Oil, gas and minerals, or the extractive industries generate great wealth. Oil export revenues for 2006 alone are estimated to make up approximately 1.8 percent of the World’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and more than half of the combined GDP of the 53 lowest income nations.

High revenues from the extractive industries have often fuelled corruption, economic stagnation, inequality and conflict. One step towards reversing this curse lies in the transparent and accountable management of revenues generated from the extractive industries.

The Promoting Revenue Transparency Project is run by Transparency International in partnership with the Revenue Watch Institute, and builds on the work of the Save the Children UK ‘Beyond the Rhetoric’ report from 2005. The project aims at making extractive industries’ revenues of most benefit to society by increasing transparency and accountability of extractive industry revenues.

To achieve this purpose, the project provides robust standards for revenue transparency and tools to measure progress, encouraging companies and governments engaged in the extractive industries to improve transparency and accountability to citizens and investors.

The Promoting Revenue Transparency Project has three specific objectives which add value to existing revenue transparency initiatives:

Insisting on transparent governance is necessary to transform the resource curse into a blessing. Greater public knowledge of the scale of extractive industry revenues, how these flow from oil producers to governments, as well as greater understanding of the oversight systems that are in place, can potentially place pressures on governments to use these revenues in the public interest in support economic growth and poverty reduction. Absent such transparency, governments and companies may behave in ways that will enhance the wealth of the few and yield no benefit to the many.

A vital approach to improving transparency lies in strengthening the accountability of decision-makers – of host governments and companies to citizens, and of companies to investors. This requires a strong role for civil society in monitoring processes and in constructive partnerships with companies and governments. To secure meaningful accountability there has to be adequate information about the resources being extracted and the flow of revenues to public authorities.

Four principal stakeholders can improve the transparency of such financial information in the context of the extractive sector: companies can publish what and who they are paying; host governments can publish what they are receiving from companies; home governments of the companies can regulate and enforce the disclosure of such information; and civil society in the host and home countries can act to monitor the payments from companies to public authorities to ensure that information is fully provided to the public at large. The ability of civil society to perform this role rests to no small degree on the actions in this context of the other three stakeholders.

In the 2008 Report on Revenue Transparency of Oil and Gas Companies, Transparency International (TI) evaluates 42 leading oil and gas companies on their current policies, management systems and performance in areas relevant to revenue transparency in their upstream operations.

Revenue transparency in this report includes three areas of corporate action where disclosure can contribute to improved accountability in the management of extractive revenues: payments to host governments, operations and corporate anti-corruption programmes. The companies are evaluated in a total of 21 countries of operation.

A variety of stakeholders, most notably the companies themselves, were engaged during the research design and data review process. It is important to state that this report and its analysis and recommendations are based on information which is made publicly available by companies. Several companies used the opportunity to review their own data and provide feedback, but despite efforts to engage with all companies at all stages of the project, regrettably more than 30 companies did not use the opportunity to review their data.

The companies in this report were chosen for their relevance, geographic spread and their size, and are not a representative sample of all oil and gas extraction companies. Detailed annexes outline methodology and criteria.

For more detail, please refer to the full report or the summary document (available for download below).

Backgrounder
Fact Sheet on the Oil and Gas Sector

• Transparence : les compagnies pétrolières doivent encore faire des efforts
  Novethic.fr, France, May 26 2008
• Make negotiations on oil public: GII
  Myjoyonline.com, Ghana, 20 May 2008
• Transparency International should focus on European companies
  El Khabar, Algeria, 20 May 2008
• Publicise oil revenues, says corruption watchdog
  New Vision, Uganda, 19 May 2008
• Sonatrach on the blacklist of oil companies
  El Khabar, Algeria, 19 May 2008
• Interview with Elena Panfilova, TI Russia
  INTERVIEW_panfilova_PRT_080510.mp3 5.17 MB
  Bulgarian National Radio, 10 May 2008 (in Bulgarian)
• More disclosures urged in oil deals
  Houston Chronicle, USA, 13 May 2008
• Slick operators
  Guardian comment, 6 May 2008
• Ghana: Revenue Transparency Shunned by Oil Companies
  Public Agenda, Ghana, 5 May 2008
• ExxonMobil backs transparency deals
  Financial Times, 2 May 2008
• Pertamina lacks transparency
  The Jakarta Post, Indonesia, 30 April 2008
• Fighting graft
  Financial Times, 29 April 2008
• Rosneft Outranks LUKoil
  The Moscow Times, 29 April 2008
• Transparency International flays oil firms over revenue figures
  Daily Independent, 29 April 2008
• Transparency: Pemex Best, PDVSA Worst
  Latin Business Chronicle, 28 April 2008
• Report by anti-corruption group rates oil companies' transparency
  Associated Press in International Herald Tribune, 28 April 2008
• Asian oil cos must detail anti-bribery efforts: NGO
  Reuters, 28 April 2008
• NNPC, other oil companies weak in revenue transparency
  Business Day online, 28 April 2008
• Exxon 'ranks low on transparency'
  BBC News, 28 April 2008
• Oil majors rebuked for lack of transparency
  Financial Times, 28 April 2008
• BBC_interview_JO_Radio_28apr08.mp3 1.95 MB
  - Interview with Juanita Olaya, Transparency International
  BBC World Service Radio, 28 April 2008
• Ghana: Governmant prepares to battle the "oil curse"
  Irin News. 24 April 2008
• Nigerian oil sector being probed
  BBC News. 22 April 2008
• EITI Plus Plus gets praise, encouragement
  United Press International, 18 April 2008
• Nigeria: EFCC probes past governments on $500 billion oil revenue
  Vanguard, Nigeria, 11 April 2008