Yahoo News 3 Oct 08;
Russian environmental groups launched Friday legal action against an oil and gas project led by US energy giant Exxon for threatening critically endangered whales in Russia's far east.
The Russian government last month gave the consortium the green light to construct a pipeline across a Sakhalin island lagoon that produces organisms on which the world's last 120 to 130 Western Gray Whales survive.
"We have decided to challenge in court the positive findings of the state experts," Ekaterina Gretchuchkina, the chief lawyer for the Russian environmental group Rodnik, told a Moscow press conference.
Rodnik filed the lawsuit at a Moscow district court together with the non-governmental Sakhalin Environment Watch and an association of indigenous people.
Separately, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has sent a letter to Russia's Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev, asking him to stop the project.
Earlier this year, the WWF, Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare presented Trutnev's ministry with a scientific report arguing for the pipeline route to be changed.
The report said there were only around 130 Western Gray Whales left worldwide, including some 20 females able to reproduce. They gather in the area for four months to feed and build up the fat to survive the rest of the year.
The international consortium in the Sakhalin-1 project -- which also includes Russian, Japanese and Indian oil companies -- rejected an offer to negotiate a new route.
