Welcome moves for greater openness over oil money in Iraq and Nigeria
Date: 7 Jul 2003
The decision by the United States to publish information on Iraq’s oil revenues, and on the
way they are spent, is a welcome first step towards transparency in Iraq’s oil industry.
Under the new spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan, signed into law by President Bush this
week, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq must submit to U.S. legislators a
monthly report “which details, for the preceding month, Iraqi oil production and oil revenues,
and the use of such revenues.” The reports must be published in English and Arabic, including
via the CPA’s website.
“This provision means that the Iraqi people should be able to see how much money their oil is
earning and what that money is being spent on. Given the vast sums wasted by corruption and
unaccountable government in many oil-rich countries, this is good news,” said Simon Taylor,
director of Global Witness.1
Global Witness is a founding member of the Publish What You Pay global coalition, which
campaigns for oil and mining companies to publish their payments to governments, and for
governments to publish their receipts from these resources. Such disclosure would make it
easier for citizens to double-check where their money goes.2
The U.S. move comes in the same week as a dramatic announcement by Nigeria that it plans
to publicly disclose all the revenues its government receives from oil and gas. Nigeria, the
largest oil-producing country in Africa, has been dogged in the past by massive
misappropriation of oil wealth by state officials.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo announced the move today in Berlin, at the tenth
anniversary meeting of Transparency International, the anti-corruption group of which he was
a founder. Nigeria will go even further than the U.S. in Iraq by not only disclosing state
earnings from oil and gas but also requiring companies in the country to individually publish
their payments to state agencies.
“We welcome both moves as major steps forward in implementing transparency,” said
Taylor. “In particular, the Nigerian model of both state and company accountability, coming
from Africa’s biggest oil producer, has set a standard that others must follow.”
The US and Nigeria are both participants in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative,
the UK-led campaign for greater openness in the oil and mining industries.3
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Contact Simon Taylor or Sarah Wykes. Office: +44 (0)207 272 6731
or mobiles: +44(0)7957 142 121/+44 (0)7947 008580
Editor’s notes:
- Global Witness investigates the links between the exploitation of natural resources and the
funding of conflict and corruption. It is non-partisan in all its countries of operation. Global
Witness has been co-nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in uncovering
how diamonds have funded civil wars across Africa. - The Publish What You Pay campaign was launched in June 2002 and now has more than
170 members (see www.publishwhatyoupay.org ). The coalition calls for stock market and
international accounting rules to require oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their net
payments to governments for resource access on a country-by-country basis. The coalition
believes that revenue transparency is an essential condition for alleviating poverty, promoting
just and equitable development, improving corporate social responsibility, and reducing
corruption in many resource-rich developing countries, such as Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan,
Cambodia, Chad, Colombia, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea,
Sudan, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. - Information on the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is available at: www.dfid.
gov.uk . The full Global Witness statement on the EITI can be downloaded at www.
globalwitness.org
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