Shell's Sakhalin Pipeline Raises Fears Of Another Nigeria - Independent

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"The Sakhalin project is one of the world's most ambitious. The oil giant, which recently announced profits of £9.3bn - the highest recorded by a British listed company - hopes its new £7bn pipeline, platform and LNG plant, will help it cash in on Asia and America's rising demands for oil and gas. The project is likely to be backed by loans from the British Government.

But those who must live with this modern-day bonanza are deeply unsettled. Environmentalists fear that disruption to the life cycle of the bear is but the tip of the iceberg. The worst-case scenario is an ecological catastrophe on the scale of the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster. There are concerns posed by offshore drilling to the critically endangered western grey whale in the north of the island. The loss of a single breeding-age mother could drive the 100-strong population to extinction.

The 800km pipeline at the centre of the scheme will traverse 21 seismic faults in some of the world's most earthquake-prone territory. It will cross more than 1,000 rivers and streams including dozens of sensitive salmon spawning grounds. Campaigners believe the threat of a serious oil spill on land or a tanker disaster in the seas that surround Sakhalin would wreck the fisheries from which a third of islanders make their living. Worst hit would be Sakhalin's 3,500 indigenous people. Many also believe that while Shell will make billions from the project, the people of Sakhalin - whose average income is just £28 a week - will be left with nothing but a ruined landscape.

More than 200 lorries a day thunder past the dachas on their way to deliver materials to Shell's LNG plant rapidly rising on the shores of Aniva Bay at Prigorodnoe. Mr Tikhonov says the dust storms they kick up are making people ill, polluting wells and ruining crops. Much of the public beach where families used to swim and gather mussels on the shore is now being built on. A local museum director, Elena Lopukhina, is furious. "Our losses are immeasurable," she says. "I have lost the opportunity to drink from the streams that I always did. I cannot go to the beach, which I loved. When this project is over all that will be left for us Russians is a pipeline that will cost a lot more to dig up than it did to bury."

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=645048