London, December 15:

The British lawyer who represented Greenpeace in the battle with oil giant Shell over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil platform has been hired by Russia to prepare a case against the Anglo-Dutch oil company over problems at its development project on Sakhalin island off Siberia.

Mark Stephens, partner at Finer Stephens Innocent, said he expected court proceedings in spring although he would not say whether that would be in London, New York or Moscow.

The moves emerged amid another twist to the Sakhalin story yesterday (DEC14) with the environmental official dubbed a “Kremlin attack dog’’ for his verbal assaults on Shell’s environmental records facing disciplinary proceedings.

Oleg Mitvol, the deputy head of RosPrirodNadzor, Russia’s environmental agency, has been recommended for a warning by his own boss in a move which was variously interpreted as the result of internal jealousy or a softening of the Kremlin’s line as a deal neared between Shell and state-owned Gazprom over an asset swap.

Stephens made his name defending Greenpeace in litigation brought by Shell to recover the Brent Spar platform in the North Sea in 1995 which it alleged had been illegally occupied by the environmental activists. The case fizzled out, but Shell lost the public relations battle with Greenpeace and dropped plans to sink the platform in place of dismantling it at shoreside.