Our Work | Revenue Watch Institute

Azerbaijan: A fisherman in the oil village of Bibi-Heybat, the site of the Caspian bay's first exploration of petroleum reserves by American and European investors. (Rena Effendi)

Drafting a Charter to Guide the World's Use of Natural Resources

The Revenue Watch Institute is collaborating with a team of economists and legal and environmental experts to draft an international Natural Resource Charter. This pioneering document offers resource-rich societies a vision and a blueprint for the future of their country's natural resource sector. The most important audience for this document will be policy makers in resource-rich countries, but industry, intergovernmental organizations, citizen groups, and importing states are also key players in the decisions that determine the outcome of a society's attempt to harness resource wealth. Read more ... | Español

ANÁLISIS QUINCENAL: Transparency and Extractives Update from Latin America

Carlos Monge, RWI Latin America Regional Coordinator, and colleagues deliver fresh news and insight. In issue May 30, the debate about exporting natural gas continues in Peru; the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico holds consequences for Latin America; and Peru and Bolivia face the implications of rising international gold price. In previous issues, the Tía María mining project sparks a debate about the use of water and territory; the Bolivian government collects warranty payments from Jindal Steel; debates are underway on the distribution of royalties from Pre-sal in Brazil; Ecuador's President Rafael Correa pushes for new contracts; and more.

MULTIMEDIA: Oil, Power, and the Niger Delta

Revenue Watch is proud to present an original audio slideshow featuring images by award-winning photographer Ed Kashi. Through stunning photos and firsthand commentary from transparency advocate Asume Isaac Osuoka, this presentation reveals the stark problems of poverty, corruption and environmental abuse that continue to devastate the oil-rich Niger Delta.

In the 50 years since oil was first exported from the Niger Delta region, Nigeria has become the largest producer in Africa, earning $600 billion in oil revenues over the past five decades. But this historic windfall has led to crisis and decline, in what author Michael Watts calls "a gigantic failure of leadership and governance."
View the slideshow and learn more about oil and transparency in Nigeria …

ISSUES

EXPENDITURE TRANSPARENCY
It is impossible to ensure proper management of natural resource wealth by looking exclusively at revenues. Transparent and accountable management and expenditure of public funds is essential to addressing the poverty, corruption and autocracy that too often plague resource rich countries.
Read more ...
CONTRACT TRANSPARENCY
The contracts between governments and oil, gas and mining companies are central to any effort to trace revenues and expenditures in the extractive industries. Extractive industries contracts determine the benefits, obligations and indeed the transparency of the agreements between countries and industry. Read more ...

COUNTRIES

Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone's mining and petroleum sector has made a significant recovery since the end of the 11-year civil war in 2002. Mining accounted for about 30% of GDP in 2007 and 80% of exports in 2008, with diamonds contributing 85% of that total. A new Mining and Minerals Law was signed in 2009, marking important progress towards improved sector governance and legal reforms.
Iraq
Iraq, a nation of 25 million people, holds the second largest oil reserves in the world, estimated to exceed 300 billion barrels. While Iraq enjoyed a period of relative prosperity and modernization in the 1950s and 1960s, its more recent history of pervasive violence, mismanagement and abuse has denied the people of Iraq any lasting benefits from this wealth. Today, a nation mired in conflict, Iraq suffers severe shortages of fuel and power, despite the fact that it literally "swims on a lake of oil."

PUBLICATIONS

PUBLICATION ~ September 14, 2009

Contracts Confidential: Ending Secret Deals in the Extractive Industries

Contract transparency is sorely needed to improve the management of natural resource wealth, in particular in developing nations where such resources often account for more than half of the national income. In a new report from RWI, authors Peter Rosenblum and Susan Maples delve into government and private sector objections to contract disclosure and make conclusions about what information may legitimately and reasonably be kept confidential, and how civil society institutions can better confront the challenge of secret deals.