Celebrate this victory in a campaign we launched in January 2004!

Thanks to all who have written letters to the Russian government and to the Sakhalin II oil project's potential financial backers. With this week's decision, the Russian government has taken an important step to put some teeth into corporate accountability and to protect Sakhalin's fragile wild salmon habitat.

****************************************

Russia Revokes Permit for Sakhalin Energy Project

We've just received good news from Kosovo, where the United Nations is at long last providing appropriate medical treatment to Roma children who are suffering from lead poisoning. The poisoning occurred while displaced Roma families lived in UN-administered camps that were contaminated with lead.

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

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

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

We just received great news from Kosovo: almost all Roma families have been safely relocated from lead-contaminated camps where they lived for seven years. Two of the three lead-contaminated camps have been leveled (Kablare and Zitkovac). A few families remain in the Chesmin Lug camp, but almost everyone is safely relocated in the new camp Osterode.

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

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

For the past year, Global Response has supported the Penan indigenous people of Malaysia in their determination to stop industrial logging in their territories.  Several Penan communities have set up rustic blockades against logging trucks, and now they are facing police violence. They urgently call on the international community to support their courageous stand against logging in some of Malaysia?s last remaining tropical rainforests. Too many Penan martyrs have already lost their lives defending their Native Customary Rights and their rainforest territories.

 The Kanak group Rheebu Nuu has lodged complaints of corruption against the president of New Caledonia's southern province, Philippe Gomes, and the director general of the Goro Nickel company, Ron Renton.

This comes amid a conflict between Rheebu Nuu and Goro which nearly two months ago saw Rheebu Nuu activists destroy 10 million US dollars worth of vehicles and installations at the Goro construction site.

Rheebu Nuu has hired a French lawyer to draft the complaint which alleges that Mr Gomes has mixed his political post with his business interests.

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

GENEVA - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) should not make loans to Shell's giant energy project off Russia's Pacific coast without more measures to protect the environment, WWF said on Friday.

The conservation group said ice and poor weather around the proposed Sakhalin oil and gas operation would make it nearly impossible to clean up any spills for half of the year, placing marine life at risk in the case of an accident.