MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) – Gazprom’s timely action to protect the critically endangered western Pacific population of grey whales has increased their numbers to 150 from a mere 100, Russia’s Ecology Minister Sergei Donskoi said Thursday.
Sakhalin Energy, a company set up by Russia’s energy giant Gazprom to develop offshore oil and gas deposits in the western Pacific, has previously been criticized by environmentalists for drilling in the whales’ traditional feeding grounds.
“Sakhalin Energy’s own initiative to preserve the population of grey whales in the Sea of Okhotsk has yielded good results. Despite the construction of new oil rigs in this area, its timely action helped increase the number of these mammals to 150 from 100,” Donskoi said.
Every year, grey whales undertake a long migration along the Pacific coastline from their summer feeding grounds to winter breeding grounds and back.
Sakhalin Energy’s drilling in the northeastern shelf area of the Sakhalin island in the Russian Far East has been feared to jeopardize these migration routes and the entire species, forcing the company to take measures to protect these majestic mammals.
Sakhalin Energy is owned by Gazprom (50 percent of shares plus one), as well as by Shell (27.5 percent minus one share), Mitsui (12.5 percent) and Mitsubishi (10 percent). It was formed to develop the Piltun-Astokhskoye and the Lunskoye oil and gas fields in the Sea of Okhotsk.
