POGO Joins Natural Resources Extraction Transparency Initiative

Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has appointed POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian to serve on a new federal advisory committee that will oversee efforts to make royalty payments from natural resources companies to the government more transparent.

The committee is part of the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which calls for collaboration among government agencies, industry, and civil society groups to ensure that each country’s government and taxpayers are getting their fair share of revenues from natural resources that come from public lands.

The United States, for instance, collected almost $12 billion from extractive industries companies in 2012, according to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue. The revenue is distributed to states, environmental clean-up projects, the U.S. Treasury, and American Indian tribes, among other recipients.

Thirty-seven countries follow the EITI standard, and they have monitored and disclosed revenues from extractive industries such as oil, gas, and mining, according to the EITI website.

The U.S. EITI advisory committee is comprised of 21 primary and 20 alternative members. It will hold its first meeting—which, like all U.S. EITI advisory committee meetings, will be open to the public—on February 13 at the Department of the Interior.