Obama: US will implement international standards for energy transparency

President Obama said Tuesday that the United States would adopt a set of international standards to increase transparency in the oil, gas and mining sectors.

Obama used the launch of the multilateral “Open Government Partnership” in New York City to announce that the U.S. will formally become an implementing country in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

“Today, I can announce that the United States will join the global initiative in which these industries, governments and civil society all work together for greater transparency so that taxpayers receive every dollar they’re due from the extraction of our natural resources,” Obama said in wide-ranging remarks in New York City.

EITI is an eight-year-old collaboration between countries, companies and nongovernmental groups aimed at ensuring that government revenues from energy and mining projects provide public benefits.

Governments, under the EITI program, publicly disclose revenues, while companies also disclose payments to governments for access to resources.

It’s an effort to reverse the “resource curse,” in which some energy- and mineral-rich nations in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere are plagued by high levels of corruption, conflict and poverty.

The EITI announcement is part of a wider set of U.S. commitments under the Open Government Partnership.

The U.S. is already a “supporting” country in EITI, but with today’s announcement become the first G-8 country to commit to implementing EITI within its own borders, according to Ian Gary of Oxfam America.

“It will strengthen the credibility of the U.S. when it is encouraging other countries to implement EITI,” said Gary, Oxfam's senior policy manager for extractive industries, who noted that countries including Cambodia and Angola have not signed on.

Last year’s Dodd-Frank financial reform law requires companies listed on U.S. exchanges to file Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures about their payments related to projects in the U.S. and other countries where they operate. The SEC has yet to finalize implementing rules, however.

“We’re continuing our leadership of the global effort against corruption, by building on legislation that now requires oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose the payments that foreign governments demand of them,” Obama said, according to his prepared remarks.

Implementing EITI will ensure public disclosures about U.S. payments by privately held companies, in addition to the publicly traded companies captured by the Dodd-Frank mandates, according to Gary.

The U.S. collects about $10 billion annually in revenues from oil-and-gas and mining projects on public lands and in public waters offshore.

“By signing onto the global standard that EITI sets, the U.S. Government can help ensure that American taxpayers are receiving every dollar due for the extraction of these valuable public resources,” states the White House “action plan” for the Open Government Partnership.

The Interior Department last year moved its energy revenue collections outside of the offshore drilling regulation branch to prevent conflicts of interest — part of the overhaul that followed the BP oil spill.

The White House “action plan” says that signing on to EITI will add to such reform efforts by providing more “sunshine.” The plan states:

Industry already provides the Federal Government with this data. We should share it with all of our citizens. Toward that end, the Federal Government will work with industry and citizens to develop a sensible plan over the next two years for disclosing relevant information and enhancing the accountability and transparency of our revenue collection efforts.

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