MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's environmental regulator said Tuesday it had filed suit seeking to revoke approval for a billion international oil project led by Royal Dutch Shell on the Pacific island of Sakhalin.

The Federal Service for the Supervision of Natural Resources had signaled for several weeks that it planned to ask the Natural Resources Ministry to withdraw its approval for the Sakhalin-2 project in Russia's Far East.

Environmental groups today welcomed the decision by the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources to sue to halt construction of the Royal Dutch Shell’s Sakhalin-II pipeline. The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources announced on August 3, 2006 that it will sue Shell’s Sakhalin II oil and gas project due to poor engineering that has resulted in land slides that are environmentally harmful and a safety hazard. Several independent environmental organizations have confirmed these findings.

Fresh photographs taken by Sakhalin Environment Watch from June 21-July 3, 2006 show continued severe erosion problems on Shell’s problem-plagued Sakhalin II oil and gas project on Russia’s Sakhalin Island. A photo report with written description can be found at:

Three environmental organizations released pictures today of recent environmental damage caused during construction of pipelines associated with Royal Dutch Shell's enormously risky Sakhalin II oil and gas project, located on Sakhalin Island, in the Russian Far East.[1] The photographs document violations of Sakhalin Energy Investment Company’s river crossing strategy, international banking policies and Russian law, despite Shell’s public commitment to prevent environmental damage. These pictures are available at:

The Hague, Netherlands - In the weeks running up to the May 16, 2006, Shell Annual Shareholder?s meeting in the Hague, the oil giant has embarked on a broad PR campaign to try to minimize the impacts of its massive Sakhalin II oil and gas project on the critically endangered Western Gray Whale. ?The world is watching the Gray Whales of Sakhalin. Alexander Rutenko is also listening,? the ad says, referring to that scientist?s monitoring of underwater noise impacts on the whale.

Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc and its partners in a billion Russian natural-gas venture are being confronted by environmentalists over the project's ecological consequences in a series of public hearings.

On March 15, the United Nations General Assembly voted 170–4 to create a new Human Rights Council, effectively dissolving the oft-criticized Commission on Human Rights. Candidates for the Council will need to be elected by an absolute majority of 96 votes in order to secure a position, and once elected members can serve a maximum of two consecutive terms.

San Francisco, CA - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is concealing a crucial report that it commissioned on the Sakhalin II oil and gas project’s damage to wild salmon runs.The so-called ‘Birmingham Group’report^[1] critically examines the Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s failed strategy for crossing hundreds of Sakhalin Island’s wild salmon rivers, streams and tributaries with eight hundred kilometers of Sakhalin II oil and gas pipelines. 

* Philip Merrill has left Exim Bank. Send emails to the Chairman and Acting President of Exim Bank, James H. Lambright; same address as before, with this email: james.lambright@exim.gov .

Celebrate some good news with our campaign partners on Sakhalin Island, Russia!

Since January 2004, Global Response has participated in an international campaign to stop Shell Oil company from endangering the Pacific Gray Whale and the wild salmon fishery of Sakhalin Island.  Indigenous communities have been protesting on Sakhalin for many months.

Now a Russian court has rejected Shell's Sakhalin-II Environmental Review. See more information below, from Pacific Environment.

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 Indigenous leaders of the island of Sakhalin in the far east of Russia have joined forces as a new wave of oil and gas development on the island is encroaching on their traditional lands.

On March 25-26, representatives of the Nivkh, Orok, Evenk, and Nanai peoples of Sakhalin held a congress in the town of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Roughly 3,000 indigenous people make up about 0.5 percent of the island’s total population.

On January 20, around 250 representatives of the Evenk, Nivkh, Nanai, and Uilta indigenous peoples of Sakhalin Island took to the streets in Venskoye settlement, Nogliksky, to protest the activities of international oil companies in the area. The first in a series of actions, participants declared that construction of oil and gas pipelines, processing facilities, and other large industrial sites are having a direct negative impact on the lives and livelihoods of indigenous peoples.