Well, RIA Novosti has just published a translated-to-English article that says that the whole mess that is Sakhalin II is no longer a thing of concern.  The state gas monopoly Gazprom has paid a handsome fee to become a majority stockholder, and Shell will retain control through its subsidiary Sakhalin Energy.  All those environmental engineering disasters?  Well, why even bring those up. 

The article "Debates Around Sakhalin II Over" reasons that Gazprom paid a high price for its share because it wanted to compensate for "moral damage."  Apparently that's the only kind of damage any of these oily gassy folks are concerned about.  Nobody is even paying lip service to the long long list of illegal and simply bad engineering and design decisions made by Sakhalin Energy and its contractors. 

I guess we just wait for the catastrophic oil spills and hope when that happens they do more than just compensate for the "moral damage".

Well, at least public money won't be going to the project now, if this Yahoo article's (Gazprom's Sakhalin-2 buy may let EBRD off the hook) prediction is true, that the EBRD can't finance a project that is majority government-owned.