We encourage and support government efforts to use energy revenues effectively. In developing countries, oil and natural gas revenues can bring widespread benefits funding, for example, schools and hospitals.
If the money is poorly managed it can stimulate corruption, social inequality and conflict. Governments have responsibility for using these funds for social benefits but we can help. We believe that it starts with openness from companies like ours on how much we pay to governments and from governments on how they spend these funds.
We are a leading corporate supporter of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The UK government launched the initiative in 2002 to increase the transparency of revenues governments receive from oil and mineral activities. This includes payments made by private companies like ours, such as signature bonuses, taxes and royalties, and profits from state-owned companies.
Governments, agencies and companies in the oil, gas and minerals businesses now support the initiative. We were the first company in 2003 to publish the royalties, taxes and other payments made to the Nigerian government, with their permission and support. We sit on the board of the EITI and support national programmes in Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Gabon, Kazakhstan and Nigeria.
The Nigerian Government established its own national programme, the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), in 2004. We strongly support this and are actively involved in the national stakeholder working group as one of the two industry representatives. We continue to disclose our revenue to the Nigerian government.
Some have argued that to fulfil the EITI's mandate of increasing the transparency of oil and mineral revenues received by host governments it is not necessary to disclose annual payments made by individual companies. Instead these amounts could be aggregated by an independent aggregator - and the total amount published for comparison against government receipts. Supporters of this approach argue that, amongst other things, commercial confidentiality is kept this way.
Our view is that host governments should decide whether individual or aggregated company payments are disclosed. If a host government wants to disclose its revenues, we would support this.
