3+ day, 19+ hour ago   (1602+ words) The previous instalment ended with a warning. Sakhalin Energy had kept PA-C alive as a future option. Its 2014 appraisal well had disappeared. But another major operation was moving steadily toward the northeastern Sakhalin shelf. A 4-D seismic survey. The purpose…...

4+ day, 20+ hour ago   (1613+ words) The previous instalment ended with a platform location. The 2012 site survey had shown that the alternative “blue location” could work. It lay farther offshore than the earlier preferred PA-C site, farther from the principal Western Gray Whale feeding area and…...

6+ day, 20+ hour ago   (1593+ words) Before a third platform could be built, Sakhalin Energy had to determine exactly where it might stand. That required another seismic operation. The South Piltun high-resolution 2-D site survey was originally planned for summer 2011. It did not happen on schedule....

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (752+ words) After checking the HEDA Resource Centre archive again against the full Nigeria: Lifting the Lid report and against the instalments already published in this series, I do not think there is another substantial documentary story that can responsibly be presented…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago   (1596+ words) For years, one word has dominated Shell’s explanation of oil pollution in the Niger Delta: There is no responsible reason to pretend that oil theft and sabotage were invented by Shell. But the legal question is more complicated than the…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago   (1581+ words) There are internal Shell documents about pipelines. There are documents about corrosion. Then there is a different kind of evidence. Section 4.7 of the July 2026 report Nigeria: Lifting the Lid reproduces material relied upon by the Bille and Ogale claimants concerning…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (1604+ words) Sometimes an old article improves with age. Reading it again almost twenty years later is rather like opening a corporate time capsule. There is a worried whistleblower. There are secret emergency offices. There are allegations about employees being required to…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (1591+ words) Some of the most revealing words in the newly disclosed Shell papers are not about corrosion, clamps, leak detection or the condition of a pipeline. They are about the “court of public opinion.” That phrase appears in the March 2013 Project…...

2+ week, 5+ day ago   (1575+ words) For decades, one word has carried extraordinary weight in arguments over oil pollution in the Niger Delta. If a pipeline was deliberately damaged by thieves, Shell could point to criminal conduct by third parties. If it failed because of corrosion…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (1590+ words) Shell launched its new Penguins FPSO in the UK North Sea in February 2025 with considerable fanfare. The company called it a “state-of-the-art” facility and an “engineering marvel” — Shell’s first new operated offshore production facility in the UK North Sea for…...