Russia's environmental regulator said Friday it had found new legal violations committed by Gazprom-controlled Sakhalin Energy, which operates the Sakhalin II oil and gas project off the country's Pacific Coast, RIA Novosti reports.
Rosprirodnadzor's branch in Sakhalin said its experts had found that a subsidiary of Sakhalin Energy, building a stretch of a pipeline crossing several rivers, had failed to carry out riverbank reinforcement and landslide containment work.
Regulators sent a report setting out their findings to local and regional environmental prosecutors, and ordered the company to rectify the uncovered violations, the statement said.
The ambitious Sakhalin II project, formerly led by Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell, was subjected to months of intense pressure last year from Russian authorities, who accused it of inflicting major environmental damage on Sakhalin Island, including deforestation, toxic waste dumping and soil erosion.
The dispute was largely resolved after Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom [RTS: GAZP] acquired a controlling stake in the project last December, and authorities coordinated in March 2007 a plan to fix the damage.
However, the environmental watchdog continues to closely monitor the implementation of the project, and several new allegations have arisen this year.
Minority partners in the project, Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, currently control 27.5%, 12.5% and 10% of Sakhalin Energy respectively, in line with the 2006 deal.