Well, here we go again. Two brothers, Ilya and Aleksandr Saslavsky, both graduates of Oxford University and dual Russian-U.S. citizens, were arrested by the Russian FSB on charges of spying on behalf of foreign oil companies. In addition, the FSB raided the offices of TNK-BP, a joint venture between BP and three Russian gazillionaires.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said that the two men, who also have US citizenship, were arrested on March 12 while allegedly attempting to obtain classified information from a Russian “employed with a national hydrocarbon institution”.

An FSB spokesman said: “The brothers were illegally collecting classified commercial information for a number of foreign hydrocarbon companies, which wished to have advantages over their Russian rivals, including those in the [Commonwealth of Independent States] markets.”

The two were charged with industrial espionage on Wednesday. The announcement came just a day after police seized documents during raids on the Moscow headquarters of TNK-BP and BP, which holds a 50 per cent stake in TNK-BP.

The FSB said that the search produced “material evidence of industrial espionage . . . and business cards of representatives of foreign defence departments and the Central Intelligence Agency”.

So the brothers left the business cards of their CIA contacts just lying around the office? Some spies they are!

Oh, and in other news, the Rosprirodnadzor, the Russian equivalent of the EPA, announced that they will be conducting an inspection of TNK-BP's Samotlor field in Siberia:

A spokeswoman for the ministry of natural resources characterized the inspection announced on Friday as routine and noted that it would cover other fields and other companies as well.

Still, in 2006, the same Russian environmental agency threatened Royal Dutch Shell with multibillion-dollar fines in a months-long campaign that led to Shell’s selling a controlling stake of its Sakhalin Island oil and gas development to Gazprom.

After Gazprom bought the stake, the agency dropped its environmental complaints and work continued.

The same inspector in the Shell situation, Oleg L. Mitvol, the agency’s deputy director, was appointed to lead the investigation at TNK-BP’s Samotlor field, according to the statement.

How convenient.