U.S. Seeks to Join International Transparency Initiative

Every day, companies around the world are drilling, mining and extracting billions of dollars in natural resources from public lands. Tracking the revenue and making sure that a portion of it benefits public coffers and local communities is a daunting proposition. However, thanks to an international reform effort called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), there are now guidelines to increase the amount of information drilling and mining industries make available to the public.

A multi-stakeholder group, including POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian has been tasked by the Obama administration to come up with a plan for the U.S. to participate in EITI. The U.S. application will be submitted to the EITI international board in early 2014.

To learn more about the process, what’s at stake and why it matters, see the feature article we published today on POGO’s website. From the article:

“It’s an enormously important revenue stream and because of the history of problems, the only way you can have accountability in the government’s actions is if we have more transparency into what’s going on,” Brian said. “So EITI can be a really good step to making sure there is integrity in the process.”

The committee will be touring U.S. cities through the end of October for public information and comment sessions. For a full schedule and to view an interactive map of participating countries, visit POGO’s EITI page.

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