THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 31 AUGUST 2026
SLF-2007-043
The Sakhalin Papers XXXIII: The $5.3 Billion Alternative — When Britain’s Proposed Guarantee Disappeared and Japan Stepped In
On 29 February 2008, Sakhalin Energy withdrew its applications for British and US export-credit support. Less than four months later, Japan’s state-backed development bank signed a $3.7 billion loan and commercial banks added another $1.6 billion. The environmental controversy had not disappeared. The source of the money had changed.
Archive reference: SLF-2007-043
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal record: Japan Bank for International Cooperation announcement, 16 June 2008
Authenticated Shell record: Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2008; Shell SEC filings concerning the Sakhalin Energy ownership restructuring
Court record: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)
Contemporaneous reporting: Oil & Gas Journal, June 2008; contemporary project-finance reporting; environmental-group statements issued immediately before and after financial close
Evidence standard: The financing amounts, ownership interests and stated purposes of the JBIC loan are treated as documentary fact. Environmental organisations’ criticisms are identified as allegations or assessments made by those organisations. The decisions of institutions that did not finance the project are not inaccurately characterised as judicial or regulatory findings against Sakhalin Energy.
Introduction
For years, Sakhalin II had been discussed as though international public finance might determine whether the project could proceed.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development examined a proposed Phase 2 financing package.
Britain’s Export Credits Guarantee Department considered approximately $650 million of support associated with UK exports.
The US Export-Import Bank was also involved in the evolving financing structure.
Environmental organisations concentrated enormous effort on those institutions because public lenders could impose standards, demand information and, potentially, refuse finance.
Then the structure changed.
Gazprom acquired control of Sakhalin Energy.
The EBRD stopped considering the financing package that had been built around the previous ownership structure.
Sakhalin Energy eventually withdrew its applications to ECGD and US Ex-Im.
And on 29 February 2008, the British financing process effectively ended before ECGD had reached its substantive decision. Mr Justice Mitting subsequently recorded the withdrawal in the High Court judgment concerning disclosure of government environmental information. (vLex)
The obvious question was:
What happened to the financing?
The answer came on 16 June 2008.
Japan stepped decisively into the centre of the project-finance structure.
1. Tokyo, 16 June 2008
The Japan Bank for International Cooperation announced that it had signed a project-finance loan agreement with Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.
Maximum JBIC financing:
$3.7 billion.
Commercial-bank syndicate:
up to $1.6 billion.
Total package:
$5.3 billion. (JBIC)
This was not a memorandum of understanding.
It was not an expression of possible future support.
JBIC said it had signed the loan agreement.
That distinction is particularly important after the lengthy British controversy over conditional support, final guarantees and unresolved underwriting decisions.
The Japanese financing had reached financial commitment.
2. Shell’s Own Annual Report Confirms the Deal
Royal Dutch Shell’s own 2008 reporting independently confirms the transaction.
The company recorded that in June 2008 Sakhalin Energy, JBIC and a consortium of international commercial banks signed a $5.3 billion project-finance contract for Sakhalin II Phase 2.
Shell’s interest was then 27.5 per cent. (Shell News)
Shell’s official archive continues to list its 2008 Annual Report among the company’s historical corporate reports. (Shell)
This matters because the financing package does not depend upon later recollection or activist interpretation.
It appears in the records of both the principal government lender and Shell itself.
3. Japan Had Not Appeared From Nowhere
It would be misleading, however, to portray JBIC as a new financier that suddenly arrived after Britain walked away.
Japan had been involved in Sakhalin for years.
JBIC’s June 2008 announcement itself records that it had already lent $116 million for Sakhalin II Phase 1 in December 1997.
That earlier money supported oil production facilities associated with the Astokhskoye development, where seasonal production began in 1999. (JBIC)
JBIC had also been part of the broader group of prospective public financiers examining Phase 2 before Gazprom acquired control.
The story is therefore not:
Britain refused, so Japan suddenly entered.
It is:
the earlier international financing architecture fractured, the ownership changed, and Japan became the dominant public financier in the replacement structure.
That is a materially different historical conclusion.
4. The Original Financing Structure Had Already Been Rewritten
Gazprom’s own contemporaneous announcement helps reconstruct that transition.
It stated that the broad structure and amount of Phase 2 project finance had been preliminarily agreed in mid-2006, at which point the contemplated financing was approximately $6.7 billion and involved a range of state, international and commercial financial institutions.
Then Gazprom acquired control.
According to the Gazprom announcement, the financing discussions resumed after the April 2007 ownership restructuring and the composition of the creditor group changed.
The result was the $5.3 billion package signed in June 2008. (Rustocks)
That sequence is crucial.
The Japanese-led financing was not simply a substitute cheque for the withdrawn British guarantee.
The entire financing architecture had been reconstructed.
5. The Shareholders Had Changed Too
The project receiving the loan was no longer the Shell-controlled Sakhalin Energy of 2003 and 2004.
Shell’s authenticated December 2006 SEC filing records the agreement under which Gazprom would acquire 50 per cent plus one share of Sakhalin Energy for $7.45 billion.
Shell’s interest fell from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent; Mitsui’s to 12.5 per cent; Mitsubishi’s to 10 per cent.
By the time JBIC signed in June 2008, Gazprom was the controlling shareholder.
JBIC’s own announcement identified the shareholder structure accordingly and described Shell as holding 27.5 per cent minus one share in the precise legal formulation used in the transaction documents. (JBIC)
Historical responsibility therefore needs to be divided by date.
Shell had designed and led the project through the crucial early Phase 2 years.
Gazprom controlled Sakhalin Energy when the $5.3 billion financing package was signed.
Shell remained a very substantial shareholder and technical participant.
6. What Was the $5.3 Billion Actually Financing?
JBIC was explicit.
The loan proceeds were to support construction of offshore platforms, oil and gas pipelines and the liquefied-natural-gas plant.
The Phase 2 development was designed to produce approximately 9.6 million tonnes of LNG annually.
JBIC also expected crude-oil production of around 150,000 barrels per day. (JBIC)
This was therefore financing for the physical core of Sakhalin II:
offshore production;
the trans-island pipeline system;
the Prigorodnoye LNG complex;
and associated export infrastructure.
By June 2008 much of that infrastructure was already far advanced.
That fact would become increasingly important in understanding why lenders were prepared to finance it.
7. The Project Was Already Close to Completion
Shell’s December 2006 filing had described Phase 2 as already more than 80 per cent complete, with approximately $12 billion invested by the end of the third quarter of 2006.
Contemporaneous Oil & Gas Journal reporting in early June 2008 said the shareholders had already committed roughly $15 billion and that year-round oil production was expected to begin later that year. (Oil & Gas Journal)
That commercial reality deserves emphasis.
By the time the Japanese-led financing closed, lenders were not evaluating a greenfield concept consisting of little more than geological promise and engineering drawings.
They were financing a huge project with billions already sunk into construction, much of the physical infrastructure substantially built and long-term LNG sales contracts already signed.
That changes risk.
It does not eliminate environmental risk.
It does not eliminate political risk.
But it makes abandonment commercially much less likely.
8. Japan’s Energy-Security Case Was Explicit
JBIC did not conceal why it wanted the project.
Its press release was headed:
“To Secure Stable Supply of Energy Resource and Energy Security for Japan.” (JBIC)
The bank said more than half the project’s expected LNG output would be supplied to Japan.
It estimated that this volume would amount to approximately 8 per cent of Japan’s LNG imports.
A substantial proportion of the project’s crude oil was also expected to reach Japan, with total project oil production equivalent to roughly 4 per cent of Japanese oil imports. (JBIC)
Those figures explain much of what followed.
For Japan, Sakhalin II was not simply another overseas oil-and-gas investment.
It was close.
It was large.
It was already contracted to Japanese buyers.
And it provided a source of supply outside the Middle East.
9. Geography Was Part of the Financing Argument
JBIC expressly referred to Sakhalin’s proximity to Japan.
The Russian Far East sits immediately north of Hokkaido.
That reduced voyage distances compared with many alternative sources of LNG.
JBIC argued that the project therefore had special significance for Japanese energy security. (JBIC)
It also pointed to expected reductions in LNG supply from Indonesia, historically an important source for Japan.
Sakhalin II could fill part of that gap.
This is a useful corrective to any explanation of the 2008 loan based solely on corporate finance.
The financing decision was also an instrument of Japanese national energy policy.
10. Mitsui and Mitsubishi Had Their Own Strategic Interests
Japan’s commercial interest was equally direct.
Mitsui and Mitsubishi jointly owned 22.5 per cent of Sakhalin Energy.
JBIC explicitly stated that the financing supported Japanese companies engaged in overseas resource development. (JBIC)
Mitsui’s president described Sakhalin II as important to energy security throughout the Asia-Pacific region and thanked the banking syndicate, Sakhalin Energy, LNG buyers, Gazprom, Shell, Mitsubishi and the other participants for bringing the financing to completion.
Mitsubishi’s president similarly welcomed the agreement as a Sakhalin Energy shareholder. (JBIC)
In other words, the Japanese public and private interests aligned unusually closely.
Japan had:
a government lender;
major Japanese equity shareholders;
Japanese commercial banks;
Japanese LNG customers;
and a national energy-security rationale.
That combination gave the replacement financing structure considerable strategic depth.
11. Who Were the Commercial Banks?
JBIC’s public release described the private component simply as a syndicate supplying up to $1.6 billion.
Contemporaneous reporting was more specific.
Oil & Gas Journal, citing Japanese reporting shortly before financial close, identified the expected commercial lenders as Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho Corporate Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and BNP Paribas. (Oil & Gas Journal)
Environmental organisations subsequently identified the same four banks when condemning the financing decision after it was announced. (Banktrack)
The private syndicate was therefore overwhelmingly Japanese, with BNP Paribas providing the principal European participation identified in the contemporary record.
12. Environmental Opposition Had Not Disappeared
The fact that financing was available did not mean the environmental controversy had been resolved.
On 11 June 2008, just days before the signing, environmental organisations wrote to the prospective lenders urging them not to finance Sakhalin II.
They cited concerns including pipeline impacts, river crossings, fisheries, oil-spill risk and the Western Gray Whale.
After the loan was announced, environmental groups including Friends of the Earth Japan, Sakhalin Environment Watch, Pacific Environment and BankTrack publicly condemned the participating institutions. (Banktrack)
Those criticisms are part of the contemporaneous record.
They are not judicial findings.
The distinction is essential.
13. The NGOs Claimed the Banks Were Violating Their Own Policies
Environmental organisations argued that financing Sakhalin II was inconsistent with the environmental and social policies of JBIC and the participating commercial banks.
They referred to expert reports, earlier lender scrutiny, Russian regulatory controversies and environmental problems identified during project construction. (Banktrack)
They also portrayed the absence of EBRD, ECGD and US Ex-Im finance as evidence that other public institutions had backed away from the project.
That description requires qualification.
The EBRD stopped considering its existing financing package after the ownership and financing structure changed materially following Gazprom’s acquisition of control. The EBRD expressly said it remained open in principle to discussing a new proposal from the restructured company. (FOE Japan)
Likewise, the British High Court record establishes that Sakhalin Energy withdrew its ECGD application before a final decision was made. (vLex)
Those facts do not invalidate the NGOs’ wider environmental criticism.
But they do mean that phrases such as “rejected by Britain” or “rejected by the EBRD on environmental grounds” are too crude for a documentary history.
14. JBIC Publicly Acknowledged the Environmental Concerns
The Japanese lender’s own announcement is unusually revealing.
JBIC specifically acknowledged concern among people in Hokkaido about the potential environmental effects of Sakhalin II.
It singled out possible oil spills and other environmental and social issues and stated that it had been working with Sakhalin Energy to address such concerns.
More importantly, JBIC said it would continue monitoring the project for years after the loan agreement. (JBIC)
This prevents another misleading historical simplification.
JBIC’s decision was not presented publicly as:
Environmental issues do not matter.
Its position was effectively:
The project is important enough to finance, and environmental concerns will be managed through continued lender engagement and monitoring.
Whether that approach was adequate was contested.
But the monitoring commitment itself is documentary fact.
15. Hokkaido Fisheries Put the Tension Into Words
JBIC’s press release included a statement from the Hokkaido Fisheries Environmental Centre.
Its chairman welcomed the financing because of Sakhalin II’s importance to Japanese energy security and Japan-Russia relations.
At the same time, he stressed serious concern about oil spills, shipping accidents and possible effects on people engaged in fisheries around Hokkaido.
The significance of JBIC participation, in his view, was that a major government lender could exercise continuing leverage over Sakhalin Energy. (JBIC)
That statement captures the policy tension unusually well.
Financing was not necessarily viewed as endorsement without conditions.
For some stakeholders, becoming a creditor created leverage that refusing to lend would not provide.
Environmental organisations sharply disagreed with that reasoning.
But it was a real institutional argument.
16. The $5.3 Billion Deal Followed the Collapse of the UK-US Route by Only Weeks
The timing remains striking.
29 February 2008: Sakhalin Energy withdrew its ECGD application. Mr Justice Mitting later recorded that no British decision would therefore be made. (vLex)
17 March 2008: the High Court dismissed ECGD’s appeal in the separate environmental-information case. (CaseMine)
June 2008: Japanese and commercial financing reached agreement.
16 June 2008: JBIC formally announced the $5.3 billion package. (JBIC)
Thus fewer than four months separated the withdrawal of the British application from the Japanese financial close.
Whatever practical pressure the British and US processes had created, they did not leave Sakhalin II without access to very large-scale external debt.
17. Did the Environmental Campaign Fail?
That question is more difficult than it first appears.
If success is defined narrowly as:
prevent Sakhalin II from obtaining project finance,
then the answer is clearly no.
The project obtained $5.3 billion in June 2008.
It later obtained still more.
If success is defined as:
force environmental issues into lender decision-making, produce independent scrutiny, alter project design, obtain documents, impose monitoring requirements and increase the reputational cost of financing,
the documentary record is much less dismissive.
Years of lender scrutiny had generated extensive environmental studies, the HSES Action Plan, corrective programmes, whale-protection measures, pipeline changes and public disclosure.
JBIC itself acknowledged environmental concerns in the very announcement that confirmed the loan and promised continued monitoring. (JBIC)
The finance arrived.
So did lender conditions and scrutiny.
Those outcomes can coexist.
18. What the $5.3 Billion Deal Did Not Prove
Financial close did not constitute a judicial finding that every environmental criticism of Sakhalin II was wrong.
It did not erase deficiencies previously identified during scrutiny by other institutions.
It did not mean that the Western Gray Whale controversy had ended.
It did not establish that every pipeline or river-crossing concern had been resolved.
Conversely, the existence of environmental criticism did not prove that JBIC or the commercial banks had acted unlawfully in financing the project.
The June 2008 agreement was a financing decision.
It was not an environmental judgment of universal validity.
That boundary should remain explicit.
19. Nor Did British Withdrawal Cause the Japanese Loan
Chronology can easily be mistaken for causation.
The British application disappeared in February.
The Japanese loan followed in June.
But JBIC had been involved with Sakhalin for years, had financed Phase 1 in 1997 and had participated in the earlier Phase 2 financing discussions.
Japan’s equity, banking, LNG-purchasing and energy-security interests all pre-dated the British withdrawal. (JBIC)
The stronger historical interpretation is therefore:
the disappearance of one financing route coincided with the successful reconstruction of another route in which Japan assumed the dominant public-finance role.
That conclusion fits the documentary evidence without claiming a causal chain the records do not establish.
20. The Financing Demonstrated the Limits of Lender Campaigning
There is nevertheless a broader lesson in the sequence.
Campaigners had focused heavily on institutions such as the EBRD, ECGD and US Ex-Im because those lenders operated with environmental policies, public accountability and reputational constraints.
That strategy could delay decisions.
It could extract information.
It could force environmental assessments.
It could sometimes persuade institutions not to participate.
But Sakhalin II demonstrated the structural limit of lender-focused campaigning:
a sufficiently large and strategically important project may have more than one pool of capital available.
When one financing architecture became unusable, another could be assembled.
In Sakhalin II, Japanese energy-security interests made that possibility especially powerful.
21. Shell Still Benefited
Shell no longer controlled the project.
But it remained a 27.5 per cent shareholder and continued to have a major commercial interest in Sakhalin II reaching production.
Its SEC-filed 2006 announcement had described the project as an important component of Shell’s global LNG portfolio and said Shell would remain involved in Sakhalin Energy management and continue as technical adviser after Gazprom became majority shareholder.
The successful financing therefore benefited a project in which Shell still had billions of dollars of exposure and substantial future production interest.
Shell’s 2008 Annual Report records the financing as part of the year’s operational progress. (Shell News)
The change in control did not make Shell economically irrelevant.
22. By the End of 2008, the Project Was Moving Into Production
Shell’s 2008 reporting records that Sakhalin Energy delivered first production from the Piltun-Astokhskoye B platform in December and began year-round oil exports.
First gas from the Lunskoye-A platform followed in January 2009.
The LNG plant started up in February 2009. (Shell News)
The $5.3 billion financing had therefore closed at a pivotal moment.
Sakhalin II was moving from vast construction project toward operating oil-and-LNG business.
That transition gave the debt an increasingly visible revenue base.
23. The Fundamental Question Had Changed
During the earlier EBRD and ECGD years, the question was often framed as:
Should international public institutions finance Sakhalin II?
By mid-2008, the commercially relevant question had become:
Which institutions will finance the final stages of a project that is already largely built and has contracted customers waiting for its output?
Those are not the same question.
The first gives lenders substantial leverage over whether the project proceeds.
The second gives lenders leverage over conditions, monitoring and financing terms — but far less leverage over whether billions of dollars of completed infrastructure will simply be abandoned.
That difference helps explain why the 2008 outcome looked so different from the years of unresolved Western financing discussions that preceded it.
24. The Money Had Not Finished Arriving
The June 2008 agreement was not the end of the financing story.
In October 2009, Sakhalin Energy announced another $1.4 billion loan from international commercial banks.
That financing was insured by Japan’s Nippon Export and Investment Insurance — NEXI.
The additional debt took total Phase 2 project finance to:
$6.7 billion. (Offshore Magazine)
Intriguingly, $6.7 billion was also the amount Gazprom said had been contemplated in the earlier financing structure before the creditor group was reorganised. (Rustocks)
By then Sakhalin II was no longer merely approaching production.
It was producing and exporting LNG.
Japan’s public-finance role had expanded again.
Documentary Findings
Established: On 29 February 2008 Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application for ECGD support before ECGD had reached a final substantive decision. The fact is recorded in the subsequent High Court judgment. (vLex)
Established: On 16 June 2008 JBIC signed a project-finance agreement providing up to $3.7 billion to Sakhalin Energy, alongside up to $1.6 billion from commercial banks, producing a $5.3 billion financing package. (JBIC)
Established: Royal Dutch Shell’s 2008 Annual Report independently records the $5.3 billion financing contract and Shell’s 27.5 per cent interest in Sakhalin Energy. (Shell News)
Established: JBIC expressly identified Japanese energy security, diversification of supply, proximity to Japan, support for Japanese resource companies and expected LNG deliveries to Japan as reasons for its participation. (JBIC)
Established: JBIC publicly acknowledged environmental concerns associated with the project and stated that it intended to continue monitoring environmental and social matters after financial close. (JBIC)
Established: Environmental organisations opposed the financing and alleged that Sakhalin II did not comply with the environmental policies of JBIC and participating private banks. Those claims remained the organisations’ position and are not treated here as court findings. (Banktrack)
Established with qualification: The EBRD, ECGD and US Ex-Im did not ultimately participate in this financing structure. The reason cannot accurately be reduced to a single environmental “rejection”: EBRD ceased considering its then-current package after the ownership restructuring, while Sakhalin Energy itself withdrew the UK application before a substantive ECGD decision. (FOE Japan)
Not established: The $5.3 billion financing does not establish that all environmental concerns had been resolved.
Not established: The absence of EBRD or ECGD money does not itself establish that those institutions found Sakhalin Energy guilty of environmental wrongdoing.
Not established: Sakhalin Energy’s withdrawal from the British and US financing processes does not prove that the subsequent Japanese loan was caused by those withdrawals.
Not established: No judicial finding identified in the records examined establishes that JBIC or the commercial lenders acted unlawfully by financing Sakhalin II.
Commentary
The June 2008 financing is one of the moments when the Sakhalin archive changes character.
For years, the documents describe scrutiny:
reports;
questions;
conditional commitments;
environmental assessments;
NGO submissions;
government correspondence;
information requests;
court proceedings;
and unresolved lender decisions.
Then suddenly there is money.
$5.3 billion of it.
That fact does not invalidate everything that came before.
Quite the opposite.
The earlier scrutiny helps explain why the Japanese lender talked openly about environmental monitoring, oil-spill concerns and stakeholder engagement when announcing its loan.
But the transaction also demonstrates a hard commercial reality.
Sakhalin II had become too advanced, too strategically important and too deeply connected to Asian energy markets to depend upon a single group of Western public lenders.
Japan had compelling reasons to finance it.
Japanese companies owned part of it.
Japanese banks could lend to it.
Japanese utilities wanted its LNG.
And the Japanese government regarded diversification of energy supply as a national strategic objective.
The environmental campaign therefore confronted something larger than Shell.
It confronted the alignment of a host government, a state-controlled energy giant, international oil expertise, Japanese equity, Japanese banks, Japanese buyers and Japanese energy policy.
That alignment proved financially formidable.
The most accurate conclusion is not that environmental scrutiny failed.
Nor is it that the project somehow “passed” every environmental controversy.
It is this:
the scrutiny changed the conditions surrounding Sakhalin II, but it did not remove the project’s ability to obtain capital.
When the British and earlier multilateral financing structures disappeared, the project did not disappear with them.
The centre of financial gravity moved east.
Source Record
The principal primary source is the Japan Bank for International Cooperation announcement of 16 June 2008, recording the $3.7 billion JBIC project-finance loan, the $1.6 billion commercial-bank syndicate, the shareholder structure, the intended use of funds, Japan’s energy-security rationale and JBIC’s commitment to continued environmental monitoring. (JBIC)
The principal authenticated Shell source is the Royal Dutch Shell plc 2008 Annual Report and Form 20-F, which records the $5.3 billion project-finance contract, Shell’s 27.5 per cent interest and subsequent operational milestones. Shell maintains its historical annual reports in its official corporate archive. (Shell News)
Shell’s December 2006 SEC filing records the Gazprom ownership agreement, the reduction of Shell’s interest from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent, the project’s more-than-80-per-cent completion status at that point and Shell’s continuing role after the ownership restructuring.
The principal judicial source is Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), in which Mr Justice Mitting recorded that Sakhalin Energy withdrew its ECGD application on 29 February 2008 before a final support decision had been made. The case concerned disclosure of environmental information and did not determine Shell’s environmental liability or the lawfulness of the separate Japanese financing. (vLex)
Contemporaneous Oil & Gas Journal reporting identified Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho Corporate Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and BNP Paribas as the four private banks expected to provide the $1.6 billion commercial portion of the financing. (Oil & Gas Journal)
Contemporaneous environmental-group statements are used to document opposition to the June 2008 financing and the criticisms made of JBIC and the commercial banks. These materials represent the campaigners’ position and are not treated as independent judicial or regulatory findings. (Banktrack)
Archive disclaimer: The existence or absence of project finance does not itself determine compliance with environmental law or lender standards. Environmental organisations’ criticisms are attributed to those organisations. EBRD’s withdrawal from its earlier financing proposal followed the material ownership restructuring; ECGD never issued a final decision because Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application. JBIC’s decision to finance the project is not presented as a judicial determination that all environmental controversies had been resolved.
Site wide disclaimer also applies.
Next Archive File
SLF-2007-044 — The Sakhalin Papers XXXIV: The Second Japanese Lifeline — NEXI and the Extra $1.4 Billion That Took Project Finance to $6.7 Billion
The $5.3 billion agreement of June 2008 looked enormous.
It was not the end.
In October 2009, with the world still emerging from a profound financial crisis, Sakhalin Energy obtained another $1.4 billion from international commercial banks.
The loan was insured by Nippon Export and Investment Insurance — NEXI, Japan’s government export-credit agency.
Total Phase 2 project finance now reached:
$6.7 billion. (Offshore Magazine)
By then Russia’s first LNG plant was operating.
Cargoes were sailing to Asian customers.
And a project that had once struggled for years to assemble international financing had secured one of the largest project-finance packages in Russian history.
Why did NEXI step in?
Which banks supplied the money?
How much leverage did Japan now exercise over Sakhalin II?
And what happened to the environmental conditions once the project moved from construction controversy to operating reality?
SLF-2007-044 will follow the second tranche — and examine how Japanese public backing completed the financing structure that Western lenders never joined.
*This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment, the Shell DPA Files, "Shell and the Spies", the Shell Leaks files, as well as books written and published by John Donovan - Kindle eBooks. Timeline of the Donovan Shell Feud. Toxic History of Royal Dutch Shell Group. Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years. *All created and supported by internet wizz, Nick Gill.
