THE SHELL LEAKS FILES
SLF-2007-027
The Sakhalin Papers XVII: The Kremlin Attack Dog and the Donovan Connection
From Leaked Emails to Legal Threats
Archive reference: SLF-2007-027
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal record: John Donovan correspondence with Oleg Mitvol, 19 November 2006; correspondence with solicitor Mark Stephens, 21 December 2006; Shell Exploration & Production General Counsel Keith Ruddock’s response of 5 January 2007; Shell internal “Donovan – Sunday Times” email of 2 February 2007
Supporting record: Argus FSU Energy interview with Oleg Mitvol; contemporaneous Guardian, Business New Europe and Prospect reporting; official Kremlin and Gazprom records; subsequent English High Court proceedings concerning UK governmental scrutiny of Sakhalin II
Evidence standard: Direct documents, reported statements, allegations, legal threats, judicial findings and commentary are identified separately. No causal claim is treated as established merely because it appeared contemporaneously in the press.
Introduction
An earlier instalment in this series, SLF-2007-022, reconstructed the provenance of the 2002 Sakhalin technical emails and established the documentary chain by which they travelled from the Shell/Sakhalin network into the possession of John Donovan and onward to Russian environmental regulator Oleg Mitvol.
This file asks a different question.
What happened after Mitvol decided the material might be usable against Sakhalin Energy?
The surviving record is unusually revealing.
It contains a direct letter offering assistance with authentication.
It contains a Russian regulator publicly identifying his source.
It contains contemporaneous reports that lawyers were being assembled for proceedings against Shell.
It contains correspondence with the London solicitor retained in connection with the proposed Russian case.
It contains Shell’s own written rejection of much of the Donovan interpretation.
And, finally, it contains an internal Shell email showing that Group media staff knew a national newspaper was investigating the Sakhalin leaked-email story and were trying to persuade the newspaper not to run it.
Those documents do not prove that John Donovan caused Shell to lose control of Sakhalin II.
They prove something narrower — and historically important.
The leak had moved beyond publication. It had entered the worlds of regulation, proposed litigation and corporate damage control.
1. The Man the Guardian Called the “Kremlin Attack Dog”
The description did not originate on this website.
In October 2006, The Guardian introduced Oleg Mitvol as the “Kremlin’s attack dog” leading the assault on the $20 billion Sakhalin II development. The newspaper accompanied Mitvol and other observers as he toured alleged environmental damage on Sakhalin Island and reported his increasingly confrontational exchanges with representatives of the Shell-led consortium.
Mitvol was then deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor, Russia’s environmental watchdog.
His campaign was highly public.
He accused Sakhalin Energy of environmental violations involving rivers, forests and pipeline construction. Shell and Sakhalin Energy disputed both the scale of the alleged damage and the regulatory conclusions being drawn from it. Contemporary reporting also questioned whether environmental enforcement was being used in the larger struggle to bring Gazprom into Sakhalin II.
That political context matters.
But it does not make the documentary trail disappear.
2. 19 October 2006: Mitvol Gets the Emails
The key provenance point had already become public by November.
In an interview reproduced in the surviving archive, Mitvol said he possessed email correspondence between Sakhalin Energy management figures dating from 2002.
Asked where it had come from, he identified his source directly:
“I received these letters from John Donovan.”
Mitvol said he had received the material on 19 October 2006, forwarded it to Sakhalin Energy and requested an official response.
Contemporaneous Business New Europe reporting independently repeated the same attribution. Derek Brower reported that Mitvol told the petroleum trade press that the compromising material had come from Donovan and consisted of correspondence between Sakhalin Energy management executives.
This therefore rests on more than a retrospective Donovan claim.
The Russian regulator himself publicly identified the source.
3. What the Emails Actually Contained
The correspondence involved Hans Bouman and Engel van Spronsen and raised technical concerns concerning well design, seismic conditions, young faults associated with gas plumes and the extent to which the project was being driven by schedule.
Contemporaneous MarketWatch reporting said a Shell manager had expressed concern in 2002 that proposed oil and gas well designs did not adequately address seismic risks. The Guardian subsequently reported that Shell had been warned years earlier by one of its own senior people about safety concerns relating to the development.
That does not mean the emails proved the final Sakhalin II engineering design was unsafe.
It means genuine internal technical concerns existed and subsequently became public.
That distinction remains important.
4. Mitvol Had Not Yet Proved Authenticity
One sentence in the Mitvol interview is particularly important because it prevents the later history from becoming exaggerated.
Mitvol did not say Russian intelligence had conclusively authenticated the emails.
He said:
“They appear genuine”
and added that Russian “special services” were working to establish authenticity. He said that, once verified, the material could form part of evidence used in proceedings against Sakhalin Energy.
That is the documentary position.
The archive currently contains no final report from those “special services” stating that their examination was completed and setting out a formal conclusion.
Accordingly, claims made years later that Russian intelligence definitively authenticated the documents go further than the surviving evidence presently permits.
What can safely be said is that Mitvol considered them sufficiently credible to send to Sakhalin Energy and sufficiently important to initiate an authentication exercise.
5. 19 November: Donovan Offers an Affidavit
The direct correspondence becomes particularly interesting on 19 November 2006.
John Donovan wrote to Mitvol after reading the published Argus interview.
He suggested that Mitvol contact Dow Jones journalist Benoit Faucon, who, according to Donovan’s understanding, had seen the two emails and checked their authenticity with the authors.
Donovan then went further.
He told Mitvol that he had independently checked the correspondence and offered to provide an affidavit confirming authenticity if required. He also said he might be able to place Mitvol in direct contact with Shell insiders who had knowledge of the matters, although he would not approach them unless Mitvol requested it.
That letter is significant for evidential reasons.
It shows that Donovan was not simply publishing the material and leaving Russian officials to discover it online.
He was actively offering assistance with provenance.
Whether Mitvol or any subsequent lawyer ultimately required that affidavit is another matter.
No affidavit relied upon in Russian proceedings has been located for this instalment.
6. The Threatened Claim
Mitvol’s public language was dramatic.
He said that if the documents were verified, he believed they could support proceedings against Sakhalin Energy and referred to environmental compensation exceeding $10 billion, in addition to possible compensation for Russian revenue allegedly lost through project delays. He described the $10 billion figure as a rough estimate prepared by experts, including Rosprirodnadzor.
Other contemporary reports carried still larger figures as the environmental campaign developed.
Those numbers should be treated for what they were:
regulatory claims and threatened damages, not court awards.
There is no located judgment ordering Sakhalin Energy or Shell to pay Mitvol’s proposed $10 billion or the later figures being publicly discussed.
7. Then the Lawyers Appeared
By December 2006, the threatened legal action had moved beyond Mitvol’s rhetoric.
On 14 December 2006, The Guardian reported that British solicitor Mark Stephens, known for having represented Greenpeace during the Brent Spar dispute, had been retained by Russian interests to assemble an international legal team and develop options for proceedings concerning Sakhalin II.
Stephens told the newspaper that he expected court proceedings in the spring, although the jurisdiction had not been decided. The same report noted that Mitvol — still described as the Kremlin “attack dog” — was simultaneously facing internal disciplinary pressure as negotiations between Shell and Gazprom approached their climax.
This is an important point in the chronology.
The litigation threat was sufficiently serious for an identifiable London lawyer to discuss it publicly.
But contemplated litigation is not completed litigation.
And anticipated proceedings are not a judgment.
8. 21 December: Donovan Writes to the Russian Side’s Lawyer
The archive contains another direct document.
At 16:55 on 21 December 2006, John Donovan emailed Mark Stephens.
The timing was extraordinary.
The high-level negotiations involving Shell, Gazprom, Mitsui and Mitsubishi were taking place in Moscow that same day.
Donovan told Stephens that he understood the solicitor was advising Rosprirodnadzor in relation to a proposed environmental claim against Sakhalin Energy. He drew attention to Mitvol’s public acknowledgement that Donovan had supplied material and offered further documentary evidence from Shell and Sakhalin insiders if proceedings were genuinely intended.
Donovan also made an important qualification in his own email.
He said he did not know whether the threatened proceedings were seriously contemplated or were instead being used as leverage during the Gazprom negotiations.
That uncertainty was being expressed at the time, not invented retrospectively.
Stephens replied later that evening:
“Thanks for your mail John.”
Nothing in that short response establishes that he accepted the proposed evidence, relied upon it, regarded it as admissible or transmitted it onward.
The correspondence proves contact.
It does not prove legal reliance.
9. On the Same Day, the Ownership Battle Was Being Settled
The Kremlin’s official transcript confirms that 21 December 2006 was also the day Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi signed the protocol under which Gazprom would become the controlling shareholder in Sakhalin Energy.
Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller told President Vladimir Putin that the parties had reached agreement after roughly two years of negotiations. Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer discussed the environmental concerns in the same Kremlin meeting and thanked Putin for his assistance in resolving the wider dispute.
The formal purchase and sale transaction followed in April 2007, leaving Gazprom with 50 per cent plus one share and reducing Shell’s interest from 55 per cent to 27.5 per cent.
The coincidence of regulatory pressure, proposed litigation and ownership negotiations is historically striking.
It is not, by itself, proof of a bargain.
10. What Contemporary Journalists Made of the Connection
Independent contemporary reporting went further than the documentary minimum.
In January 2007, Business New Europe reported that the environmental charges had helped create conditions advantageous to Gazprom and explicitly described Donovan as the source of Mitvol’s internal Sakhalin correspondence. The article said that although Mitvol denied ulterior motives, few observers doubted that the environmental campaign intersected with Gazprom’s strategic ambitions.
The following month, Prospect published Derek Brower’s “Rise of the gripe site.”
It reported that Mitvol’s detailed inside information had come from material passed by the Donovans and stated that Mitvol had publicly acknowledged John Donovan as his source. The magazine portrayed the environmental campaign as part of the political pressure through which control ultimately moved to Gazprom.
Those are significant contemporaneous assessments.
But they remain journalistic interpretations of causation.
They are not judicial findings that the Donovan material caused the ownership transfer.
11. Shell Was Given an Opportunity to Respond
Another useful document survives from 5 January 2007.
Before publishing a lengthy account of the Sakhalin affair, the Donovan website offered Shell advance sight and an opportunity to respond.
The response came from Keith Ruddock, then General Counsel for Shell Exploration & Production.
Ruddock said Shell “disagree[d] fundamentally” with the factual basis and interpretation of much of the material and considered that no useful purpose would be served by a detailed rebuttal.
That response should be given proper weight.
Shell did not accept the Donovan narrative.
It did not accept the interpretation placed upon many of the insider allegations.
It did not concede that the leaked emails proved wrongdoing.
Equally, the response did not identify specific inaccuracies in the Bouman–Van Spronsen correspondence or deny that Mitvol had received material from Donovan.
The correct documentary formulation is therefore not:
Shell admitted the allegations.
It plainly did not.
The record is:
Shell rejected much of the factual basis and interpretation but chose not to provide a detailed rebuttal.
12. February 2007: The Story Reaches Shell’s Group Media Office
Then comes an authenticated Shell document of a different kind.
A Shell internal email dated 2 February 2007, subsequently released under the UK Data Protection Act, carried the subject:
“Donovan – Sunday Times.”
The author said Shell’s Group media office understood that The Sunday Times had picked up the “Sakhalin/drilling leaked e-mail story from Donovan’s website.”
The email said the media team was initially trying to “kill the story” by persuading the newspaper that it was old news, while acknowledging that this approach had only a slim chance of working.
This document is important.
But its meaning should not be inflated.
In media-relations language, attempting to “kill” a story can mean persuading a journalist or editor that there is insufficient novelty or news value to justify publication.
The email does not record bribery, intimidation or any unlawful interference with the newspaper.
It records an attempted news-management strategy.
13. The Sunday Times Article Did Not Appear
John Donovan’s contemporaneous account says Sunday Times journalist Steven Swinford had prepared an article, arranged photography and read the proposed story to him on 3 February before expected publication.
The article did not appear.
Donovan later speculated that Shell’s intervention might have contributed to that outcome. The same archive records that he was told the article had initially been displaced by the Suffolk bird-flu outbreak.
Shell’s internal email proves that Group media wanted to prevent the Sakhalin story from running by arguing that it was old news.
It does not prove that Shell succeeded.
There is no document currently identified in this archive from The Sunday Times saying:
“We cancelled this article because Shell asked us to.”
The distinction is essential.
One can document intention on Shell’s side.
One cannot safely assign causation for the newspaper’s editorial decision from the existing evidence.
14. The Court Record Tells a Different Story
There is another reason for caution when discussing “the Sakhalin court case.”
More than one legal process became associated with the project.
Mitvol talked publicly about proceedings against Sakhalin Energy.
Mark Stephens publicly discussed assembling legal options.
But no located Russian merits judgment establishes the environmental case Mitvol said he intended to bring on the basis of the leaked emails.
The most important accessible English judgment involving Sakhalin II is instead Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin).
Mr Justice Mitting recorded that Shell had held the majority interest in the consortium in 2003, that Gazprom had assumed a 50 per cent interest by early 2007, that roughly $650 million of UK export-credit support had been sought, and that the project presented potentially serious environmental consequences, including risks concerning Western Grey whale habitat.
The case concerned access to environmental information held by the British Government.
The Information Tribunal had ordered disclosure of interdepartmental responses concerning the Sakhalin project. ECGD appealed. Mr Justice Mitting dismissed that appeal.
The judgment did not decide:
whether the Bouman–Van Spronsen emails proved technical wrongdoing;
whether Mitvol’s proposed damages claim was justified;
whether Donovan’s activities caused Gazprom to obtain control;
or whether Russian environmental enforcement was politically motivated.
It was a transparency case.
That limitation matters.
15. The Proposed Environmental Litigation Faded
The Russian threat of a giant environmental action never produced the kind of final merits judgment that Mitvol’s public statements had suggested might follow.
By the time the ownership structure changed, the political and commercial environment had also changed.
Gazprom became the majority shareholder.
The project continued.
Environmental remediation and monitoring continued.
The threatened litigation did not become the defining legal event of Sakhalin II.
This is consistent with the possibility, openly discussed at the time by journalists and even acknowledged as a possibility in Donovan’s email to Stephens, that the threat of litigation formed part of a much wider pressure environment surrounding the ownership negotiations.
It does not prove that this was its sole purpose.
16. A Documentary Circuit
What makes this episode unusual is not any single allegation.
It is the circuit created by the documents.
Internal technical concerns were written inside the Shell/Sakhalin world.
Copies left that world.
They reached a campaigning website.
They were sent to a Russian regulator.
The regulator forwarded them back to Sakhalin Energy and requested an answer.
The regulator publicly identified the source.
A London lawyer became involved in preparations for possible proceedings.
International journalists reported the connection.
Shell’s own General Counsel responded to the wider allegations.
Then Shell’s Group media organisation internally discussed how to prevent a national newspaper from pursuing the leaked-email story.
That chain is documented.
The interpretation placed upon it is a separate matter.
Documentary Findings
Established by the surviving record
Oleg Mitvol publicly said he possessed 2002 Sakhalin Energy management correspondence supplied by John Donovan.
Mitvol said he received the material on 19 October 2006 and forwarded it to Sakhalin Energy seeking an official reply.
Mitvol said the documents appeared genuine and that Russian “special services” were working to authenticate them.
He did not, in the surviving interview, say that this verification had already been completed.
John Donovan subsequently offered Mitvol assistance with authentication, including an affidavit and possible access to insiders with knowledge of the matters.
The Guardian reported that Mark Stephens had been retained to develop legal options concerning Sakhalin II and expected proceedings to follow.
On 21 December 2006 Donovan directly contacted Stephens, offered further material and expressly questioned whether the threatened proceedings were genuine litigation or leverage during the simultaneous Gazprom negotiations. Stephens acknowledged the communication but did not substantively address the proposed evidence in the surviving reply.
Shell General Counsel Keith Ruddock subsequently told Donovan that Shell fundamentally disagreed with much of the factual basis and interpretation of his Sakhalin account.
An authenticated Shell internal email of 2 February 2007 records that Group media knew The Sunday Times had picked up a Sakhalin leaked-email story from the Donovan website and was attempting to persuade the paper not to pursue it on the basis that it was old news.
Not established by the surviving record
No final Russian “special services” authentication report has been located for this archive.
No judgment has been located awarding the $10 billion or larger environmental sums discussed by Mitvol.
No evidence examined here establishes that Mark Stephens ultimately relied upon additional Donovan material in litigation.
No court has found that the Donovan emails caused Gazprom to acquire control of Sakhalin Energy.
No document establishes that Shell’s media intervention caused The Sunday Times article not to appear.
And no competent judgment establishes that every environmental or technical allegation made during the 2006 Russian campaign was correct.
Commentary
The temptation is to turn this episode into a spy story.
That would actually make it less interesting.
The documentary reality is more consequential.
A multinational company can control its press releases.
It can control official project documentation.
It can control who speaks for the corporation.
What it cannot completely control is what happens when its own people begin communicating privately about concerns — and copies of those communications leave the organisation.
That is what happened here.
The emails moved from internal discussion to journalism, from journalism to a critic, from the critic to a regulator, from the regulator back to the company, and then into threatened litigation.
At that point, Shell had an information-management problem that could no longer be solved by simply refusing to comment on a hostile website.
Its own internal February 2007 email demonstrates that reality.
The company was not merely watching the website.
Its Group media staff were responding to national newspaper interest generated by material originating there.
The broader Sakhalin outcome still cannot responsibly be reduced to:
Donovan sends emails → Shell loses Sakhalin.
Reality was far more complicated.
The project had suffered extraordinary cost escalation.
Environmental problems existed.
Russian regulators applied aggressive pressure.
Gazprom had been negotiating to enter the project for years.
Russia was pursuing a wider strategy of increasing control over strategic energy assets.
And Shell ultimately negotiated a commercial sale of part of its interest rather than having its shares confiscated by a court.
But another conclusion is equally difficult to avoid.
The leaked documents became part of the pressure environment.
That is not speculation.
Mitvol said he had them.
He identified where they came from.
He forwarded them to Sakhalin Energy.
He spoke about using them in court once authenticated.
Lawyers were being consulted.
Journalists were reporting the connection.
And Shell’s own people were discussing how to manage the resulting publicity.
That is enough.
History does not require embellishment.
Source Record
The principal documentary source is the 19 November 2006 correspondence from John Donovan to Oleg Mitvol, which preserves the contemporaneous Argus interview in which Mitvol identified Donovan as the source of the 2002 Sakhalin Energy emails, described his authentication efforts and discussed proposed legal proceedings.
A second primary document is the 21 December 2006 correspondence between John Donovan and Mark Stephens, then publicly reported as advising Russian interests concerning possible Sakhalin proceedings.
The Shell position is represented directly by Keith Ruddock’s 5 January 2007 response, in which Shell’s Exploration & Production General Counsel rejected much of the factual basis and interpretation of the Donovan account, and by the authenticated 2 February 2007 “Donovan – Sunday Times” internal Shell email concerning Group media handling of the leaked-email story.
Independent contemporaneous reporting includes The Guardian, Business New Europe and Prospect, while the ownership context is cross-checked against official Kremlin and Gazprom records.
The relevant later judicial record is Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), taken from the official National Archives judgment. It establishes the separate UK environmental-information dispute and should not be misrepresented as a judicial ruling on the Donovan–Mitvol evidence.
Archive disclaimer: Regulatory allegations are not treated as judicial findings. A threat to litigate is not treated as a filed or successful claim. Contemporary journalistic assessments of political causation are identified as such. Corporate disagreement does not establish that a publication was false, just as publication of leaked material does not establish that every inference drawn from it was correct.
Site wide disclaimer also applies.
Next Archive File
SLF-2007-028 — The Sakhalin Papers XVIII: “Pipeliners All!” — The Patton Email and the Fall of David Greer
By June 2007, Gazprom was in control of Sakhalin Energy.
The project still had to be finished.
And the workforce was under enormous pressure.
Then David Greer, a senior Shell executive and deputy chief executive of Sakhalin Energy, sent a motivational email to project staff.
It was supposed to rally the troops.
Instead, it escaped.
The Financial Times obtained it.
Readers began comparing its language with a famous pre-D-Day speech attributed to General George S. Patton.
And within weeks, Greer was gone.
The next instalment will examine the original email, the contemporary reporting, Shell and Sakhalin Energy’s response, and the circumstances surrounding Greer’s resignation.
The question will be narrower than the headlines:
What did David Greer actually write, what was borrowed, and what does the episode reveal about the pressure inside Sakhalin Energy after Shell lost control?
*This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment, the Shell DPA Files, "Shell and the Spies", the Shell Leaks files, as well as books written and published by John Donovan - Kindle eBooks. Timeline of the Donovan Shell Feud. Toxic History of Royal Dutch Shell Group. Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years. *All created and supported by internet wizz, Nick Gill.
