Sakhalin II oil and gas project Russian Federation

The Sakhalin II project in the Russian Far East is said by project sponsors to be the largest integrated oil and gas project in the world.  The project  involves three offshore oil and gas platforms and subsea pipelines to shore. The oil and gas will then be transported via 800 km of onshore pipelines to what will be one of the world’s largest natural gas liquefaction and export terminal and oil export facilities at Prigorodnoye, in the south of Sakhalin.

SEIC has installed its new oil platform adjacent to the only known feeding ground of the approximately 120 critically endangered Western Gray Whales.  After initially planning to build a subsea oil pipeline directly through the whale’s feeding area, SEIC re-directed the offshore pipeline just adjacent to the feeding area, continuing to threaten the population with its far-reaching impact. Noise, collisions, and sediment disturbance put the whales at risk during construction.  The whales will face an ongoing risk of an oil spill in this harsh environment. The sea around the platform is covered by ice for 6 months of the year, seriously limiting the ability of SEIC to respond to an oil spill.  Despite unreasonably optimistic promises by SEIC, there is no proven effective way to respond to oil spills in ice conditions.

Shell has not followed the precautionary approach, refusing to deviate from its construction schedule to wait for the completion of scientific analysis and it refuses to follow much of the advice from a panel of whale experts hosted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. As a result, the decision of whether the oil platform base should be constructed at all in the area of the critically endangered Western Gray Whale became moot issues for the panel. The whale scientists also made recommendations on noise limits, which SEIC has ignored.

SEIC is constructing over 1000 pipeline river crossings, which has led to damage to salmon spawning rivers.  SEIC has failed to construct 800 kilometers of parallel on-shore oil and gas pipelines simultaneously to reduce impact. Ineffective erosion control, unapproved stream diversion and sedimentation of rivers have damaged hundreds of salmon spawning rivers and tributaries. SEIC has revised its river crossings strategy but has failed to comply with the requirements of this strategy on a high percentage of sensitive rivers. Meanwhile, SEIC's pipeline design has failed to account for geohazards and river migration features of Sakhalin that will result in risks extending throughout the life of the project. NGO monitoring in October and December 2007 continued to find non-compliance with the required river-crossing and soil erosion management plans, raising concerns over the integrity of the pipeline system, especially in areas prone to seismic zones and landslides.

SEIC is constructing the world’s largest liquid natural gas plant in the south of the island in Aniva Bay. In so doing, SEIC dredged the bay to deepen the access for tankers, and dumped the dredged materials in the middle of this fisheries-rich bay, refusing to dump the material in a less environmentally harmful location further out to sea. Fisheries have been disrupted, and SEIC did not accurately predict the impact on the bay ecosystem.  SEIC did not adequately consult on the construction of a jetty in Aniva as required by Russian EIA law. The local shellfish beds continue to suffer from damage from dumping of dredged material.

The vast majority of environmental problems and EP compliance failures occurred while SEIC was led by Royal Dutch Shell.

In October, 2007, SEIC announced that a new consultant report for potential lenders gives the project a "clean bill of health."  However, this report actually reveals amongst other things systematic and chronic violations of policies and standards of potential international lenders and, by extension, the Equator Principles.  An NGO critique of this report is available in the documents section below.