower.

It independently confirms that by March 2008 the ownership transformation was complete and that Sakhalin II remained the subject of substantial British institutional scrutiny. vLex

16. What Shell actually lost

The cleanest reconstruction from Shell’s own filings is this.

Established

Shell reduced its ownership in Sakhalin Energy from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent.

Shell ceased consolidating Sakhalin Energy as a subsidiary.

Approximately 658 million boe associated with minority interests disappeared from the consolidated minority-interest calculation.

Approximately 402 million boe connected with Shell’s continuing interest moved from Shell subsidiaries to equity-accounted investments.

Shell itself identified a net reduction of approximately 402 million boe of proved reserves attributable to shareholders relating to Sakhalin.

Shell’s overall attributable reserves nevertheless fell by only about 22 million boe during 2007 because other additions substantially offset the Sakhalin reduction.

Also established

Analysts and journalists contemporaneously used figures around 1.1 billion boe to describe the impact of Sakhalin deconsolidation.

That language reflected the scale of reserves disappearing from Shell’s consolidated presentation.

It should not be silently converted into a claim that Shell shareholders economically owned and then lost 1.1 billion boe.

Not established

The surviving corporate evidence does not support simply adding 658 million and 402 million boe and calling the result Shell’s economic reserve loss.

Those figures describe different accounting components.

Documentary Findings

Established: Shell’s 2006 filing forecast that the Gazprom transaction would reduce Shell’s net Sakhalin reserves by approximately 0.4 billion boe.

Established: Shell’s 2007 filing subsequently identified a 402-million-boe net reduction in proved reserves attributable to Shell shareholders relating to Sakhalin.

Established: 658 million boe of minority interests were removed from the consolidated reserve presentation following deconsolidation.

Established: approximately 402 million boe associated with Shell’s remaining Sakhalin interest were transferred into equity-accounted investments.

Established: JP Morgan and contemporary press reports used an approximately 1.1-billion-boe figure for the reserve impact of Sakhalin deconsolidation.

Established: Shell’s total attributable proved oil, gas and minable oil sands reserves fell by only 22 million boe between year-end 2006 and year-end 2007.

Established: Shell reported organic reserve replacement of 124 per cent before acquisitions, divestments and year-end price effects, but Malcolm Brinded was reported as saying the ratio was only 17 per cent after the Sakhalin dilution was taken into account.

Not established: that Shell economically lost 1.06 billion boe belonging to its shareholders.

Not established: that accounting reclassification represented disappearance or destruction of physical Sakhalin hydrocarbons.

Commentary

The interesting thing about this episode is that neither the dramatic headline nor the corporate reassurance tells the whole story.

“Shell lost 1.1 billion barrels” is too simple.

“Shell’s reserves barely changed” is also too simple.

The transaction took approximately 402 million barrels of proved oil equivalent away from Shell’s shareholders.

That is not trivial.

It is an enormous hydrocarbon volume.

But Shell was a company large enough to absorb that loss within a year in which reserve additions elsewhere, Canadian consolidation and other portfolio movements almost restored the total.

That is why the aggregate figure — 11.942 billion boe becoming 11.920 billion boe — can conceal the geopolitical event beneath it.

The company did not finish 2007 dramatically smaller in total reported reserves.

But it did finish the year with half the economic exposure to Sakhalin II that it had possessed before the Kremlin confrontation.

And it no longer controlled the project.

The reserve ledger therefore records something the political language sometimes obscures.

The December 2006 Kremlin agreement was not merely a change of boardroom influence.

It transferred a quantifiable portion of one of Shell’s most important future hydrocarbon positions.

Approximately 402 million boe of proved reserves attributable to Shell shareholders went with it.

That is the number the documentary record supports.

Not because a critic calculated it.

Not because an analyst estimated it.

Because Shell said so.

Source Record

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Annual Report and Form 20-F 2006 records the pre-completion reserve position and Shell’s expectation that its net Sakhalin reserve interest would fall by approximately 0.4 billion boe after Gazprom entered.

Shell — historical Annual Reports archive

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Annual Report and Form 20-F 2007 records the 658-million-boe minority-interest adjustment, the 402-million-boe transfer to equity-accounted investments and the 402-million-boe net reduction in proved reserves attributable to Shell shareholders.

Shell — Annual Report and Form 20-F 2007

The contemporary JP Morgan analysis reported by Hemscott estimated that Sakhalin deconsolidation would remove approximately 1.1 billion boe from Shell’s proved-reserve presentation.

Hemscott archive — Shell “overvalued”, 25 January 2008

The Observer subsequently reported an estimated 1.1-billion-barrel Sakhalin reduction immediately before publication of Shell’s annual figures. The Guardian

Bloomberg’s 17 March 2008 report used Shell’s final figure of approximately 402 million boe and recorded the near-flat overall year-end reserve position. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

The High Court judgment in Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin) supplies independent legal and institutional context concerning Sakhalin II during precisely this period. vLex

Archive disclaimer: Reserve reporting is an accounting and regulatory classification system, not a direct measurement of physical ownership in the ground. Contemporary descriptions of reserves being “lost”, “removed” or “written off” are therefore reproduced only with the accounting context necessary to understand what changed.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Next instalment SLF-2008-074 — The Sakhalin Papers LXIV: The British Money File — $650 Million, Environmental Secrets and the High Court Fight Over Sakhalin II

While investors were trying to understand the reserve consequences of Gazprom’s takeover, another part of the Sakhalin story had reached the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Britain’s Export Credits Guarantee Department had been considering approximately $650 million in support for Sakhalin II.

Friends of the Earth wanted access to environmental information held by the Government.

The Government resisted disclosure.

The resulting litigation exposed an extraordinary question:

What did British officials know about the environmental risks of Sakhalin II while public money was being considered for the project?

The next file will reconstruct the disclosure battle from the High Court judgment, ECGD records and the contemporaneous environmental and financial record — and explain why the financing application disappeared before the court delivered its decision.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 30 SEPTEMBER 2026 was first posted on September 30, 2026 at 8:49 pm.
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1995 Irate Don hits Shell investors By Marketing Week 27 Jan 1995 Shell UK dealers and institutional shareholders have received letters from sales promotion company Don Marketing accusing Shell of a cover-up involving a “flawed” promotion.

Don and Shell are involved in a long-running legal dispute, due to come to court in February. Don has issued three high court writs and county court proceedings against Shell, alleging the wrongful use of retail promotions developed by Don Marketing. Shell has settled one of the three writs out of court.

Now Don has formed the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group, put ads in the petrol trade press rallying support from others who have had dealings with the firm and written to institutional investors. Those who have received a letter include the pension fund manager of The Equitable Life Assurance Society, a heavy investor in Shell.

“This pressure group has been formed by more than a dozen individuals and companies owning shares in Shell because of our growing concern about the ethical conduct of Shell UK,” says Alfred Donovan, who founded the group in support of his son John – who runs Don Marketing.

Shell UK says Don initiated the legal proceedings and that it will wait for its day in court. “Shell UK is sorry Donovan has not felt confident enough to await the outcome of the legal proceedings which he initiated and which Shell is keen to conclude.”

Forte seeks global head of marketing Forte is looking for its first world-wide marketing director, after splitting its central sales and marketing function into two.

Forte has promoted Jackie Kernaghan, who has been acting sales and marketing director since November last year, to the new position of worldwide sales director. It has also created a second new position – worldwide marketing director. Both jobs are at managing director level, which puts them on a par with heads of Forte brands.

A Forte spokeswoman says: “We have changed the focus of our sales and marketing and are putting more weight behind each function.”

The centralised teams will concentrate on the group’s top 200 accounts, she says, and on other services such as the Forte card. Otherwise, “we will be continuing with separate marketing teams for the brands”.

Shell faces libel threat from Don By Marketing Week 31 Mar 1995 Sales promotion agency Don Marketing is threatening to sue Shell UK for libel while at the same time circulating the results of a poll it claims to have carried out among Shell retailers.

The two companies are due to meet in court over Don’s accusation that Shell used its ideas in a series of promotions without permission or payment.

Don has sent a letter to Shell from solicitors acting for Don claiming a press release the company issued two weeks ago was defamatory and untrue (MW March 24) and is demanding a retraction.

Among issues covered in the press release was Shell’s application to the court for security for its costs in the event of Don losing the case, to ensure Don will pay Shell’s legal expenses.

But Don also says Shell’s press release amounted to an “unfounded personal attack” on Alfred Donovan, the father of John Donovan the managing director of Don Marketing, who runs the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group (SCCPG) even though “Shell is aware that Mr Donovan is a 78-year-old ex-regular army, war-disabled pensioner”.

A spokesman for Shell says the company has no plans to retract the press statement.

Shell faces libel action as Don’s founder issues writ By Marketing Week 21 Apr 1995 Alfred Donovan, a founder of sales promotion company Don Marketing and the Shell Cor-porate Conscience Pressure Group, has issued a writ against Shell UK claiming damages for libel.

This latest twist in the long-running legal wrangle between Don Marketing and Shell comes as the two companies prepare to meet in court over Don’s accusation that Shell used the agency’s ideas in a series of promotions without permission or payment (MW February 24 and March 31).

Among issues covered in the press release at the heart of this latest dispute was Shell’s application to the court for Don Marketing to provide £62,000 security for its costs in the event of Don losing the case. This was to ensure Don will pay Shell’s legal expenses.

The court ruled that Don should provide £10,000 as security to the end of the part of the legal process known as the “discovery stage”.

But Don also says that Shell’s press release amounted to an “unfounded personal attack” on Alfred Donovan, the father of John Donovan who is managing director of Don Marketing.

Shell says it stands by its press release, while Don pro-mises to stage a demonstration at Shell’s AGM next month/

Don takes its payment fight to Shell’s agm

BYLN:

By Marketing Week 26 May 1995

Sales promotion agency Don Marketing has carried out its long-standing threat to picket Shell’s annual general meeting (MW January 20), while at the same time also having direct talks with Shell. The two companies are to meet in court on June 24 over Don’s accusation that Shell used its ideas in a series of promotions without permission or payment. Representatives from Don handed out leaflets to staff and shareholders at Shell’s agm, headed “A Shell Game: a game of deception”, which suggested questions delegates should raise at the meeting. During the agm, Alfred Donovan – father of Don Marketing managing director John Donovan – requested a meeting with John Jennings, chairman of Shell transport and trading. Donovan senior runs the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group, set up to canvass support among Shell retailers.

The meeting between Donovan and Jennings took place after the agm, though Shell says this does not indicate any change in its position and emphasises that legal action is continuing.

Shell also claims that Donovan asked the company if it would adopt “binding arbitration” schemes to allow disputes to be settled without recourse to legal action. No one at Don Marketing would comment on the latest moves

No Title

BYLN:

By Marketing Week 2 Jun 1995

John Donovan, of sales promotion agency Don Marketing, says he will have a team picketing Shell’s London headquarters for four days a week distributing a leaflet detailing his company’s grievances against the oil giant (MW May 26).

SBHD:

BYLN:

By Marketing Week8 Sep 1995 Shell UK and Don Marketing have agreed that the only way to settle their dispute over payment for promotional work will be through the courts. Shell made the announcement after meeting with managing director John Donovan. 1998 Shell is being sued… By Tom O’Sullivan By Marketing Week16 Apr 1998 Shell is being sued for allegedly breaching copyright on the concept idea it used to create its Shell Smart Card loyalty programme.

The legal row could further delay the national roll-out of the scheme. It has been tested in Scotland for the past 12 months and was to have been introduced nationally at the end of last year. However, it was delayed because the ten partners in the scheme, including Dixons, the RAC and Commercial Union, could not agree on a launch date.

The High Court writ was issued last Thursday by the promotional agency Don Marketing. It alleges that the agency first offered the idea for a “multibrand” loyalty scheme to the oil company at a confidential meeting between the agency and Shell on October 23 1989. The idea was further discussed in a letter dated July 24 1990 but at that stage Shell said that it did not want to pursue the Don Marketing concept.

The writ also reveals that Don Marketing had approached both Sainsbury’s and Tesco, among other potential partners, to join a multibrand scheme with Shell in early 1990. Sainsbury’s was an initial member of the Shell Smart Card consortium in 1996 but is not part of the Scottish trial. The writ says Don Marketing developed the scheme on the basis of attracting market leaders from different sectors as partners.

Don Marketing managing director John Donovan has been in talks with Shell for the past 12 months. “It was not obviously our scheme until Shell launched its trial in Scotland,” says Donovan, “that is when we realised it was our scheme.”

Shell denies the legal action will affect the national roll-out. “The claim has been most comprehensively investigated and discussed in correspondence with Mr Donovan,” says a Shell spokeswoman. “Shell is satisfied that it is completely without substance. We now intend to defend vigorously Mr Donovan’s claims in court.”

Don Marketing is claiming multimillion pound damages. Its writ demands an injunction to prevent Shell using the scheme, an admission that the agency’s confidential information was “misused” and that all promotional material credits Don Marketing with originating the scheme.

This legal case is the latest in a series of spats between Shell and Don Marketing. All have been settled out of court with the settlements remaining confidential.

ASA dragged into Shell UK Smart battle By Marketing Week7 May 1998

The Advertising Standards Authority has been dragged into the legal fight between Shell UK and the sales promotion agency Don Marketing.

The agency issued a High Court writ against Shell at Easter alleging a copyright infringement over ownership of the Smart card concept.

But now it is alleging that in 1995 Shell deliberately misled the ASA, which was investigating complaints about its Make Money promotion. As part of it, envelopes were given away with petrol purchases, containing two pieces of paper which had to match to qualify for a prize. Players complained that the envelopes were not secure.

The allegation about Shell misleading the ASA is made on a specially created Website, which discusses Don Marketing’s relationship with Shell over the past ten years.

Don Marketing managing director John Donovan claims Shell lawyers asked his company to withhold additional information which it wanted to pass to the ASA as part of a complaint it had also made.

At the time of the ASA investigation, in July and August 1995, Don Marketing was negotiating to resolve an outstanding legal claim with Shell over ownership of the Make Money promotion idea.

“Shell torpedoed that (ASA) investigation and stopped important information going to the ASA,” says Donovan. “We had further information that would’ve changed what the ASA said in its report.”

The ASA dismissed the complaint. ASA spokesman Bill Lennon. says: “I cannot see it is in anybody’s interest to reopen the claim.”

Shell adds: “Shell did not mislead the ASA. It had all the information it needed to make its decision.”

Shell: Don is more than ‘disgruntled’ By Marketing Week21 May 1998

I am writing in response to Alan Mitchell’s article about the key to loyalty card survival (MW May 14). He mentioned Shell’s aspiration to reach 8 million members within a year “legal battles with disgruntled sales promotion agencies permitting” – a reference to our High Court action against Shell. “Disgruntled” is not the description I would choose. Frankly, I am absolutely pissed off with Shell UK. Let me explain why.

The multimillion pound claim in respect of the Smart consortium concept operated by Shell in the UK and in several other countries is not our first High Court action against Shell UK. It is the fourth. All involve breach of confidence and/or breach of contract. All involve the same Shell UK national promotions manager. It has been going on for five drawn out years.

I also want to set the record straight regarding a statement issued by Shell UK on or around April 21 1998 in which it gave the impression that I am a vexatious litigant, who issues High Court actions in respect of bogus claims.

In fact, Shell has already settled the first three actions in our favour. I even received an unsolicited letter of apology from Dr Fay, the chairman of Shell UK, admitting that its dealings with us did not meet “the high standards we set ourselves and which our long relationship had led you to expect of us”. I have now issued libel proceedings against Shell UK for defamation in regard to its press statement.

As Shell is well aware, we were not the only sales promotion agency which complained to Shell UK about the business practices of the relevant manager. Even its retained promotions agency eventually refused to disclose confidential information in his presence. We are, however, the only agency which has been brave enough (or foolish enough) to take on one of the world’s leading multinational Goliaths.

I do not recommend anyone else to follow our path. Litigation on such a scale has a destructive effect on business and family. Shell UK and its lawyers have bombarded my company and my family with threats over the years (verbally and in writing). Some have come from the highest levels of Shell UK management. However, we will see it through to the end, as we are determined that right will prevail over might.

It is only fair to mention for the record, that in the interests of justice, Sir John Jennings, the chairman of Shell Transport & Trading Company up to June 1997, personally interceded in our legal battles with Shell UK. I had several brief meetings with him. He upheld Shell’s Statement of General Business Principles requiring honesty, integrity and openness in all of Shell’s dealings.

Mitchell mentioned Shell’s desire to expand the number of partners in Smart. With the objective of avoiding publicity that could have damaged Shell’s plans to expand the scheme, it was agreed over a year ago that Shell would, in effect, take the Smart claim up to the “discovery” stage, without any legal proceedings being commenced.

As litigation is now underway, that arrangement has ended. I am therefore sending legal notifications to existing Smart partners reserving rights to take legal action if they continue to participate in the scheme that Shell is conducting without our consent.

We will also be notifying potential partners.

John Donovan

Don Marketing

Bury St Edmunds

Suffolk

Shell faces new threat to Smart card scheme By Marketing Week21 May 1998 Don Marketing, the sales promotion agency embroiled in a legal wrangle with Shell UK, is threatening to send letters to Shell’s 1,700 service stations warning owners about the legal implications of operating the Smart card scheme.

Managing director John Donovan intends to send a “letter before action” to a sample station – Tim Brinton Cars in Bury St Edmunds – then roll out the mailing to the entire network at a later date.

The proposed “letter before action” warns that Don Marketing has the legal right to seek damages against any company participating in the Shell Smart scheme without consent from John Donovan.

Shell’s solicitor DJ Freeman has written to Donovan’s solicitors Royds Treadwell warning that “the sending of such notices amounts to an inducement to breach their contractual commitments to our clients, and as such, are unlawful”.

But Donovan is adamant that the letter will be sent even though the full mailing to all service stations will cost thousands of pounds.

“It is our firm intention to send it and if stations continue to operate the Smart scheme we will issue further proceedings to stop them,” he says.

Don Marketing has issued two writs alleging Shell UK breached copyright on the concept idea used to create the Smart card loyalty programme and for alleged defamation of Donovan in a press statement (MW April 16 and 23).

Shell has been warned by its solicitors not to speak to the press following Donovan’s defamation action.

The company issued a state ment saying: “The proper forum for resolving these matters is in court and proceedings are moving forward to enable them to be resol-ved there.

Don Marketing posts warning about Shell By Marketing Week28 May 1998

Don Marketing, the sales promotion agency alleging Shell breached copyright on the idea it used to create the Shell Smart card scheme, has placed an advertisement in this week’s Marketing Week warning businesses they may face legal action if they join the scheme.

Under the headline “Shell Smart Legal Notice”, the ad sets out the details of the court case and warns potential partners that participation in the scheme “may involve an infringement of rights, rendering it liable to legal action”.

Don Marketing managing director John Donovan has been forced by Shell’s legal department to revise a letter he planned to send to Shell’s 1,700 service stations (MW May 21).

The revised “letter before action” will be sent to all Gulf stations which have not been rebranded as Shell and are not yet contracted into the Smart scheme with Shell.

Donovan says: “There is a problem with interfering with existing contracts, but we are setting our approach out in the letter.”

The letter will also be sent to Shell service stations to warn managers they will be liable to legal proceedings when the Smart card scheme ends, and also to dealers to warn they will be liable if they switch to another franchise brand.

Shell UK is adamant it will win the case when it reaches the High Court. Mike Harle, retail development manager for UK and Ireland, says: “We think the case is clear that the Shell Smart card scheme out there is not John Donovan’s, but ours. We believe we can prove this in court.”

Shell UK will keep its station owners informed of the legal proceedings.

1999 Judge Shell by actions not words By Marketing Week 25 Feb 1999

I read with interest your editorial about the ethical dilemmas facing multinationals and the reference in particular to Shell’s recent public relations disasters. You say that “Shell has apparently learned its lesson”. I beg to differ.

My claim against Shell UK in respect of the Smart loyalty scheme is set down for a three week High Court trial in June.

I invite Marketing Week to attend the trial. You will then be able to make an informed assessment of Shell’s ethical conduct after sensational evidence is put into the public domain.

Don Marketing, the agency I founded, has successfully sued Shell three times in recent years for allegedly stealing business ideas that we put to the company in the strictest confidence. Shell settled out of court each time.

During the current litigation, Shell has employed undercover investigators who have used outright deception in the course of their activities. I have a letter from Shell’s legal director, Richard Wiseman, admitting Shell’s association with the covert activities (copy available on request).

I would respectfully recommend that you wait for the emergence of evidence in the coming trial before making further comments about Shell’s reformed ethical conduct. We must judge Shell by its deeds, not by its words.

John Donovan

Founder of Don Marketing UK Bury St Edmunds

Suffolk

Don ends legal proceedings against Shell UK By Marketing Week 8 Jul 1999 The six-year legal battle between oil giant Shell UK and sales promotion company Don Marketing has finally been settled.

John Donovan, owner of Don Marketing, yesterday dropped his High Court action against the company over allegations that Shell stole his ideas for the Shell Small Card, a multibrand loyalty card.

Donovan first sued Shell in 1993 over allegations that the oil company and forecourt retailer stole his ideas for a number of sales promotions. Three of the claims were settled out of court.

The final claims were laid to rest this week. The two parties issued a joint statement yesterday, saying: “John Donovan has abandoned his claim against Shell in relation to Shell’s Smart loyalty scheme. He has acknowledged that these claims are without foundation and should not have been brought.

“Mr Donovan has also withdrawn all allegations of impropriety made against Shell or against its employees in connection with these proceedings and has agreed not to repeat them in any manner whatsoever.

“For its part, Shell acknowledges that Mr Donovan’s proceedings were brought in good faith and also withdraws all allegations of impropriety made during the proceedings.”

Neither party would make any further comment.

 

 

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