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Research
A participatory approach was adopted in researching and drafting the report. A variety of stakeholders, most notably the companies themselves, were engaged during the research design and data review process. Several companies used the opportunity to review their own data and provide feedback; regrettably, and despite all efforts to engage them, about thirty companies did not take this opportunity. The hope is that, in future iterations of the report, more companies will welcome the prospect of reviewing their data. The report-drafting process benefited from the input of a multi-stakeholder group.
Findings The results of the report produce five primary findings. ● Revenue transparency is not yet a common practice in the industry. Two-thirds of the companies evaluated fall into the middle- or low-performance categories. Most of the evaluated companies provide insufficient reports on their payments to host governments (see figure 21). ● Wide variation exists in company practice. Leading IOCs and NOCs demonstrate that revenue transparency is possible and that proactive company efforts can make a difference. This information could be useful to encourage companies to exert peer pressure on their competitors to set a common high standard. Working to achieve such a standard is an imperative. ● Good practice in revenue transparency starts at home, where national regulations have a strong influence on current company revenue transparency practices. ● Regulatory approaches produce systematic impacts. Two main types of regulation currently have some limited impact and have the potential to level the playing field even further: ● regulations with a multi-country impact, such as stock exchange listing regulations and accounting standards; and ● host-government reforms along the lines of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).5 ● Disclosure of information on revenue transparency is hindered by diverse reporting formats that are difficult to obtain, interpret and compare between companies and countries. Based on these key findings, the report introduces four main recommendations to improve revenue transparency. First, oil and gas companies should proactively report in all areas relevant to revenue transparency on a country-by-country basis. They should also discourage governments from including in their contracts confidentiality clauses that obstruct revenue transparency. Companies that have already started to disclose information in some countries should extend their reporting to all countries in which they operate. Second, home governments and the appropriate regulatory agencies should urgently consider introducing mandatory revenue transparency reporting for the operations of companies at 5 EITI is a voluntary initiative under which host governments and extractive companies agree to disclose company payments for extractive activities and government receipts, respectively. The two data sets then undergo a process of independent reconciliation.