Gazprom Moscow Headquarters
Eurasia Daily Monitor – Washington,DC,USA: SHELL FORCED TO CAPITULATE TO PUTIN
By Vladimir Socor
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Published by The JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION
A two-part deal — one publicized on December 21 and thereafter, the other confidential but leaked by Moscow on December 28 — has sealed Gazprom’s seizure of the majority stake in the Royal Dutch Shell-led oil and gas project Sakhalin-2. Shell, hitherto the project operator, surrendered under the threat of multibillion-dollar environmental-damage suits and revocation of licenses by the Kremlin-unleashed Nature Inspectorate, in a largely farcical campaign (see EDM, December 13, 15).