RusEnergy

02 January 2007 - Upstream onLine - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is likely to abandon a $300 million loan to Sakhalin 2 after Shell and its Japanese partners were forced to sell a 50% stake in the venture to Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, according to reports. The mandate of the EBRD would probably preclude it from lending to a project now dominated by a state-run company like Gazprom, a report published in the Wall Street Journal Europe said. "It doesn't invest in projects that have just been nationalised," a banker familiar with EBRD's work told the newspaper. A spokesman for the EBRD, Anthony Williams, said no decision had been taken, the paper said. A decision not to approve the loan is not likely to jeopardise the $22 billion development, which lies off Russia's Pacific coast.