THE SHELL LEAKS FILES — 5 NOVEMBER 2026
Archive reference: SLF-2007-109
The Sakhalin Papers XCIX: The Shareholding That Survived — Shell’s Bermuda Company, Its Russian LNG Contracts and the Exit That Remained Incomplete
AN INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INVESTIGATION
By the Donovan–Shell Archive
Researched and drafted with assistance from ChatGPT, using authenticated Shell financial statements, original corporate announcements, SEC filings, contemporaneous reporting, historical documents preserved in the Donovan–Shell Archive and publicly accessible regulatory records.
Nearly five years after Shell announced its intention to withdraw from its Russian energy investments, the company’s own financial disclosures reveal a complicated legal inheritance. Shell still reported ownership of 27.5% minus one share in the original Bermuda-registered company that once operated Sakhalin II, even though Russia had transferred the project’s operating rights to a replacement company. One long-term Russian LNG purchase agreement had been declared terminated following non-performance. Another, signed with a Novatek subsidiary in 2015, remained listed in Shell’s 2025 annual report. These are not indications that Shell secretly continued operating Sakhalin II. They demonstrate something more technically significant: withdrawing from an investment, losing control of its operating assets, terminating associated contracts and extinguishing every residual corporate right are different legal and financial events. The authenticated records allow those distinctions to be reconstructed.
Comment from “An Old EP Hand” on the article:
China gets the promises, Germany gets the insolvency proceedings, and Shell gets to explain why both developments are entirely consistent with its energy-transition strategy.
