EXTRACT: Shell is drilling in the seas north of Japan as dwindling energy supplies force producers to venture into increasingly hostile locations. Costs for the Shell-led Sakhalin II project, the company’s biggest single investment, have doubled to $20 billion, undermining Shell’s effort to convince investors it can replace the oil it pumps, two years after overstating reserves.
THE ARTICLE
July 20 (Bloomberg) — The photos on Samer Slim’s office wall catalog the hurdles Royal Dutch Shell Plc must overcome on Russia’s Sakhalin Island: ice-choked drilling rigs, snowmelt swollen rivers and wilderness so remote supplies are dropped by helicopter. His T-shirt warns of another: “Beware of Bears.”