Oil giant Shell has pulled off a massive coup in Russia after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday asked the Anglo-Dutch energy company to help develop two huge gas projects on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Pacific.

When Jeroen van der Veer took the helm of Royal Dutch Shell five years ago, the company was mired in an accounting scandal involving its reporting of oil and gas reserves, a flap that nearly ended its century-long independence. Mr. van der Veer revamped Shell’s notoriously complex corporate structure, merged its fractious English and Dutch entities, and eventually restored trust with governments, regulators and investors.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered Royal Dutch Shell a role in the Sakhalin-3 and Sakhalin-4 natural gas projects on Saturday, just 2 1/2 years after Europe’s biggest oil producer was forced to cede control of Sakhalin-2 to Gazprom.

Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, threw down the welcome mat to Shell, telling the Anglo-Dutch major it could participate in new offshore oil and gas projects and help Russia build LNG tankers to help globalise its gas trade.

In a surprise move, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin invited Royal Dutch Shell to help develop two new oil and gas fields on Sakhalin Island, just three years after the government forced the company to cede majority control in the Sakhalin 2 project to state-controlled group Gazprom.

The Solitaire, which is being protected by two Irish Navy vessels, is to begin laying the offshore pipeline that will connect the landfall installation at Glengad with the gas field 83km away.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Published: June 28, 2009

In the editorial “Ending a Shell Game” (June 24) you argue that Shell’s out-of-court settlement with Nigerian plaintiffs in Manhattan earlier this month saved “costly embarrassment” and the public airing of evidence of collusion and human rights abuses by the company in Nigeria. We see the matter differently.

We knew the charges against us were not true. And we were confident that the evidence would have shown this — that Shell was not responsible for the tragic events of Nov. 10, 1995. The execution of nine leaders of the Ogoni people shocked us all. And we wanted others to see and understand that.

I am aware that the settlement may have suggested that Shell was guilty and trying to escape justice. The article certainly implies that. But this 13-year-old lawsuit has always been a bitter legacy in any reconciliation initiative among the Ogoni people themselves, who remain divided by the violence of those times that went far beyond the deaths of the four respected Ogoni chiefs, whose murders sparked the 1995 trial.

So when the judge, through the court mediation process, asked us to consider making a humanitarian gesture to settle the case, we saw an opportunity to help banish this legacy, advance the process of reconciliation and support a better future for Ogonis — in a way that us winning in court may not have done.

Shell is looking for peace. We live and work in the Niger Delta where 25,000 families depend on our operations for their livelihoods — and where we want good relations with all our neighbors.

The creation of an independent trust fund as part of the settlement will contribute to development in Ogoni land. It is independent of Shell and the plaintiffs. I believe it can make a difference where it matters most.

This was not about Shell, or the lawyers, winning or losing. Our decision was aimed at helping different factions to talk more effectively to one another and to Shell — and to help move along the vital reconciliation process, a fact lost in some of the commentary since the settlement was reached.

Malcolm Brinded, The Hague, executive director, Royal Dutch Shell

NYT Letter

Despite claims by the protest group Shell to Sea, local sources say there is very little opposition among the people living in the Erris area to the €2bn operation that has brought 2,000 jobs to the area and will provide a major energy supply to the country in the coming decades.

At Glengad in north Mayo yesterday, tourists must have thought they had strayed on to the set of a James Bond film. There were cameras, a helicopter, a mysterious ship and getaway boats. Several 4X4s and unmarked buses filled with police were on the land.

June 27 (Bloomberg) — The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the main armed group in Nigeria’s oil region, said it rejected a government amnesty offer because it failed to address key issue