Home government requirements for disclosure in the oil and industries

Full report (PDF format)

Summary

Home countries are those which are ‘home’ to companies either registered or raising capital within their jurisdictions. Such companies include oil, gas and mining companies that operate throughout the world. These companies must abide by the regulations of these home countries.

Therefore, home governments could bring about multi-lateral improvements to transparency of extractive industry revenue information by requiring companies to disclose their payments to governments wherever they operate. This is the central call of the Publish What You Pay coalition. Home governments could also support disclosure of such data through their access to information systems. Both mechanisms would allow citizens in resource-rich countries to secure information on payments that their governments are receiving for extractive industry resources.

This report, Beyond the Rhetoric, aims to put the focus back on the direct action that home governments can take to support improved transparency in the extractive industry. It defines a standard for government regulation of company transparency on revenue payments and assesses practice against this standard in ten countries: Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the USA.

The framework for the standard examines policy and management systems across four categories: revenue payments transparency; supportive disclosure; access to information; and broad governance environment. The results were subject to verification by government officials and experts in country. Eight out of ten countries responded, seven in detail. This report is focused on the oil and gas sector. Future phases will address the mining sector.


Full report (PDF format)

Also available in French, Spanish, Russian and Bahasa Indonesia.


APPENDIX TO HOME GOVERNMENT REPORT

Annex 1: revenue payments transparency and supportive disclosure results (pdf)

Annex 2: access to information results (pdf)

Annex 3: comparison of governance indicators across surveyed countries (pdf)

Scoring and weighting scenario 1 (xls)

Scoring and weighting scenario 2 (xls)

Review Group members for measuring revenue transparency of home governments (pdf)