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Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it. 

Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.

Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit. 

• Oct 2, 2026 Comment As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage With UN climate funds running short on cash, now is the time to start taxing the companies whose emissions are driving harm in the Pacific and other vulnerable parts of the world Read more
• Oct 5, 2026 Politics At pre-COP, UN climate chief warns of heat threat to mothers and babies The spotlight on maternal health came on the first day of the pre-COP31 meeting in Fiji, where Pacific concerns are set to top the agenda as ministers gather for talks Read more

Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to know that this coal will be shipped across the ocean, bring air pollution, and eventually lead to the destruction of Pacific islands thousands of miles away is another kind of heartbreak.

Rising ocean waters

I’m an Australian-born Samoan. In 2002, I visited my family home for the first time. My father took me to the rural community where generations of my family were raised. He did not have the words to describe how much has changed since rising ocean waters had taken away almost a third of the beach.

I learned of how we had to relocate my great‑great‑grandparents’ grave to higher ground twice in the last 15 years. Of how my cousins have to paddle out further to sea to catch fish, since warmer waters have destroyed much of the reef. Of how the ocean crashes so close to my uncle’s home that he had to build a new house further away. 

A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams A climate activist protesting the drilling of new coal seam gas wells holds a sign during a demonstration outside Origin Energy Ltd’s Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Australia, October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams

We saw reflections of our own climate destruction in the Pacific when we shared these stories with our First Nations relatives at the edge of the Saraji mine. Murrawah Johnson and Teila Watson, both Birri Gubba and Gangulu women, made clear connections between their struggles and ours. “We don’t get to inherit our land and we don’t get to inherit our traditional roles. We are fighting a war on extinction,” Murrawah said.

Coal extraction devastated their lands and cultures – totems have disappeared, fresh water has become scarce – while the effects of using it have devastated ours. “King tide, cyclones, all the violence that has been enacted on your country and people is because of the violence that has been allowed here, to us and our country,” Teila said.

Wearing the mantle of climate leadership

This week, Australia is assuming the mantle of climate leadership as co-president and head of negotiations of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP31. It will lead on deliberating the summit’s priorities as world leaders and climate negotiators descend on Fiji and Tuvalu for the pre-COP meetings.

Ironically, just days before the pre-COP began, the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission approved the largest-ever coal project the state has seen, set to emit an extra 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions. I joined the Pacific Climate Warriors and other communities in submitting about 4,000 appeals to oppose the project – yet these all fell on deaf ears. 

• Sep 18, 2026 News Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn Türkiye and Australia are pushing coal, oil and gas at home with no national timeline for their own fossil fuel phase-out Read more
• Mar 19, 2025 Justice This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future The mining town of Collie offers a promising example of how to survive – and even thrive – amid the global transition to net-zero emissions Read more

But the fight is not yet over. The project still requires federal approval to proceed, so every promise that Australia makes while at the helm of the climate talks counts. These promises will be measured against actual decisions it makes at home: to either lock us into more decades of climate pollution, or begin shutting down coal and gas once and for all.

Pacific leaders have made it clear that countries must align their policies with the 1.5-degree warming goal, a limit that we already know will be breached within the decade. Any chance of keeping this still within reach requires an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion and concrete plans to phase out existing projects. But success will be an uphill battle if COP31’s own head of negotiations refuses to lead by example.

Kaibakia Pinata holds the fish he caught in his nets off Bikeman islet, located off South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 25, 2013. Credit: Reuters Kaibakia Pinata holds the fish he caught in his nets off Bikeman islet, located off South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 25, 2013. Credit: Reuters

Australia remains the second-largest coal exporter in the world. It is one of the very few industrialised countries under the Paris Agreement’s Annex I that still has no coal phase-out plan. Since 2022, the Albanese government has approved 37 new, expanded or extended coal, oil and gas projects. It is thus unsurprising that its own mitigation policies have been rated by Climate Action Tracker as “insufficient”, even without factoring in fossil fuel exports and related expansion.

Keeping 1.5C alive

Australia must course-correct to earn the mantle it has been given, especially by Pacific nations that backed the country’s bid for the COP31 co-presidency. As a first step, the government must end all coal expansion and explicitly declare a coal phase-out date. It’s the only way to show that it’s capable of leadership that moves beyond endlessly deliberating the “if”, and starts implementing the “how” of keeping the 1.5C target alive. 

The dread I felt staring down at the abyss on the edge of that coal mine months ago still exists. I carry it with me as I show up at the pre-COP to demand that leaders heed the calls of Pacific people. But it is tempered with resolve to keep our lands and communities alive. We remain steadfast in our efforts to secure an outcome that protects people everywhere and brings us back below 1.5 degrees as soon as possible.

The post Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy appeared first on Climate Home News.

Headline News:

• “Climate Change Takes Center Stage In SCOTUS Battle Over Oil Companies” • The City of Boulder and Boulder County, Colorado, in 2018 sued major fossil-fuel producers. They allege the companies “knowingly caused and contributed” to climate change by promoting fossil fuels. The case is before the US Supreme Court. [ABC News]

Impacted forest (Dan West, Colorado State Forest Service)

• “Aula Energy Plans 1.8-GWh battery To ‘Optimise’ 330 MW Solar Farm” • Aula Energy, owner of one of Australia’s biggest solar farms, has revealed plans to add a 1.8 GWh battery energy storage system at a site in central west New South Wales. It is seeking to overcome limitations associated with the intermittent nature of solar energy. [pv magazine Australia]
• “Climate Damage Already ‘Locked In’ – But These 10 Insights Show Our Future Is Still Being Decided” • The 10 New Insights In Climate Science report points to a “narrowing window for action” but one that is still open, showing us what is already locked in, what can still be avoided, and where policy can have the greatest effect. [Euronews]
• “BYD Commercial Vehicle Sales Up 113% In September” • Sales of BYD’s commercial vehicles, all EVs, look great now. BYD has separated reporting them into bus sales and non-bus sales, but we can combine them. BYD’s total was 6,848, 194.8% more than the 2,323 sold in August 2026 and 113.3% more than the 3,210 sold in September 2025. [CleanTechnica]
• “The EPA Cooks The Books And The Planet” • The Trump EPA went past repealing the 2024 power plant standards. It issued a new proposal purporting to find that the EPA lacks any authority to regulate power plants’ climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. The proposal is yet another step on this administration’s campaign against climate action. [CleanTechnica]

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

As CUPE and the four Ontario teachers’ unions announce their plans for strike votes in November, CUPE-OSBCU, the union representing 57,000 Educational Assistants, caretakers, office...

The post Ontario education workers: CUPE says no work-to-rule, will strike on day one first appeared on Spring.

As the fever dream of this summer’s scorching heat slowly subsides, nightmares from Europe’s past are lingering in waking life in the form of warships, bombs, and catapult stones. Still, a shared understanding of history remains elusive despite physical evidence of all that befell the continent. And while some of the walls that separated us have crumbled, new divides are forming in front of our very eyes.

London’s unforgiving, sun-bleached summer of 2026 has a dystopian, hallucinatory quality. As I write this, the city has not seen proper rain in 45 days. We swelter, unused to high temperatures. Air-conditioning in private homes is rare. People are suffering from sleep deprivation. Underground trains and buses are like ovens. A hosepipe ban has turned English lawns into dusty deserts of parched yellow and trees are shedding leaves to survive. We watch in horror as wildfires devour vast areas of France and seemingly everywhere else further south. Reports suggest that almost half a million hectares of European land have been consumed by flames so far this year.

Email exchanges with friends across the European continent frequently start and end with the weather. A distinguished university professor in Timișoara, in Romania, reports living as if under house arrest, with temperatures rising into the 40s. “In the end we will probably have a repeat of the 1980s,” she writes, “when, albeit for different reasons, there were constant power and running water cuts”. Our conversations about climate are increasingly coloured by a fatalism which seems, in many ways, more difficult to argue against than climate denial.

Skeletons of the past

Meanwhile, the falling waters of the Danube, Europe’s great East-West thoroughfare, are peeling back layers of European history in a way which makes the physical vulnerability of our present difficult to separate from the traumas of our past. In Hungary, the riverbed has surrendered centuries-old catapult stones and a live wartime bomb, causing a temporary bridge closure in Budapest. Further downstream, the wreck of a cargo ship materialised in Croatia, and the ancient remains of a woolly mammoth surfaced in Bulgaria. Most striking of all, a fleet of World War II German warships emerged from the river’s former depths in Prahovo, Serbia. Skeletons of the European past have never seemed so close to the surface.

Elsewhere, history is yielding its secrets through deliberate excavations. Joint archaeological teams from Poland and Ukraine are searching for the mass graves of up to 100,000 Poles murdered by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the Volyn Oblast during the last two years of the Second World War. This vast project is, in some ways, a belated example of the type examined by Katherine Verdery in her seminal book The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (1999).

In some ways, the passage of time and the exigencies of economic survival have achieved more progress towards reconciliation than the activities of expensive and sometimes self-serving international bodies set up to forge it.

The people of Eastern Europe, Verdery argued, suffered “cosmic disorientation” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In order to re-anchor their sense of history, they turned to exhuming, moving, and reburying historical figures and national heroes, as well as counting victims of mass executions in an effort to reframe versions of the past they had lived with since the end of the Second World War. The materiality of dead bodies seemed to promise an “objective truth” in contrast to narratives coloured by communist ideology.

Ukraine may be spurred to cooperate with Poland by its desire to join the European Union, but “objective truth” requires more than a body count. Having witnessed perhaps the largest and certainly the most technologically advanced effort in human history, conducted on the territories of at least four of its successor states, and still ongoing, former Yugoslavia illustrates the limitations of such endeavours. Causes and effects of past events continue to be disputed to the extent that makes the idea of a shared, agreed version of history seem like a naïve dream. In some ways, the passage of time and the exigencies of economic survival, involving trade, shared infrastructure projects, or cross-border employment, have achieved more progress – however painfully slow – towards reconciliation than the activities of expensive and sometimes self-serving international bodies set up to forge it.

I am drawn to contested versions of history by the invitation to consider the current state of the East-West divide in Europe, and its transformations in the last 15 years. The evidence of this summer’s parched landscapes leads me to wonder if the North-South division is not already more critical. The seemingly unstoppable mass migration patterns are certainly speaking in its favour. Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2020 was largely driven by fears of uncontrolled immigration, yet when it comes to global movement, post-Brexit Britain and the rest of Europe continue to share the same problems. Desperate people walking and sailing into Europe from Sub-Saharan Africa or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan do not worry if their biometric passports are EES or ETA compliant.

Europe “as it used to be”

In an episode from the 2010 UK election campaign, broadcast live on British television, 65-year-old lifelong Labour supporter Gillian Duffy challenged the then prime minister Gordon Brown by highlighting immigration issues. “But all these Eastern Europeans that are coming in, where are they flocking from?” she asked. Brown offered a predictably anodyne public response. Some moments later, being driven away and forgetting that his microphone was still on, he commented to his aide that the conversation was a disaster and that Duffy was “just a sort of bigoted woman”.

The comment derailed Brown’s campaign by its suggestion of political arrogance, yet the so-called “Bigotgate”, highly damaging at the time, seems almost quaint today. Even the language used to depict the threat of immigration belongs to a simpler world. Instead of “flocking”, with its suggestion of birds that can potentially fly away as easily as they arrived, we now hear threats of biblical deluge, conquest and population replacement. The most prejudiced Brexiteers sometimes hint at nostalgia for the Polish plumbers of yesteryear and even a degree of envy for those plumbers’ as yet unspoiled homeland.

It might seem paradoxical that Poland, historically one of Europe’s most significant exporters of labour, is also one of the most vocal opponents of southern migration. It is not without its support in western social media, where countries such as Poland, Hungary, or the Baltic republics are often mentioned not as “New Eastern Europe” but as Europe “as it used to be”, evoking postcard images tinged with the sepia tones of false memory. Such nostalgia is often a conservative fantasy, a coping mechanism for the West’s own identity crisis and its diminishing social cohesion.

In 2022, I published Iron Curtain, a novel set in the mid-1980s, the dog days of communism. Its story linked an unnamed Soviet satellite state with Britain in the grips of its yuppie revolution under its Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. I had lived through the era but the experience of recreating it on the page seemed at times as challenging as researching the French Revolution. In 1986, I arrived in London from socialist Yugoslavia, a country enjoying freedoms unimaginable further east and officially not behind the Iron Curtain. As a student I had criss-crossed Europe by train. Britain was less easily accessible. Airplane tickets were expensive and a single telephone call from London to my parents in Belgrade cost more than my current monthly mobile phone bill. We were so paralysed by the need to be succinct that our conversation often consisted of the same basic phrases, reassuring each other that everything was all right. Our steadiest link consisted of weekly letters: one means of communicating which has since become both more expensive and more unreliable.

What resurfaced with those memories, more than almost anything else, is a sense of the sheer physical distance between East and West, a void that is no longer there. My British students hop on an airplane to spend a weekend in Riga or Budapest with less forethought than, at their age, I gave to spending 48 hours in my grandparents’ village a hundred kilometres south of Belgrade. Could the distinction between East and West still be relevant, on either side of wherever that divide might lie now, when a whole generation of what would have been East Europeans has grown up benefiting from freedom of movement, buttressed by budget flights and a shared digital space?

Nostalgia is often a conservative fantasy, a coping mechanism for the West’s own identity crisis and its diminishing social cohesion.

Recycled concepts

Indeed, it sometimes seems that the East now has an advantage even beyond the conservative longing for an impossible return to safe, homogenous, and traditional societies. In The Historical Novel (1937), György Lukács described how an awareness of Europe was formed by the mass marches of the Napoleonic Wars, taking millions of people for the first time across their country’s border. Something similar happened at the beginning of this century, now in a benign context, when the borders of Western Europe opened to labourers from the East.

As reverse brain drain started to occur more recently, the West to East knowledge transfer brought with it an economic and digital boom in cities as far apart as Tallinn, Warsaw, and Cluj. It would appear that any notion of a simple binary opposition pitching a rich, democratic West against an impoverished East – unfree until 1989, then for many years lagging behind – has been replaced by a more complex, fluid set of ideas and values.

The concepts of East and West are still recycled, even if the West is no longer so sure of its progressive ideas; and the East is more ready to resist what it sees as western cultural impositions; and even if we are no longer so certain where exactly we are talking about when we talk about East and West. Again, it is in former Yugoslavia, once perceived as “the West in the East”, that the West continues to assert its superiority most confidently, even running Bosnia like an EU colony through its own appointed viceroy. The notion of “the Western Balkans”, now a common reference for those regional states still not in the EU, is part consolation prize, part insult. It is an oxymoronic designation devised by outsiders, and it makes no geographic sense other than to define a hole in Europe’s Balkan bagel.

Viewed from the West, this area is still routinely described in tones that are more redolent of Bismarck than of contemporary European debate. This is illustrated by a quote from a recent report published by the Robert Schuman Foundation: “In the Balkans, borders, regimes, dynasties, alliances and even the names of states are constantly changing … It is clear that today, Balkans or not, the region wants to be European. Yet will all these countries, having barely regained their sovereignty, easily accept Community rules which by definition imply limits to national sovereignty? Will the Community model suit them? After centuries of dependence, will they be able to tolerate a new form of federalism? And finally, can the European Union overcome the Balkan curse?”

There is profound irony in the fact that the report’s authors, the French centre-right politicians Jean Bizet and Fabrice Hugot, worry about the Balkan ability to accept limits to national sovereignty just at the moment when Western European nations are putting forward greater demands for sovereign border controls. To borrow their gothic turn of phrase, the curse may be European and not Balkan.

However, and whenever, the war in Ukraine ends, that new demarcation – between what Putin calls the ‘collective West’ and the shrunken, Russia-dominated East – seems likely to remain.

A new West?

Of course, it is impossible to discuss shifts in mutual perceptions between East and West while ignoring the fact that there is war in the East. I have argued elsewhere that the Iron Curtain was removed in 1989 only to divide Europe again in February 2022, this time several hundred miles further east from the Szczecin-Trieste line made famous by Churchill’s speech. However, and whenever, the war in Ukraine ends, that new demarcation – between what Putin calls the “collective West” and the shrunken, Russia-dominated East – seems likely to remain.

As we look at the parched earth of the South and the newly dug trenches of the East, yet another difference of perspective emerges from the geopolitical vice. It is the contrast between those countries in the European Union with direct memories of the Soviet Union and all too concrete fears of Russia, and those countries further West, with populations much more concerned with Israel and Palestine than they are with Ukraine. Their peoples are more influenced by the post-colonial priorities of the Global South than by fears of Moscow. To them, Gaza seems closer than Kyiv. It is easier, in light of such a divergent sense of existential threat, to pinpoint the “New East” than it is to locate the “New West”.

This article first appeared in New Eastern Europe. It is republished here with permission.

The Supreme Court opened its 2026-2027 term Monday with a climate case: a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, against Exxon Mobil and Suncor, a Canadian oil company, over the costs of a warming planet. The case is one of dozens across the country in which local governments have sued fossil fuel companies for their role in driving climate change and are seeking compensation as they now deal with its effects. The Supreme Court’s decision could decide the fate of all those other cases and the idea that oil companies must pay for the damages their products caused.

The justices gave no clear signs of how the court will rule, but over the course of two hours of questioning, they did demonstrate unison on one point: It is a hard and consequential task to identify who is legally liable for the impacts of climate change. 

Although Boulder’s case was first filed in Colorado courts, oil and gas companies asked the Supreme Court to step in, arguing that important climate change matters shouldn’t play out at the state level. Instead, they say, the issue belongs to Congress and the White House. Boulder wants the court to send the case back to Colorado, where it can proceed. 

Eight justices — Justice Samuel Alito removed himself from the case — attempted repeatedly to cast the case into something legible and simple. Multiple times, justices from both sides of the ideological spectrum asked attorneys, “Why make this argument so complex?” Yet they seldom openly agreed on what the simpler argument would be. The consequences for oil companies weighed heavily on some parts of the discussion, while the consequences for communities dealing with a warming planet went largely unexplored.

Some judges attempted to describe it as a case about reducing emissions — a framing that aligns closely with what Exxon Mobil and Suncor argue. If Boulder’s case is an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through state court, it opens the possibility that a state court could police activity all over the country, and even the world. No state law could be appropriate to apply to the cumulative impact of global pollution, the companies argue.

“This case involves an unprecedented effort to use state law to regulate global conduct,” said Kannon Shanmugam, the attorney representing oil companies.

Several justices seemed to agree with that general picture. Kavanaugh said he could see no difference between allowing a state court to order oil and gas companies to pay damages for climate-related harms and allowing a state to effectively regulate greenhouse gas emissions all over the world. He told Boulder’s attorney, Kevin Russell, that he was downplaying the effect this case could have on oil companies, arguing it could “bankrupt” some of them. In his closing arguments, Shanmugam reinforced the idea that the chaotic consequences of the case could reach the scale of climate change itself. 

“Boulder could tag me … when I am in Colorado in two weeks and sue me on a nuisance claim for refilling my car and thereby contributing to global climate change,” he said. 

A recently rebuilt neighborhood in Superior, Colorado, that had been destroyed in the Marshall Fire. Boulder County, where Superior lies, is suing oil companies in an attempt to receive compensation for the effects of climate change.
Chet Strange / The Washington Post via Getty Images

Ironically, these questions were far from what Boulder claimed it wanted to do with its case. The city hasn’t asked to stop companies from producing oil and gas, or to stop those who burn them from sending greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Rather, it wants oil companies to pay for deceiving the public into thinking those products weren’t producing large-scale harms through climate change. 

Justice Elena Kagan argued Boulder’s case was similar to suits that states brought against cigarette companies in the 1990s, seeking compensation for health care costs linked to tobacco consumption. The companies weren’t required to stop selling cigarettes, but to roll back their pro-cigarette marketing and fund awareness campaigns around the effects of smoking.

“This is not an effort to reduce emissions,” said Russell. “Under our deception theory, they can continue to produce as much fossil fuels as they like and contribute to as much air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as the market will bear when consumers are properly informed about the consequences of that decision.” 

“It doesn’t prohibit them from engaging in the conduct. It requires them to internalize a portion of the cost of their activities by paying for some of the damage,” Russell said later.

Kavanaugh called Russell’s phrasing “cavalier,” saying that those costs could be significant to oil and gas companies. Some firms, including Suncor, have told their shareholders the accumulating climate cases against them could affect their bottom lines. 

An Exxon gas station lies only blocks from the Supreme Court building on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. Exxon Mobil is one of the defendants in Boulder’s climate case. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, looms behind the station. Austin Corona / Grist

If the case is allowed to proceed in Colorado courts and Boulder wins, it could open the floodgates for other cases, Shanmugam argued: “More [suits] are being filed by the week … so given the extraordinary magnitude of these cases, where, in each of these cases, plaintiffs are seeking billions of dollars of damages, we need an answer to this question sooner rather than later.”

Justices typically hear opening arguments and ask questions at the beginning of the court’s term and then take months before publishing a decision. This thread was only one of several they teased apart during the arguments, including arguments over states’ regulatory authorities under the Constitution and the intent of the Clean Air Act. Judges could use a range of rationales for their ultimate ruling, each of which would affect other climate suits against oil companies differently because those suits depend on different legal bases.

“States and local governments are trying to recoup costs related to harms from climate change in a lot of different types of lawsuits,” said Erika Kranz, an attorney with Harvard Law School’s environmental and energy law program. Whether these other cases “run into trouble will depend on how justices write their decision.”

It’s also possible justices send the case back to Colorado, either by deciding the Supreme Court isn’t the right place for it or by voting 4-4, which would leave Boulder able to carry on with its state-level lawsuit. (Alito has not explained why he removed himself from the case, though he has faced accusations that his investments in oil and gas companies not related to the case made his participation inappropriate.)

Kranz and Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School, said it’s hard to know whether that emphasis showed the court was leaning toward the oil companies, but it suggested that at least some justices were deeply concerned about the case’s potential financial consequences for the industry.

Boulder’s lawyers must now convince them that this risk to oil and gas companies was beside the point, Winter said. To do that, Boulder will have to overcome justices’ claims that it’s trying to reduce emissions through the court.

“There’s a lot of concern from the oil industry, from corporate actors, and from the conservative justices about the significant consequences of these cases,” Winter said. “One way to get at that is to equate this case with previous cases, which were much more directly about regulation of pollution.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Supreme Court wrestles with who should pay for climate change on Oct 6, 2026.

Marvin Martin was in the Four Corners area of Dorchester one day when a train sped by on the Fairmount Line into downtown Boston. It was filled with white people, sitting comfortably and reading newspapers. It made him wonder why the commuter line seemed to pass through communities of color without stopping, leaving people in his neighborhood to crowd into buses.

Martin decided to do something about that. In 1995, he and others began pressuring the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to expand service. It took more than 15 years, but the agency added three stops in Dorchester in 2012 and 2013. It opened a fourth in Mattapan in 2019.

But Martin wasn’t finished. He also had been pushing for electrifying the line. 

“We want a train that would not be spewing a bunch of toxic particulates into the air,” Martin, who recently retired as the head of the transit advocacy organization Action For Equity, said.

Nearly three decades after Martin saw the train roll through Four Corners, the T, as the transit agency is known, plans to electrify the Fairmount line. It will lease seven battery-powered trains, each with four cars, for 15 years in a deal expected to cost $765 million. The arrangement allows the agency to gain experience with the technology before deciding whether to use it more widely.

The trains, built by the Swiss company Stadler, are slated for 2030. They will boost frequency of stops along the 10-mile route from every 30 minutes to every 20 and save 17,700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually compared to the diesels they will replace, according to the T.

Battery-powered trains allow transit agencies to electrify without the expense or complexity of installing overhead power lines, called catenary. But some worry the technology remains unproven on lines with ridership similar to what the Fairmount carries daily. 

Read Next How electrifying a Bay Area rail system made trains faster, cleaner, and more frequent Benton Graham

They’ll find out soon enough. Caltrain, which provides regional service in the San Francisco Bay Area, plans to introduce battery-powered trains by 2028. Chicago’s Metra has a similar timeline. The projects could offer a glimpse into the future of rail electrification, but the technology must first show that it is capable of transporting thousands of people each day.

Boston is no stranger to electric rail. Its first electric streetcar rolled out in 1889, and the Tremont Street Subway — now part of the Green Line — was the first electric subway in North America. (It was third worldwide behind Budapest and London.) 

Chris Friend, interim executive director of the advocacy organization TransitMatters, considers the Fairmount line a logical place to begin the T’s regional re-electrification because it is the system’s shortest commuter route. But he added that battery-powered trains have not yet been widely used on busy routes anywhere in the world. “So, is this the thing,” he asked, “or are we going to end up in another quagmire of an unproven technology?”

Battery-powered trains built by the French manufacturer Alstom are zipping back and forth on a 50-mile route in Germany that carries 2 million people annually. Dani Simons, the company’s vice president of communications in the Americas, said rising fuel prices make electrification more appealing. (The average price of diesel was $6.32 a gallon on Monday, up from $3.70 a year ago.)

Simons conceded the technology is best suited to “medium ridership.” But she said transit agencies should be pursuing electrification in all its forms, including diesel-electric hybrids and trains powered by overhead lines. These technologies can mitigate the impact of rising fuel costs and improve air quality. Even the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is diversifying, with plans to deploy both battery and catenary trains on the Providence Line.

In some ways, electrifying transit means going back to the future. Urban systems began the transition from horse-drawn vehicles to electric streetcars in the 1880s and 1890s, said Albert Churella, a history professor at Kennesaw State University. Steam railroads, meanwhile, carried passengers between cities and their outskirts, helping spur the growth of suburbs.

Some commuter lines, including routes from New York to New Haven and Philadelphia to Paoli, along with the Long Island Rail Road, electrified at the start of the 20th century. Subways in Boston and elsewhere used electricity because steam trains emitted smoke and risked asphyxiating passengers underground. 

It also helped that the technology was new.

“People get infatuated with technological advancements, and they tend to believe that these are cure-alls, that these are things that have extraordinary, almost unlimited potential,” Churella said. “Electrification of railways was no different.”

Read Next All aboard Amtrak’s sleeker, cleaner new trains Benton Graham

Most commuter lines, however, were never electrified. Many ran on tracks owned by larger railroads that also carried long-distance passengers and freight, operations that favored steam and, later, diesel power, said Nicholas Dagen Bloom, a historian and author of The Great American Transit Disaster. As passenger rail declined after World War II, he added, those companies increasingly wanted out of the passenger rail business. Diesel trains also offered a cheaper alternative to electrification because they do not need miles of wire.

Caltrain provides a look at what electrification can deliver. In 2024, it replaced diesel trains with electric ones on the 51-mile route between San Francisco and San Jose, powering them with overhead lines. Commute times dropped by as much as 23 percent because electric trains accelerate so much faster, and people loved the smoother, quieter cars. Ridership climbed 60 percent, and quality improved. Beyond the immense reduction in CO2 emissions, Joshua Apte, an environmental engineer at the University of California Berkeley, found that riders’ exposure to black carbon dropped 89 percent — a result he called comparable to what California cities achieved during 30 years of regulation.

Given the number of commuter rail systems that still rely on older diesel locomotives, “you might see similar air quality gains if you electrify them,” he said.

Although battery-powered trains might be slightly less efficient than those that use overhead lines or a third rail, Apte said they still do wonders for easing pollution. 

That’s enough for Martin. He acknowledges that the cleaner, quieter trains that will begin rolling through the Four Corners will be a “novel thing” and that riders will continue breathing air polluted by diesel exhaust until they go in service. But he considers his three decades of advocacy a success.

“I’m pretty satisfied with where we ended up,” he said. “As long as we still get that train.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of French train manufacturer Alstom.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The future of commuter rail could be taking shape in Boston on Oct 6, 2026.

Apologies for invoking again the awful noise that never stops. But a month before mid-terms, a fascist feckless clown show run by the dumbest people ever churns on with lies, bribes, cruelty, crude racism; their flailing leader grows daily more perilous; and fiery patriots remind us we cannot grow weary. Oddly, we find solace in Lindsey Graham's 2016 prophesy to the GOP: "If we (choose) Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it." God: "And in the fullness of time...."

Because we are well and truly beyond the looking glass, an actual, NYTPitchbot-likeTimes headline just posited that "some conservatives are having second thoughts" about Trump - this, even as he continues obliterating every institution of democratic governance, bars press outlets, ignores court rulings, betrays allies, courts autocrats, spews profanities online and at rallies, turns the election into a reality show and the Oval Office into a bordello, and shovels over $1.8 billion into junk vanity projects as his approval plunges to 26% on the economy and his brain dissolves into mashed potatoes. "Second thoughts?"

Decades ago, Robert Reich warned an American economy moving increasingly overseas through the 1970s was creating a two-tired society of a few rich winners and too many left-behind Americans whose anger, resentment and historic racism could be easily manipulated by a savvy carnival barker hungry for power - especially with a right-wing SCOTUS willing to give him almost total immunity for his boundless crimes. The grim result: What Timothy Snyder calls unprecedented "superpower suicide," wherein a major country quickly crashes and burns due to incompetence at all the "basic instruments of state power."

Now, facing "the mid-term music," the GOP flounders through "a five-alarm fire," pulling out lies, bribes, denial. They "must WIN" by using "every tool" - vote early, absentee, in person, by mail (or ICE thugs). Rick Wilson: "Oh, NOW mail-in ballots AREN'T a scam? Sweaty Don is nervous." They hype a duplicitous White House App: "365 Days of Wins." Trump offers a stream of paltry bribes: $90 to 20 million seniors to offset higher Medicare costs he caused, $500 to a million "excess" Obamacare fees, $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans win, conjuring a shameless Oprah-like spectacle: "You get a car, and you get a car..."

The alleged master of the Art of the Deal grows cringey and desperate, as do his boasts. At a recent rally: "I know more about inflation, I know more about everything than anyone in this room, anybody anywhere in the world." Of his two-day "emotional support" debacle of a Texas convention, he claimed 107 million views compared to the NFL's 25 million; the reality was his 3.3 million vs. their 25 million views, with even Ken Paxton secretly complaining, "It dropped our numbers." One viral meme tells the tale: A sign with sky-high gas prices, an angry MAGA voter, and the text, "Turns out my truck doesn't run on liberal tears."

In 2015, Trump packed a rally in Mobile ALA with over 30,000 fans; last week, at a high school gym with mostly empty upper tiers, people began streaming out as he bragged the economy is "booming," with new plants "everywhere." Later, he stubbornly insisted, "There are no empty seats" and his rallies are "HOTTER than ever," so nothing to see here except mashed potatoes. "Just pretend I’m on the ballot," he pleaded, a loser's losing message amidst the debacles he's forged. In need of safe harbor, his itinerary in "a red-state October blitz" is almost entirely in deep-red states he once won by double digits: Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas.

In Ohio this weekend, he raved Democrats' "transgender for everybody" policies would “mutilize your children," he has "record-winning numbers," "Talafreako" (in Texas, not Ohio) is a "vaygan" who "eats a piece of lettuce all day long" but he's now "gone full on eating meat" to get elected so he goes to barbecues where he's "throwing up all the time." He rambled, ranted, cursed, flaunted "the utter disdain for the office he holds and the people hes supoosed to serve." NYTPitchbot: "Whether it’s Obama saying 'Yes We Can” or Donald Trump saying 'We're gonna shove it up their ass,' both presidents adopted divisive slogans."

Beyond the rallies, the carnage persists. Millions have lost SNAP benefits. Many thousands, caught in our immigration atrocities, endure "quiet reckonings with what the country has become.” The Atlantic profiled the Ohio truck driver who hit and killed Haitian student Pierre Damas Bel in an apparent suicide; he is haunted by a young man who “would have been a model citizen,” who had to charge his own ankle monitor, who "was hurting - we did not do right by him.” War agit-prop still spews. So does cultural appropriation: Park rangers blast regime theft of Smokey the Bear, a forest fire refugee: "Only you can prevent fascist liars." "Zoologically-deficient hacks" have also dropped AI slop of USA-themed penguins in Greenland, where they don't live; some suggest they "shouldn’t have dismantled the Department of Education so quickly."

Surreal dissonance flourishes. Because they are "committed to leading the world in Gold Standard Science," other regime goons are bravely charging ahead to "MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY, SAFE, AND BEAUTIFUL" with an executive order to "ELIMINATE FOREIGN, INVASIVE TICKS AND MOSQUITOES" to "restore enjoyment of the great outdoors" through "safe and effective technology-enabled methods," thus rebuilding "public trust in science." Too little, too late? Still, their effort aligns nicely with Press Barbie's move to Fox News, per The Borowitz Report, "as a stepping-stone" to acquiring the requisite “warrior ethos" to become Secretary of Defense. And that profound disconnect is alive and festering in the incoherent child king somehow still babbling about "the golden age of America.”

Declaiming, “Watch for the ‘Midterm Surprise!’,” he just boasted his sparse rally crowds are "unbelievable!" He even added for the 8,726th time his now parody-level, "Nobody has ever seen anything like it"and raved the GOP is “flipping races all over the place.” As a public service, Aaron Rupar, who's borne witness to years of this insanity, urges we read the transcript of his recent Time interview to grasp "the grave cognitive impairment" of "random brain firings" like, "I just got a tariff from Lindsey Graham" and "100 million people watched the midterm convention." Observers: "He’s like a criminally inclined rutabaga with some language skills" and "He looks like an attendant just asked him if he wants pudding or Jello and he’s mad he has no idea what those are."

Sunday night, Indivisible hosted a "Hands Off Our Vote" event in New York to prep for Oct. 17's No Kings and the election. Despite our fatigue - from lying, thieving, genocidal rants, fucking ballrooms - a fiery Mark Ruffalo vowed to "Hulk-out" to convey his rage. "We are so tired, but we can't give up now," he said. "They want to keep us afraid. Their only weapon is our fear. But we're inevitable." He recalled meeting with activist Harry Belafonte a few years ago and asking, "How are we going to know what to do? When are we going to know when it's our calling? And he said, 'Brother, you’ll know. And then you go. You show up.’“

Robert De Niro, out of furious fucks to give, raged at policies crazy, cruel and increasingly unpopular. "Power...to...the...people," he intoned. "It isn't just a slogan. It's the founding principle of our nation." So what do those now unduly empowered do? he asked. "They try to take our votes away. Are you kidding me?" (Ghost of Travis Bickle) "Hands Off Our Vote. Lemme put it another way - keep your fucking hands off our vote," he seethed. Then he led the crowd in an explosive call-and-response to "spineless officials, the Supreme Court, masked ICE thugs," finally "that coward, that fucking piece of shit Donald Trump. When he tries to take our voice and power away, what do we tell him?" To each, he bade,"Keep your fucking hands off our vote!" and take back the House, the Senate, our country. In brief, show up.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Trump's middle-school level AI images feature headless penguins in Greenland, where they don't live. Truth Social post

To really understand what’s going on in the Nebraska Sandhills, Shelly Kelly told me, it’s helpful to see it from the air. From the window of her father’s Bonanza A36, we looked out over the heart of one of the most rural landscapes in the United States. The Sandhills are a 19,500 square-mile swath of grassy dunes embellished with grazing cattle, serpentine rivers, and sunflowers. 

Kelly has spent her life on the prairies of the High Plains. As a child, she made bouquets of flowering grasses and hunted for mudpuppies in the interdunal buffalo wallows on her parents’ ranch. Now a rancher herself, she’s trying to preserve the landscape she loves against the usual suspects — overgrazing and overharvesting — and one surprising new threat: trees. 

She pointed out my window to the prairie below. “You can see it there,” she said, pointing to a neat grove of Juniperus virginiana, eastern red cedar, deliberately planted by ranchers to protect calving heifers from the wind. These windbreaks are standard features on the Plains. But to the south of their orderly rows, a dozen cedars have popped up in the middle of the grass, scattering across the nearby range like race-runners breaking free of the pack. 

This spreading of trees is known as woody encroachment — or the “green glacier,” as some call it, evoking the slow creep of tree species over grasslands — and it’s got ecologists and ranchers of the Plains on high alert. 

“We’re losing our biodiversity,” Kelly said. “We’re losing our resiliency.”

Trees grow along the Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center in March 2024 near Lincoln, Nebraska. The Center works to conserve the tallgrass prairie ecosystem and associated wildlife.
David Madison / Getty Images

For ranchers, a woody takeover of their rangeland creates an obvious problem: less land to graze. The Texas A&M Agrilife extension estimates that woody encroachment over the 10 Great Plains states represents $4 billion in lost range production. Ecologists predict biodiversity losses would affect the insects, birds, and small mammals that populate the country’s remaining prairies. Everybody worries about what those thirsty trees will do to the already stressed water supply as the green glacier expands from the wetter climate in the eastern prairie states to the arid western regions. 

Prairies — on the High Plains and around the world — thrive in cycles of stability and disruption. Fire, grazing, dry seasons, and the area’s particular mix of vegetation all play a role in preserving the healthy root systems that allow a diverse mix of grasses to continue growing year after year. Some heartier grasses with root systems 20 feet deep can keep the prairie green in a drought, while healthy soil can hold dormant seeds until the conditions are right. 

Fire — both naturally-occurring and prescribed burns — has long been a feature of the prairie landscape. Suppressing it is part of what has allowed woody plants to seed, spread, and develop the thick bark that makes them more likely to then withstand future fires. Meanwhile, overgrazing reduces trees’ and shrubs’ grassy competition, allowing them to grow faster. Cattle and bison don’t eat the woody plants. Goats, sheep, elk, and other “browsing” species don’t eat enough of them to control the spread, though some are experimenting with browsers as a component of a larger management plan. 

The Flint Hills of Kansas and Osage Hills of Oklahoma are home to two-thirds of the nation’s remaining tallgrass prairie, said Brian Obermeyer, The Nature Conservancy’s Great Plains grasslands strategy director. The persistence of the prairie in this region is largely because of the longstanding culture of prescribed burns, dating back to when Chisholm Trail cattle drives would divert their skinnier livestock to fatten up on the highly nutritious, tender, juicy grasses that grow back after a burn. Obermeyer even found a lease contract dating back to 1915 requiring the land to be burned regularly so that cattle would have access to the new growth. But in regions where that practice is not common, Obermeyer said, “Getting people comfortable with the culture of prescribed fire takes time.” 

Read Next The guerrilla campaign to save a Texas prairie from ‘silent extinction’ Laura Mallonee

The Sandhills in Nebraska don’t have the fire culture, though Kelly and others are trying to change that. What they do have, Kelly said, is a culture of tree-planting. 

“Most of the people that settled Nebraska came from areas that were full of trees,” she said. In fact, before it was known as the “Cornhusker State,” Nebraska’s official nickname was the “Tree Planter State.” It dates back to the Homestead Act of 1862, which required settlers to cultivate their land with crops or trees to establish ownership, and Nebraska’s Kinkaid Act of 1904, which offered free trees to help settlers cultivate 640-acre tracts in the state. The tradition has gone on for centuries now, and thanks to advances in horticulture, ranchers buy heartier and heartier red cedar saplings for their windbreaks, which then spread their juggernaut offspring across the plains. 

As executive director of the Sandhills Task Force, a nonprofit established 33 years ago to promote conservation and sustainable land management in the ranching industry, Kelly knows that half the battle is changing the culture. “We’re not talking about trees being bad everywhere,” she said. “But trees are not good on a prairie, especially invasive trees.” On her water bottle I spotted a sticker: Be A Leader, Cut a Cedar. 

Another cultural shift might be necessary as well, particularly for the broader conservation community. The prevailing climate wisdom has been pretty clear: Trees are good, and planting them is virtuous — the more the better. But actually, Obermeyer said, grasslands can be a more secure carbon sink than forests. A big reason for that goes back to the cycle of fire on the landscape, and the worsening threat of out-of-control wildfires that are often the result of too much fire suppression. Woody plants store most of their carbon above ground in their trunks and leaves. When they burn, all of that carbon is released, and the charred remains continue to release carbon after the initial burn. It can take years for the forest to return to its storage capacity. Grasslands store the vast majority of carbon safely underground in their deep root systems, and after a fire their stems and blades quickly rebound. 

The sun rises over the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Osage County in June 2026 in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
Heather Diehl / Getty Images

There is evidence that the increased atmospheric carbon may be giving another advantage to woody plants, which utilize a different carbon pathway than grasses in photosynthesis, making them more efficient photosynthesizers in carbon-soaked, warm, dry air. While this means that trees may, in the short term, capture carbon more quickly, the loss of an entire ecosystem, especially one that stores carbon more securely, isn’t a good tradeoff in the long term, said Chris Helzer, Nebraska director of science and stewardship for The Nature Conservancy. 

Climate change is one of many reasons that a non-intervention strategy — letting nature take its course — won’t work on the High Plains. There are too many things in motion to simply go “hands-off.” But, really, Helzer said, grasslands as we know them have never been free of human intervention. From the time that Indigenous peoples hunted free-ranging bison, grasslands have evolved in tandem with humans, explained Helzer. The Nature Conservancy has also worked with the InterTribal Buffalo Council and Tanka Fund to support the return of bison to the Plains along with other tribal-led efforts to restore damaged ecosystems and build management capacity. 

Ranchers also have a critical role to play, Helzer said. And many are playing it with gusto. Kelly’s dad, John Taylor, has had a front-row seat to his daughter’s crusade and benefited from her growing expertise. On his ranch the cedar is under control, but near the fenceline, a few of the evergreen treetops peeked over a neighboring dune, like Birnam Wood advancing on MacBeth’s Dunsinane Hill. These trees are prolific, spreading their seeds across a 200-foot radius. Seedlings grow at about a rate of 1 to 2 feet per year, and once they reach 5 feet tall, they start spreading seed in their own 200-foot radius. That said, the Sandhills are mostly lucky, Kelly said. Eastern red cedar is easy to kill. Cut it down to the root and it mostly doesn’t grow back.

A red cedar grows near Wauneta, Nebraska. Getty Images Over 2,000 bison, also known as American buffalo, roam in the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Osage County in June 2026 in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Heather Diehl / Getty Images

Kelly has even helped Nebraskans connect to funding opportunities to clear the cedars. Through grants and fundraising, the Sandhills Task Force can help ranchers pay for up to 75 percent of cedar removal. The funds are stimulating a growing cedar removal industry in the region. State and federal programs will also help fund the removal — but, ironically, the same departments still subsidize tree-planting for windbreaks, Kelly said, though they are increasingly discouraging red cedars. 

The Nature Conservancy is using its preserves to test grazing patterns, new mixes of plant species, and other mitigation techniques that can help private landowners across the High Plains find the right balance of grazing, burning, and rewilding to keep their grasslands healthy. “To some extent, you can have a prairie that has trees,” Helzer said. “But there’s a line — when you cross that line, you have a woodland with clearings, not a grassland with trees.” 

Grassland prairies — short, mixed, tall, and other types — used to stretch from Texas to the Dakotas, into Kentucky and up to the foothills of the Rockies. Only 4 percent of tallgrass prairies are left, making it, Obermeyer said, “the most altered landscape in North America in terms of acres lost.” At the same time, he said, places like the Flint Hills and Sandhills give him hope. More people are recognizing the subtle beauty and ecological power of the plains. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that we have a tremendous amount that we have the chance to preserve,” Obermeyer said. “We have a lot of opportunities to get this right.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Great Plains face a surprising threat: Too many trees on Oct 6, 2026.

The facility calls for 456 small nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel production and nuclear waste storage. On the same day it surfaced, Sen. Ron Wyden introduced legislation that would ban new data centers.

Communities that trust their institutions are more willing to participate, collaborate, adapt, and recover. Communities that do not trust them remain vulnerable, regardless of how much climate finance is mobilised.

What can one person actually do about the metacrisis? In this week’s Frankly, Nate explicitly outlines just a few of the countless actions we can take to actually change what’s coming.

When José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new president in March, one of his first moves was to put the brakes on plans to expand two protected marine parks – raising doubts about the country’s high-profile bid to host the headquarters of the High Seas Treaty.

But during the UN General Assembly last month, the right-wing leader reaffirmed his leftist predecessor’s ambition for Chile to host the landmark global pact, which came into effect in January and provides a legal framework to protect the waters of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction that cover about two-thirds of the world’s oceans.

Hailing the country’s “maritime vocation”, Kast’s government said the bid to host the treaty’s secretariat in the port city of Valparaíso was state policy and testament to its commitment to multilateralism.

“For the government of Chile, it is of high interest to achieve this recognition, and we will carry out all the efforts to obtain the necessary support,” Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna was quoted as saying by local media.

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Tough competition from Chinese, Belgian bids

But to garner the votes it needs, Chile must fend off competing bids by Belgium – which has proposed its well-connected capital, Brussels – and China, whose well-funded bid includes the provision of free premises in the coastal city of Xiamen and five years of free utility costs.

Parties to the treaty, formally called the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), will choose the headquarters at their first summit (COP1), in New York from January 11 to January 22, 2027. They will seek consensus, falling back on a two-thirds majority in successive secret ballots.

Chile has offered to provide a restored waterside warehouse “at its own expense” as office space, pitching itself to developing countries as a Global South alternative to Europe-centred Brussels. Among richer countries, it is promoting its democratic credentials and greater transparency as an alternative to China. 

Rolling back environmental safeguards at home?

While the South American country remains the top pick among environmental campaigners and other civil society groups, critics of Kast’s government say recent policy moves may make it harder for the country to garner the support it needs.

On March 12, the day after Kast took office, the Environment Ministry withdrew 43 decrees awaiting legal approval, including a push to expand the Mar de Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks – vast protected areas in Chile’s Pacific Ocean waters. Both remain under review, the ministry told Climate Home News.

The decrees also included an emission standard for coal power plants and regulations for Chile’s new biodiversity and protected areas service.

What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?

A month after holding up the decrees, Kast questioned aspects of Chile’s urban wetlands protection law, suggesting it was sometimes an unjustified obstacle to much-needed housing development, and his administration has also sought to ease the rules on salmon farming in the world’s second-largest producer. 

In August, the Constitutional Court struck down the salmon farming reform after a challenge by opposition lawmakers and warnings from green groups including Greenpeace, which said it could help farms relocate into protected areas such as the Kawésqar National Reserve. 

Valparaíso mayor Camila Nieto, from former leftist President Gabriel Boric’s party, backs the bid to host the High Seas Treaty, but said she hoped “the government’s support also translates into public policies consistent with the goals of protecting and conserving the oceans”.

“The decisions a country makes on environmental matters can influence international perceptions of its commitment to protecting the oceans. That is something we cannot ignore,” Nieto told Climate Home News.

A Victorgorgia coral hosts brittle stars on a seamount in the Salas y Gómez ridge. (Photo: Center for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands / Schmidt Ocean Institute) China’s bid stirs concerns over data access, fishing

Chile’s past record on marine protection – it has protected 43% of its jurisdictional waters – could yet give it an edge.

“Chile deserves it for its conservation record as a state. For more than 15 years Chile has been following this path,” Liesbeth van der Meer, executive director at conservation group Oceana in Chile, told Climate Home News.

Concerns in some quarters about the rival bid by China – for example, over a potential conflict of interest due to the vast Chinese fishing industry – may also weigh in Chile’s favour, experts say.

Chinese-flagged vessels did about 30% of detected high seas fishing between 2022 and 2024, according to an Oceana analysis of Global Fishing Watch data. China also sponsors five of the International Seabed Authority’s 31 deep-sea mining exploration contracts, more than any other country. 

The secretariat would host sensitive marine data, making transparency paramount, experts say.

China says hosting the secretariat in Xiamen would help make the treaty more globally representative, fostering cooperation between rich and developing countries and aiding equitable access to marine science and technology.

Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement that the country has “all along championed true multilateralism” and “firmly defended” UN institutions. Given Xiamen’s $38-billion ocean industry, the city lives up to the treaty’s “significance and promising future”, he added.

Meanwhile, Chile is proposing the treaty’s first high seas marine protected area for the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges, a chain of more than 110 seamounts stretching about 4,000 km from off Peru to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that is rich in endemic fish and other marine species.

The ridges are “a true oasis of productivity”, said Carlos Gaymer, director of the Centre for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands at Universidad Católica del Norte and co-author of a 2021 scientific review of the area. 

Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor deploys a remotely operated vehicle on the Salas y Gómez ridge in January 2024. Chilean scientists rely on foreign ships to study the area. (Photo: Center for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands / Schmidt Ocean Institute)

The water is so clear that phytoplankton thrive around 200 metres down, feeding zooplankton, small fish and, up the chain, sharks and seabirds. Whales, turtles and sharks use the ridges as “a real highway” across the Pacific, Gaymer said. Parts of the Nazca ridge are likely nursery grounds for jack mackerel and swordfish.

Chile has already asked the body that regulates the industry in the area – the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) – to close the ridges to all fishing vessels. According to Chilean data, more than 80% of fishing in the area involves Chinese vessels.

Meeting on the Chilean request in early September, SPRFMO’s scientific committee agreed only to recommend closing the area to bottom fishing. SPRFMO’s commission will take the final decision at its next meeting, in early 2027.

For Gaymer, Chile’s push to close the area to fishing should be seen as a “starting point” for the treaty proposal. 

“Every time there’s a new expedition, species new to science appear,” Gaymer said. “If you don’t protect areas like these … those species simply disappear from the planet.”

The post Race to host High Seas Treaty HQ heats up as Chile reaffirms bid appeared first on Climate Home News.

Four formerly suspended registered nurses at Olympia Fields Hospital in Olympia Fields, Ill. have been reinstated and will return to work this week. By Sept. 15, Prime Healthcare had suspended or fired six nurses at Olympia Fields Hospital.

Four formerly suspended registered nurses at Olympia Fields Hospital in Olympia Fields, Ill. and one formerly terminated nurse at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, have been reinstated and will return to work this week. By Sept. 18, Prime Healthcare had suspended or fired 20 nurses at CMMC and 6 at Olympia Fields Hospital.

Global Citizen's Michael Sheldrick on why the global push to electrify could lift millions out of poverty, and why Collie is a key test case for the transition from coal.

The post SwitchedOn podcast: Why electricity is now central to the fight against poverty appeared first on Renew Economy.

Controversy has erupted over a planned cap on land lease payments for wind farms in Germany, with the industry and banks warning it could jeopardise new projects.

The post Plan to cap wind farm land lease payments sparks controversy, may jeopardise new projects appeared first on Renew Economy.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 5 OCTOBER 2026 SLF-2007-078 The Sakhalin Papers LXVIII: From Siberia to the Arctic — Shell Takes the Gazprom Partnership Into Russia’s New Frontier Forty days after Shell announced that it would pause its Alaskan Arctic drilling programme following the troubled 2012 season, Royal Dutch Shell chairman Jorma Ollila sat in Amsterdam with Gazprom chief Alexey Miller and signed a memorandum for cooperation on Russia’s Arctic shelf. Vladimir Putin and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte were present. A parallel Shell–Gazprom Neft agreement targeted liquids-rich shale in Western Siberia. Shell had not abandoned its Arctic strategy after the grounding of the Kulluk. It had begun pursuing another Arctic frontier — this time through the Russian state company that had taken control of Sakhalin II.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-078
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal authenticated records: Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2013; Gazprom corporate chronology and April 2013 corporate record; US Department of the Interior assessment of Shell’s 2012 Arctic operations; National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the Kulluk grounding
Court record: Shell Offshore, Inc. v. Greenpeace, Inc., 709 F.3d 1281 (9th Cir. 2013)
Contemporaneous reporting: UPI; RIA Novosti reporting; Daily Telegraph reporting preserved in the Donovan archive
Evidence standard: The Alaska pause, Kulluk grounding, US government review, April 2013 Gazprom–Shell memorandum and parallel shale agreement are established documentary facts. The Russian agreement is treated as a framework for potential cooperation, not as evidence that specific Arctic fields were awarded to Shell or that production was authorised. The proximity in time between the Alaska setbacks and the Russian agreement is established; any proposition that the Russian Arctic was a direct replacement for Alaska remains commentary rather than documented Shell policy.

Introduction

The sequence is remarkable.

On 31 December 2012, Shell’s Arctic drilling unit Kulluk grounded on the coast of Sitkalidak Island, Alaska, after a tow encountered severe weather.

On 27 February 2013, Shell announced that it would pause exploration drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas for the 2013 season.

On 14 March, the US Department of the Interior published a high-level review identifying shortcomings in Shell’s planning, management and contractor oversight.

Then, on:

8 April 2013

Shell and Gazprom signed a memorandum concerning hydrocarbon exploration and development on:

Russia’s Arctic shelf.

The interval between Shell announcing its Alaska pause and signing the Russian Arctic memorandum was just:

40 days.

That does not establish that one decision caused the other.

But it establishes something almost as important.

Shell’s troubled Alaskan campaign had not destroyed its strategic appetite for the Arctic.

It had changed the geography.

And in Russia, access would depend upon partnership with Gazprom. U.S. Department of the Interior

1. The Kulluk had ended 2012 on the rocks

Shell’s 2012 Alaska campaign had already encountered difficulties before the Kulluk grounding.

Its oil-spill containment system had not been certified in time for drilling into hydrocarbon-bearing zones.

A containment dome was damaged during testing.

The Noble Discoverer, Shell’s other drilling vessel, experienced maritime problems.

Then came the most visible event of all.

While being towed south after the drilling season, the Kulluk encountered worsening weather. Towlines failed. The towing vessel Aiviq lost engine power. The Kulluk crew was eventually evacuated.

On the evening of 31 December 2012, the drilling unit grounded near Ocean Bay on Sitkalidak Island. NTSB

The grounding became the defining image of Shell’s first modern Alaskan Arctic drilling season.

2. Shell itself later acknowledged the difficulties

Shell’s authenticated Annual Report and Form 20-F 2013 is particularly useful because it gives the company’s own account.

Shell said that the 2012 top-hole drilling operations themselves had been conducted safely and that they had prepared the ground for further drilling.

But it also acknowledged:

“there were challenges.”

Shell specifically identified difficulty consistently meeting US Environmental Protection Agency air-permit requirements and problems associated with moving the Kulluk out of Alaska after the drilling season.

The company then recorded that it had paused exploration drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas during 2013 in order to prepare its equipment and plans for a resumption. Shell

That is Shell’s own SEC-filed account.

3. The US government was less restrained

The Department of the Interior published its review on 14 March 2013.

The review examined Shell’s preparations, maritime operations and emergency-response arrangements.

It highlighted:

the delayed certification of the Arctic Challenger containment vessel;

difficulty deploying the containment dome;

serious marine-transport problems involving both drilling units;

and the Kulluk grounding.

The Department concluded that Arctic work required unusually rigorous preparation, contractor supervision and management attention.

Its assessment was blunt:

Shell had performed well in some areas —

but not in others.

The Department recommended that Shell produce a comprehensive integrated operations plan before returning and undergo a full independent third-party audit of its management systems. U.S. Department of the Interior

This was not an environmental campaign assessment.

It was the United States Department of the Interior.

4. The Department identified contractor management as a weakness

The official review also went beyond the individual incidents.

It identified shortcomings in Shell’s management of contractors involved in containment systems, emissions and maritime operations.

That distinction matters.

Shell sometimes characterised its 2012 difficulties as maritime or logistical rather than drilling failures.

That was not entirely wrong: the Kulluk grounded while under tow after the drilling season.

But the government review treated the incidents as relevant to the wider management system necessary for Arctic operations.

The question was not simply whether a drill bit had malfunctioned.

The question was whether the entire system required to operate safely in an exceptionally hostile environment was robust enough. U.S. Department of the Interior

5. A court victory for Shell came two days before the government report

There was another development in March 2013.

On 12 March, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided:

Shell Offshore, Inc. v. Greenpeace, Inc.

Greenpeace had challenged a preliminary injunction restricting activists from approaching Shell vessels or engaging in unlawful interference with the company’s Arctic fleet.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the injunction.

It accepted that interference with the vessels could create risks to people, property and the environment and concluded that the district court had not abused its discretion. Justia Law

But the judicial finding must be stated accurately.

The court did not decide that Shell’s Arctic drilling programme was environmentally safe.

It did not approve Shell’s drilling plans.

It did not adjudicate the Kulluk grounding.

And it did not reject Greenpeace’s environmental criticism of Arctic oil exploration.

The case concerned an injunction against interference with Shell’s vessels.

That is its proper evidential boundary.

6. Then came 8 April

Less than a month after the Interior Department report, the Shell-Gazprom relationship moved into the Arctic.

Gazprom’s own corporate chronology records that in April 2013 it signed with Royal Dutch Shell:

a memorandum setting out principles for cooperation in hydrocarbon exploration and development on Russia’s Arctic shelf

and on a deep-water offshore area outside Russia. Gazprom

Contemporaneous reporting fixes the date:

8 April 2013.

Alexey Miller, chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee, and Jorma Ollila, chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, signed the memorandum in Amsterdam.

Present were:

Russian President Vladimir Putin

and

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. UPI

This was not a minor technical meeting.

The political symbolism was unmistakable.

7. The agreement was broader than one Arctic field

Contemporary reporting quoted Miller explaining that the agreement covered Arctic cooperation generally rather than a single identified deposit.

UPI similarly described it as a framework for exploration of the Russian Arctic without naming a particular reserve basin. Hürriyet Daily News

That is an important qualification.

Some contemporary Russian reporting identified prospective fields and discussed possible Shell equity percentages.

But the memorandum itself should not be converted into a completed field award.

The authenticated Gazprom record says that principles of cooperation were agreed.

It does not establish that Shell received title to a specified Arctic licence on 8 April.

8. Russia’s legal structure made Gazprom crucial

Contemporaneous RIA Novosti reporting, carried internationally at the time, explained another important point.

Russian rules then restricted development of the country’s continental shelf to companies meeting state-ownership and offshore-experience requirements.

Gazprom and Rosneft were the companies that satisfied those conditions.

An international oil company such as Shell could therefore not simply acquire a Russian Arctic licence and proceed independently.

It needed a qualifying Russian state-controlled partner. Hürriyet Daily News

That made the Shell-Gazprom relationship strategically valuable in a way extending far beyond Sakhalin.

Gazprom did not merely possess resources.

It possessed access.

9. Sakhalin II had provided the operating precedent

The April memorandum did not emerge from an entirely new relationship.

Shell and Gazprom had spent years learning to operate together at Sakhalin II.

By 2013, Shell still owned:

27.5 per cent

of the project.

Shell’s Annual Report says Sakhalin II produced approximately:

320,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day

and more than:

10 million tonnes of LNG

during 2013. Shell

Shell’s equity LNG sales from Sakhalin amounted to approximately:

2.9 million tonnes

that year. Shell

This was the commercial foundation beneath the Arctic diplomacy.

The Shell-Gazprom partnership was not theoretical.

It was already operating one of the world’s largest integrated oil and gas projects.

10. Western Siberia supplied another precedent

Shell also retained its 50 per cent interest in the Salym oilfields.

Its 2013 annual report records production of approximately:

145,000 boe per day

from Salym that year. Shell

Salym was jointly owned with Gazprom Neft.

So by April 2013 Shell’s Russian partnership architecture contained two important models.

At Sakhalin II:

Shell was the minority partner of Gazprom.

At Salym:

Shell and Gazprom Neft were equal partners.

The new Arctic and shale agreements drew directly upon that experience.

11. The same Amsterdam meeting produced a second agreement

The Arctic memorandum was only half the story.

Gazprom Neft chief Alexander Dyukov and Shell Upstream International director Andy Brown also signed a memorandum concerning:

liquids-rich shale development in Western Siberia.

The Gazprom Neft corporate account said this confirmed the companies’ partnership arrangements for exploration and development of shale resources.

The proposed structure envisaged equal participation and built upon the companies’ existing Salym relationship. Euro-Petrole

The April agreements therefore pushed Shell and the Gazprom group in two frontier directions simultaneously:

offshore Arctic hydrocarbons;

and unconventional onshore oil.

12. Shell’s chief executive said the partnership had reached “a new level”

Peter Voser’s public explanation is important.

The Gazprom Neft account quoted him saying that the agreements brought the partnership:

“to a new level”.

Voser specifically invoked the companies’ long experience together at:

Sakhalin II

and

Salym,

and said Shell welcomed the opportunity to apply that experience and its technology to Arctic operations and shale-oil development. Euro-Petrole

The connection to this archive could hardly be clearer.

Sakhalin II was no longer merely an asset whose control Shell had lost.

Shell itself was presenting the partnership developed there as a foundation for future Russian expansion.

13. The timing was noticed immediately

The contrast with Alaska was obvious to contemporary journalists.

On 4 April 2013, before the Amsterdam signing, Daily Telegraph reporting preserved in this archive noted that Shell was preparing a fresh Arctic initiative with Gazprom only weeks after delaying its Alaskan campaign following the setbacks of 2012. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

That contemporaneous observation matters because it removes hindsight from the comparison.

The juxtaposition was evident at the time.

Shell was pausing in one Arctic jurisdiction.

It was simultaneously preparing to expand into another.

14. But “Shell switched from Alaska to Russia” would go too far

There is no document examined for this instalment in which Shell says:

Because Alaska went badly, we will replace it with Russia.

There is no evidence that the Russian negotiations began only after the Kulluk grounded.

Large international energy agreements normally develop over substantial periods.

And Shell continued to describe Alaska as a prospective long-term opportunity.

It would therefore be misleading to suggest that the April agreement represented an immediate geographical substitution.

What the chronology does establish is narrower and more defensible:

the Alaska problems did not cause Shell to abandon Arctic oil as a strategic objective.

Forty days after announcing its Alaska drilling pause, Shell signed a framework to examine Russian Arctic development with Gazprom.

15. Shell’s own annual report confirms that the Arctic remained strategic

The 2013 Form 20-F settles this point.

In its strategy discussion, Shell identified longer-term opportunities including:

tight oil and shale;

heavy oil;

and:

the Arctic.

It said large reserve positions might become available in those areas, with development paced by market conditions, local operating circumstances and regulation. Shell

In other words, the Arctic remained within Shell’s long-term portfolio strategy even after the events of 2012.

Alaska had been paused.

The strategic thesis had not.

16. Shell simultaneously warned shareholders how dangerous the Arctic could be

The same authenticated document contains the necessary counterweight.

Shell’s risk section specifically identified operations in difficult geographical and climatic areas, including the Arctic and maritime environments.

It warned that major HSSE events could lead to:

injuries;

loss of life;

environmental damage;

business disruption;

reputational damage;

and potentially:

loss of licence to operate. Shell

This was generic corporate risk disclosure.

It was not a statement about the Gazprom memorandum specifically.

But once again the juxtaposition is striking.

Shell was identifying the Arctic as both:

a long-term resource opportunity;

and

an environment carrying exceptional operational and reputational risk.

17. Access to reserves also depended on governments

Shell’s same risk disclosure contains another sentence that bears directly upon Russia.

The company said future oil and gas production depended partly upon gaining access to new reserves through:

negotiations with governments and other resource owners. Shell

That observation was global.

It was not written specifically about Gazprom.

But the Russian Arctic was an unusually clear example of the principle.

Shell possessed capital and technology.

It did not control the Russian state’s offshore licence system.

Partnership with Gazprom supplied something Shell could not manufacture for itself:

political and legal access to the resource base.

18. The Kulluk story subsequently became even more serious

The April 2013 Russian agreement preceded the final US investigation of the Kulluk casualty.

The later National Transportation Safety Board finding is therefore included here as a retrospective official record, not as information available to Shell when it signed in Amsterdam.

The NTSB ultimately determined that the probable cause of the grounding was:

Shell’s inadequate assessment of the risks of the planned tow,

which resulted in a tow plan insufficient to mitigate those risks. NTSB

That finding is significant because responsibility was not confined to bad weather or an unfortunate contractor mishap.

The federal accident investigator placed the central deficiency in Shell’s risk assessment and tow planning.

19. That does not establish anything about Russian Arctic operations

The NTSB finding must not be stretched beyond its jurisdiction.

It concerned one tow involving the Kulluk in Alaska.

It did not assess Gazprom.

It did not assess Russian Arctic drilling plans.

It did not determine that Shell was incapable of safely operating elsewhere in the Arctic.

It did not examine the April 2013 memorandum.

The legitimate historical point is therefore comparative, not legal:

Shell was pursuing another Arctic opportunity while the consequences of its first Alaskan campaign were still being investigated.

20. Nor was Shell already drilling with Gazprom in the Russian Arctic

Another distinction is essential.

The April memorandum expressed an intention to cooperate.

It did not mean that Shell immediately began drilling a Russian Arctic well.

Indeed, later in 2013 Shell itself told Dutch media, during controversy over Gazprom and Greenpeace, that it was not then conducting joint Arctic operations with Gazprom.

The framework and the operating project must not be confused. NOS

The April agreement established direction.

Implementation remained ahead.

21. Nevertheless, the direction could hardly have been clearer

By this stage the documentary sequence had become remarkable.

2006

Shell agrees to surrender control of Sakhalin II.

2007

Gazprom becomes controlling shareholder.

2009

Sakhalin LNG begins production.

2010

Shell and Gazprom sign a Protocol on Strategic Global Cooperation.

2011

Shell and Gazprom Neft investigate a wider joint venture.

2013

Shell and Gazprom agree principles for cooperation on the Russian Arctic shelf.

This was not merely the continuation of an inherited investment.

The relationship was expanding geographically and technologically.

22. The partner that took control had become the gateway to the next frontier

This is where documentary fact ends and interpretation begins.

The public record does not establish that Shell trusted Gazprom politically.

It does not establish that Shell had forgotten the events of 2006.

It does not establish that Shell regarded the Russian investment climate as low risk.

Indeed, Shell’s own SEC filings routinely warned about political risk, expropriation and contractual renegotiation.

But Shell’s behaviour demonstrates something important.

Gazprom had become useful to Shell not simply because it controlled Sakhalin Energy.

It controlled access to opportunities that Shell wanted.

The Arctic sharpened that dependency.

A foreign company could possess enormous technical capability and still require a Russian state company to reach the resource.

23. The Alaska experience should have made the Arctic risks impossible to romanticise

By April 2013 Shell had already learned that Arctic exploration involved much more than geological promise.

It required:

specialised vessels;

spill-response capability;

containment systems;

weather forecasting;

marine logistics;

contractor management;

environmental approvals;

regulatory coordination;

and the ability to recover from failures far from conventional infrastructure.

The Interior Department review had made precisely that point.

The Arctic was not merely a large reserve map coloured white.

It was an integrated risk system. U.S. Department of the Interior

The Russian Arctic would not repeal those physical realities.

It would add a different political and legal environment to them.

24. Yet Shell still saw the prize

This is perhaps the central conclusion of the file.

The events of 2012 had demonstrated how badly Arctic logistics could go.

The 2013 government review had demonstrated how closely Shell’s management systems would be scrutinised.

Shell’s own annual report acknowledged environmental and operational risks.

And yet Shell still listed the Arctic among its long-term growth opportunities.

Then it signed with Gazprom.

That combination tells us more about the scale Shell attributed to the potential prize than any corporate slogan could.

For Shell, the Arctic remained worth pursuing.

Documentary Findings Established

The Shell-owned Kulluk grounded near Sitkalidak Island, Alaska, on 31 December 2012 while under tow. NTSB

Shell announced on 27 February 2013 that it would pause offshore Alaska exploration drilling for the 2013 season. The US Department of the Interior subsequently recorded that decision in its official review. U.S. Department of the Interior

On 14 March 2013, the Department of the Interior published an assessment identifying difficulties involving Shell’s containment system, marine transport and contractor management and recommended an integrated operating plan and independent audit. U.S. Department of the Interior

On 8 April 2013, Alexey Miller and Jorma Ollila signed a memorandum setting out principles for Gazprom-Shell cooperation in hydrocarbon exploration and development on Russia’s Arctic shelf and a deep-water offshore project outside Russia. Putin and Rutte were present. Gazprom

Shell and Gazprom Neft simultaneously advanced cooperation concerning liquids-rich shale resources in Western Siberia. Euro-Petrole

Shell’s 2013 Annual Report recorded a 27.5 per cent Sakhalin II interest, with the project producing approximately 320,000 boe/d and more than 10 million tonnes of LNG that year. Shell

The same filing recorded Shell’s 50 per cent Salym interest, with production of approximately 145,000 boe/d. Shell

Shell continued to identify the Arctic and unconventional resources among its longer-term strategic opportunities. Shell

Established court record

On 12 March 2013, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction restricting Greenpeace interference with Shell’s Arctic vessels.

The litigation concerned vessel interference and safety zones.

It was not a judicial endorsement of the environmental safety of Shell’s Arctic drilling programme. Justia Law

Later official finding

The National Transportation Safety Board subsequently determined that the probable cause of the Kulluk grounding was Shell’s inadequate assessment of tow risk and an insufficient tow plan. NTSB

That later finding concerns the Alaska casualty and should not be treated as a finding about Gazprom or Russian Arctic operations.

Not established

The documentary record examined here does not establish that the April 2013 Russian Arctic agreement was a direct replacement for Shell’s Alaskan programme.

It does not establish that Gazprom promised Shell a particular Russian Arctic field in exchange for any earlier Sakhalin concession.

It does not establish that the April memorandum itself transferred an Arctic production licence to Shell.

It does not establish that any field percentages discussed in contemporary press reports became completed Shell ownership interests.

It does not establish that Shell had begun joint Arctic drilling with Gazprom in April 2013.

And it does not establish that the difficulties in Alaska caused Shell’s decision to deepen cooperation with Gazprom.

Commentary

There is an important difference between retreat and redeployment.

Shell retreated operationally from Alaska in 2013.

It did not retreat strategically from the Arctic.

That distinction is written into the documents.

The Kulluk was grounded on New Year’s Eve.

Shell paused Alaska drilling in February.

The United States government issued its critical review in March.

Then Shell signed the Russian Arctic memorandum in April.

The temptation is to describe that as an extraordinary act of corporate stubbornness.

A more useful interpretation is that Shell still believed the underlying resource opportunity outweighed the difficulties it had encountered.

What changed was the structure through which that opportunity might be pursued.

In Alaska, Shell had acquired leases and was trying to operate its own campaign within the American regulatory system.

In Russia, the starting point was different.

Access passed through a state-controlled partner.

And that partner was Gazprom.

The same company that had acquired control of Sakhalin II during the crisis of 2006 was now potentially opening the door to an even more formidable frontier.

There is a historical symmetry here.

Sakhalin taught Shell that geology alone did not determine access to Russian hydrocarbons.

Political power mattered.

Licensing mattered.

The state company mattered.

By 2013 Shell was no longer trying to work around that reality.

It was building its strategy through it.

And Gazprom, for its part, wanted what Shell could supply:

capital;

technology;

project experience;

and international offshore capability.

That is why the April 2013 agreement belongs in the Sakhalin Papers.

It shows what Sakhalin II eventually became.

Not merely an LNG plant.

Not merely a disputed ownership history.

But the institutional foundation of a much wider Shell relationship with the Russian state energy system.

The irony is difficult to avoid.

Shell had lost control at Sakhalin.

Seven years later it was taking the resulting partnership north —

towards the Arctic.

Source Record

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s authenticated Annual Report and Form 20-F 2013 records the company’s Alaska pause, the difficulties involving the Kulluk, its continuing Sakhalin II and Salym interests, and its classification of the Arctic as a longer-term strategic opportunity. The report states that it also served as Shell’s Form 20-F filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc — Annual Report and Form 20-F 2013

Gazprom’s official 2013 corporate chronicle records the April memorandum with Royal Dutch Shell covering exploration and development on Russia’s Arctic shelf and a deep-water offshore area abroad. Gazprom

Gazprom — Chronicle of Gazprom for 2013

The contemporaneous Gazprom Neft account records the parallel Arctic and Western Siberian shale agreements and the companies’ statements concerning the use of their Sakhalin II and Salym experience. Euro-Petrole

Gazprom Neft corporate account — Arctic offshore and Western Siberian shale cooperation, April 2013

UPI contemporaneously reported the 8 April 2013 Amsterdam signing, the presence of Vladimir Putin and Mark Rutte and the framework nature of the Arctic agreement. UPI

UPI — Shell signals intent for Russian Arctic, 9 April 2013

The US Department of the Interior’s 14 March 2013 assessment is the principal governmental record concerning the problems encountered during Shell’s 2012 Alaska programme and the reforms demanded before further operations. U.S. Department of the Interior

US Department of the Interior — Assessment of Shell’s 2012 Arctic Operations

The relevant US judicial record is Shell Offshore, Inc. v. Greenpeace, Inc., 709 F.3d 1281 (9th Cir. 2013), decided on 12 March 2013. Justia Law

US Court of Appeals record — Shell Offshore v. Greenpeace

The National Transportation Safety Board’s completed investigation records the later official probable-cause finding concerning the Kulluk grounding. NTSB

NTSB — Grounding of Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit Kulluk

The Daily Telegraph report of 4 April 2013, preserved in the Donovan archive, provides contemporaneous evidence that the timing of Shell’s renewed Russian Arctic initiative immediately after its Alaska setbacks was already being remarked upon before the agreement was signed. Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com

Donovan archive — Daily Telegraph: Shell to sign Russian Arctic deal, 4 April 2013

Archive disclaimer: A memorandum setting principles for future cooperation is not treated as a completed field development, licence award or final investment decision. Later investigative findings are clearly separated from information available at the time. Judicial findings are confined to the matters actually decided by the courts. Commentary concerning strategic motives is identified as interpretation rather than documentary fact.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Next instalment SLF-2007-079 — The Sakhalin Papers LXIX: “A Good and Reliable Partner” — The Arctic 30 Put Shell’s Gazprom Alliance to the Test

Only five months after the Amsterdam agreement, the Shell-Gazprom Arctic relationship collided with an international political controversy.

On 18 September 2013, Greenpeace activists attempted to protest at Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya Arctic platform.

The following day Russian forces seized the Arctic Sunrise.

Its 28 activists and two freelance journalists — soon known internationally as the Arctic 30 — were detained.

Greenpeace then turned directly on Shell.

It called upon the company to break its Arctic cooperation with Gazprom and argued that Shell’s relationship gave it influence it should use on behalf of the prisoners. Shell rejected responsibility for the arrests. When asked about the relationship in October, a Shell spokesman described Gazprom as a:

“good and reliable partner.” RD.nl

Shell also stressed that it was not operating the Prirazlomnaya platform and had no joint Arctic operations with Gazprom underway at that moment. NOS

Then, on 20 December 2013, Gazprom announced that Prirazlomnoye had begun producing oil — the first producing hydrocarbon project on Russia’s Arctic shelf. Gazprom

The next file will examine the collision between Shell’s expanding commercial alliance with Gazprom, Greenpeace’s Arctic campaign, and Russian state power — carefully separating what Gazprom did, what the Russian authorities did, what Greenpeace alleged, and what Shell itself was actually responsible for.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 5 OCTOBER 2026 was first posted on October 5, 2026 at 10:42 pm.
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