Beyond the rhetoric - measuring revenue transparency in the oil and gas industries: company performance report

This report explores direct action that companies can take to support improved transparency of revenue flows in the extractive industries. It examines what progress has been made by companies through voluntary initiatives, and also to illustrates what steps should be taken if genuine transparency is to be achieved.Findings of the report are:systematic disclosure of payments for every country of operation presents a better practice than the country-focused approach, by which companies negotiate with host governmentsvariations in company performance within the same host country indicate that there is more room for improvement than is currently being demonstratedsome companies have similar levels of supportive disclosure across different countries of operation suggesting that company policy and systems can affect practice on the ground, and are not always hostage to individual country contextscompanies tend to put a large amount of information in the public domain in a format that is often unwieldy, heavy on narrative, and unnecessarily complicated without policies in place to tackle corruption and whistle blower protection it is difficult to see how companies can genuinely promote transparency and good governance of revenues.The report also identifies a number of recommendations. As the report highlights, companies should:publish what they pay to governments wherever they operate on a country-by-country basiscall on G8 governments to announce a commitment to developing global standards at the G8 summit this year adopt a more systematic approach to publishing payments made to governments in every country in which they operate by, for example, publishing a clear company policy on transparency or developing a simple reporting templatework collaboratively with other companies, civil society and host governments to build disclosure agreements into their contracts actively engage with the EITI to support progress where host governments are willing improve anti-corruption and whistle-blowing systems where performance is pooruse the standards provided in this report to measure and publicise progress on transparency issues against competitors on an annual basis.