November 2017 News and Analysis from NRGI

News from NRGI
30 November 2017

Highlights

U.S. Credibility Suffers in Exit from Extractives Transparency Pact
NRGI president and CEO Daniel Kaufmann wrote in the Financial Times (registration required) about the United States government decision to cease its implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. (Read NRGI's statement and Storify post on the decision.)

Reversing the Resource Curse Course: Application Deadline Extended to 3 December

This advanced multi-stakeholder course is open to exceptional leaders from government, civil society, parliaments, media, international development agencies and industry associations as well as academics, researchers and analysts from universities and think tanks. A limited number of scholarships will be available on a competitive basis for applicants from Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Indonesia, Mexico, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda. (Exceptions may be made from this list for outstanding applicants from other countries.) Apply by 3 December using this form.

Spotlight on data

Spanish Energy Giant’s Iraq Payments Highlight Commodities Trading Transparency Gap

Huge volumes of commodities trading payments are not covered by mandatory disclosure laws and therefore go unreported. Due to this lack of transparency, citizens generally have no way of knowing how much traders pay to state-owned oil and mining companies.

What is the Presource Curse?

In some resource-rich countries, economic growth begins to underperform long before the first drop of oil is produced or the first ton of copper is dug out; this is known as the “presource curse.”

Video

Which Countries Have Successfully Managed Mineral Reserves?

In this clip, NRGI's Daniel Kaufmann and many other experts tell RAW Talks about countries that have managed resource wealth successfully.

Publication

Ninth Time Lucky: Is Zambia’s Mining Tax the Best Approach to an Uncertain Future?
Like many mineral-rich countries facing the prolonged commodities slump, Zambia is stuck. The country must preserve government revenues from the mining sector to fund the budget. At the same time, it must avoid further mine closures and a drop in investment required to drive growth in the sector.

Blog

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Winning Conditions for Effective Implementation of OGP Natural Resource Commitments
A new report by the Openness in Natural Resources Working Group (ONRWG), "Closing the Gap: Strengthening the Development and Implementation of Natural Resource Commitments in the Open Government Partnership" (Spanish here), highlights that countries make more natural resource commitments in OGP when compared to other areas like health or education. However, only about half of the reviewed natural resource OGP commitments have been completed or substantially implemented. To understand some of the challenges in implementing commitments, the ONRWG commissioned a series of case studies from civil society partners in Mexico, Nigeria and Peru.

Contemplating Oil Prospects, Suriname and Guyana Look to Peers
The two South American countries are adjusting to the spotlight of the global oil industry. As they adapt to new prospects that are both exciting and challenging, government officials in both hope to learn from the experiences of their peers in other new oil hotspots.

How the Resource Governance Index Can Be Used to Audit Extractives
Supreme audit institutions have a critical role to play in closing the “implementation gap” illustrated by the index.

La Conflictividad Persiste en América Latina tras el Súper Ciclo de las Extractivas

Tool

PDF Table Extractor
PDFs are not an ideal format for publication of data. Data tables in PDFs are difficult to translate into a machine-readable format for use in a spreadsheet application, like Microsoft Excel. For this reason, NRGI developed an application that simplifies the process of extracting a table from a PDF.