Walter van de Vijver was furious. Tuesday morning’s newspapers had confirmed his worst suspicions. He, the former second-in-command of Royal/Dutch Shell, was going to be made the scapegoat for the biggest crisis in the Anglo-Dutch oil company’s 100-year history.

Van de Vijver and his boss, Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts, had been sacked a month earlier after it emerged that the company had seriously overstated its reserves, a revelation that caused its share price to plunge. It had instituted an internal inquiry, whose outcome was eagerly awaited by the City and Wall Street.

But the newspaper reports — which appeared to be uncannily well-sourced — were now pointing to only one conclusion. The report was to be a whitewash, with all the blame heaped on the shoulders of Van de Vijver and Watts.

It was time for a pre-emptive strike. Van de Vijver, well known for his quick temper and a penchant for plain-speaking, reached for the phone and called his lawyers, the aggressive Washington firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld. After a hurried consultation, the Van de Vijver camp fired its own salvo — a statement that made it clear that, in his opinion, he had told everybody that counted at Shell about his own concerns over the state of the company’s reserves.

But if last week’s leaks made Van de Vijver angry, this week might send him into orbit.

The 200-page Shell report, compiled by the American law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell and entitled “The facts and circumstances surrounding the reserves recategorisation”, will be released early this week. It will point the finger at Van de Vijver and Watts — and specifically at the pair’s antagonistic relationship.

Like a corporate version of the Hutton inquiry, the Davis Polk inquiry is understood to have looked through the pair’s e-mails and found evidence that the tension between the two men exacerbated, and may have even helped to cause, the reserves debacle.

It is an extraordinary conclusion. Watts and Van de Vijver had, at least on the surface, been Shell’s unstoppable double act, with the latter steadily following the former’s path to the top of the company.

Last year they indulged in a classic spate of shuttle diplomacy, endlessly flying to Russia — singly and together — to convince President Vladimir Putin of the merits of the company’s planned expansion into his country.

Their combined charms, the mercurial Dutch executive and the steady, cerebral English engineer, won the day, giving Shell its vital entree into the world’s next big oil province.

But under the surface, Davis Polk is understood to have found, the situation was anything but harmonious.

It will not make comfortable reading for the pair — but despite the painfulness of its revelations, it is unlikely to satisfy the company’s critics, who want one thing: the injection of some senior, big-hitting, independent directors who will be able to take an unjaundiced view of Shell’s predicament.

The next few days will also be a severe test for Jeroen van der Veer, the new chief executive. Not only will he have to contend with the “warts-and-all” reading from Davis Polk, but Ryder Scott, the American oil consultant, is expected to finalise its probe into the true state of Shell’s oil reserves.