Tue Jul 3, 2007 9:00AM EDT
By Ajay Kamalakaran
SAKHALIN, Russia (Reuters) – Noise from a Russian gas field in the Pacific Ocean is driving the endangered grey whale away from one of its few feeding grounds, says the WWF environmental group.
The grey whale is one of the largest and oldest mammals on earth — it can grow larger than a city bus and the species is thought to be 30 million years old.
But environmentalists say there are only 100 grey whales left off the Asian Pacific coast, with another 300 off the North American coast. Now construction work at a Russian gas project is forcing them away from their natural habitat.
“I feel that a huge construction bulldozer is working near my tent. I feel the vibration and hear the low, hollow rumble,” said Natalia Illarionova, who monitors the whales from a camp on the island of Sakhalin for the WWF.
She said the whales were disappearing from the area she was monitoring because of the noise, putting more pressure on other feeding grounds.
Russia has grown rich from soaring energy revenues over the last few years and the $20 billion Sakhalin-2 project, majority owned by Gazprom with Royal Dutch Shell as a minority partner, is central to its plans to sell gas to Asia.
The Sakhalin Energy project leaders had agreed to recommendations from a whale conservation panel prior to starting the project, and a company spokesman said they had not broken those guidelines.
“The acoustic monitoring buoys detected no unusual noise and at no time did noise levels at the outer edge of the feeding area exceed the action criteria levels,” spokesman Ivan Chernyakhovsky said.
Sakhalin Energy is ready to share and discuss data with environmentalists, he said.
The whales eat shrimps and small fish during the summer feeding season to fatten themselves up ahead of their winter migration towards warmer waters.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
