Advocates Fight Oil Companies on Transparency

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February 26, 2013

Major oil companies should stop fighting transparency laws that force extractive industries to disclose payments to governments, said Dominic Eagleton of Global Witness in an op-ed in The Huffington Post.

Global Witness is part of a large coalition seeking to increase transparency in the U.S. and abroad “[b]y encouraging extractive companies to publish accounts of the trillions of dollars they pay to governments for the world's oil, gas and minerals.”

This coalition, known as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), includes major oil companies like Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil, but those same companies are now trying to weaken reporting rules in the U.S.

[W]hile the EITI negotiations take place, and in a remarkably cynical move, many of its oil company members are supporting a lawsuit that if successful would destroy U.S. legislation designed to strengthen the EITI standard.

The legal action, filed by the American Petroleum Institute, an oil trade association that includes the EITI board members Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, aims to scrap Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires U.S.-listed extractive companies to publish the payments they make to governments for each resource project they invest in around the world.

Read the rest of the article to find out why this initiative is so important and what the next steps are to increase transparency in extractive industries. The U.S. also has an EITI federal advisory committee, which includes Project On Government Oversight Executive Director Danielle Brian. See what happened at the first meeting of the committee.

Topics: Energy and Natural Resources

Related Content: Department of Interior Oversight, Energy & Environment, Information Access, Oil & Gas Royalty Revenue, Open Government

Authors: Andre Francisco

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