Good summary of where the extractive industries revenue transparency debate is at

Oil & Gas revenue transparency has lessons for other sectors

Here’s a useful speech by Claire Short, chair of EITI, on progress to date with regard to extractive industries revenue transparency.

It’s not very long, and provides a useful overview of progress to date. 

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative matters not just for the extractive industry, but also because of how the lessons from it can be, and are, being applied to other industries. 

There’s one problematic part though, where she says that: “Ultimately a company’s job is to earn returns for its shareholders and this is what the stock exchange demands”.

The old paradigm of company purpose only being about generating profit is still a major challenge. Even it seems, for progressive former politicians. 

To be fair to Claire Short, we all know how under pressure oil, gas and mining companies tend to be from investors and the market, particularly in recent years. 

But whilst that attitude still dominates, thinking long term remains quite a challenge. 

The speech is still well worth a read, it’s not a long one. 

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