THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 10 SEPTEMBER 2026
SLF-2007-053
The Sakhalin Papers XLIII: Twenty-One Days of Airguns — What Actually Happened During the 2015 Piltun-Astokh Survey
The argument over whether the 2015 seismic programme should take place ended when Exxon completed its Odoptu survey on 7 July. The following day Sakhalin Energy began firing. Twenty-one days later its Piltun-Astokh programme was complete. The company acquired all 36 planned lines, recorded more than 80,000 shot points and shut the source down five times for marine mammals. But almost half of the environmentally sensitive A-lines were acquired at night, acoustic equipment failed, the full complement of real-time monitoring buoys was not available, and much of the crucial pre-survey behavioural-monitoring period was consumed by training and troubleshooting. WGWAP ultimately concluded that the mitigation component had been implemented satisfactorily. It did not say the monitoring programme was flawless — or that the whales were unaffected.
Archive reference: SLF-2007-053
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal primary record: Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel, Report of the Sixteenth Meeting, Moscow, 22–24 November 2015
Supporting primary records: Sakhalin Energy 2015 Monitoring and Mitigation Plan; company after-action material reviewed by WGWAP; IUCN Independent Observer report; WGWAP Noise Task Force material
Authenticated Shell record: Royal Dutch Shell plc Sustainability Report 2015
Contemporaneous reporting: Reuters, 23 July 2015; contemporary May 2015 reporting of the WGWAP seismic controversy
Court record: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), used solely for the earlier Sakhalin II environmental and public-finance context
Evidence standard: Sakhalin Energy’s operational assessments are identified as company positions. WGWAP conclusions are identified as independent scientific findings or recommendations. Operational compliance is not treated as proof of absence of biological effect. Later peer-reviewed analyses are distinguished from what was known immediately after the 2015 survey.
Shell has produced hundreds of pages explaining its progress towards a lower-carbon future. Unfortunately for the corporate narrative, it has also included the numbers.
By John Donovan
THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 2 SEPTEMBER 2026
Two veteran Shell employees working aboard the Prelude floating LNG facility off Western Australia have lost their attempt to secure substantially reduced working arrangements as they move toward retirement.
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THE SHELL NIGERIA FILES: 1 SEPTEMBER 2026
