THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 5 OCTOBER 2026
SLF-2007-078
The Sakhalin Papers LXVIII: From Siberia to the Arctic — Shell Takes the Gazprom Partnership Into Russia’s New Frontier
Forty days after Shell announced that it would pause its Alaskan Arctic drilling programme following the troubled 2012 season, Royal Dutch Shell chairman Jorma Ollila sat in Amsterdam with Gazprom chief Alexey Miller and signed a memorandum for cooperation on Russia’s Arctic shelf. Vladimir Putin and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte were present. A parallel Shell–Gazprom Neft agreement targeted liquids-rich shale in Western Siberia. Shell had not abandoned its Arctic strategy after the grounding of the Kulluk. It had begun pursuing another Arctic frontier — this time through the Russian state company that had taken control of Sakhalin II.
Archive reference: SLF-2007-078
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal authenticated records: Royal Dutch Shell plc Annual Report and Form 20-F 2013; Gazprom corporate chronology and April 2013 corporate record; US Department of the Interior assessment of Shell’s 2012 Arctic operations; National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the Kulluk grounding
Court record: Shell Offshore, Inc. v. Greenpeace, Inc., 709 F.3d 1281 (9th Cir. 2013)
Contemporaneous reporting: UPI; RIA Novosti reporting; Daily Telegraph reporting preserved in the Donovan archive
Evidence standard: The Alaska pause, Kulluk grounding, US government review, April 2013 Gazprom–Shell memorandum and parallel shale agreement are established documentary facts. The Russian agreement is treated as a framework for potential cooperation, not as evidence that specific Arctic fields were awarded to Shell or that production was authorised. The proximity in time between the Alaska setbacks and the Russian agreement is established; any proposition that the Russian Arctic was a direct replacement for Alaska remains commentary rather than documented Shell policy.
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