As well as claiming victory for the whales, he also believes the protest persuaded Exxon to re-inject into the seabed the drilling cuttings thrown up by its offshore project on Sakhalin. "It is embarrassing to have to go to them begging," he says.A survey by a local citizens group found that 90 per cent now opposed the plant Nearly 80 per cent saw no benefits. "The rest who did see some good coming out of it only did so in order not to be completely despondent," said Galina Budoragina, a teacher.This year, bowing to pressure from conservationists, Shell relocated the proposed routes of its two offshore pipelines to protect the grey whales. At the end of the construction phase, the buildings will be dismantled.So far, he says, only $486,000 of an agreed $4.5m fund for the town, has been forthcoming. They say it was promised they would be connected to the new gas supply But the prospect remains a distant dream.

Shell says this is a matter for the Russians.But according to Mr Zlivko, Shell must act. "I say to the shareholders of Shell - you have an operation which is going to make $3bn a year from this, surely you can spare us two bagfuls of gas?"In Korsakov, no new public housing has been built since 1992. It irks the people, he says, that a workers' village, comprising 4,000 homes, has not been sited in the town. He has just given notice that he intends to raise the company's annual rent of $50,000 a year 100-fold. He says he could earn more than Shell pays if he let the 54 hectares to farmers.Thousands of people in Sakhalin, where winter temperatures plummet to minus 30C, live in unheated homes.

Instead it has been placed within the high-security confines of the plant. He compares aspects of the deal to the "oil concessions signed by Middle East rulers at the beginning of the 20th century".Shell, under the auspices of the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company (SEIC), doesn't have to share its profits with the Russian government until it has recouped its costs and a 17.5 per cent profit. But according to an energy economist, Ian Rutledge, the original profit-sharing agreement was "particularly disadvantageous" to the Russians. The fallout from liberalisation and the huge wealth it unleashed into private hands continues to resonate in Russia - witness the sentencing last week of the former Yukos oil chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky.Shell assumed majority control of the Sakhalin project from the US oil company Marathon in 2000. "I have lost the opportunity to drink from the streams that I always did I cannot go to the beach, which I loved. When this project is over all that will be left for us Russians is a pipeline that will cost a lot more to dig up than it did to bury."The deal for the project was among the first of the post-Soviet era, allowing Western and private companies to exploit eastern Russia's vast resources.