Shell ousted from Russian oilfields

international | environment | other press Sunday September 24, 2006 22:40 by R. Isible

Guardian UK: Blair wades in to Russia oil crisis

The Russian government is pushing Shell out of the Sakhalin Islands oilfields using environmental arguments. This has the happy side-effect of stopping Shell (and its Japanese partners) and Exxon from being able to raise prices.

Blair has in turn (as the unofficial mouthpiece of US policy) leaned on Putin in order to try and keep Gazprom (the Russian state energy company) from gaining complete control of the oilfields. This appears to be unsuccesful as Gazprom is in negotiations with Indian shareholders of the Sakhalin-1 project to buy them out. The Russian government has explicitly threatened to revoke Shell's license for Sakhalin-2 and Exxon's license for Sakhalin-1. Currently Shell's license is temporarily suspended for environmental breaches, specifically disruption of Western Grey Whales and salmon.