Featured Blog Posts – April 2018 Archive (18)

For the first time the annual Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) will take place at an European city: Barcelona. Also, for the first time, LASA will host three panels on the emerging literature of the "subnational resource curse". The main objective of the sessions is to review and discuss empirical research on the…

Co-authored by Eneya Maseko, Extractive Industries Program Coordinator for Oxfam in Zambia.

In a move that will hopefully reduce corporate tax avoidance in Zambia’s mining sector, multinational companies must now document all their “related party transactions” to show they aren’t using them to reduce their tax bill.…

by Jo Robinson and Lilli Loveday (Oxford Policy Management) 

Oil revenues in Ghana are already a significant contributor to the West African country’s economy, contributing $3 billion between 2011 and 2015 – a reality accompanied by high expectations that the presence of rich natural resources will translate into development and economic returns. At present all of Ghana’s oil comes from offshore fields south of Ghana’s coastal Western Region, in the South Atlantic, but…

A key challenge facing the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector is its gender imbalance. This inequality results in reduced opportunities for women, including a lack of land rights, an inability to access resources, a lack of access to education and a lack of economic empowerment.

Although various policies and initiatives have been…

The IGF together with the OECD  invite comments on two draft toolkits that will help developing countries address profit shifting from their mining sectors via the undervaluation of mineral exports and excessive interest…

Regulatory compliance. Two words that can send a shiver down the spine of the most experienced Project Manager. While compliance makes a lot of sense (in most cases that is), it shouldn’t slow down or have a negative impact on your operations.

Put simply, trying to be compliant means doing things the right way, according to laws, policies and regulations. While many of them are imposed by local authorities like governments, others represent a choice that an organization made at some…

Dear colleagues

I wanted to remind you of our sixth annual Executive Training on Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development, organized by us at the Columbia Center on…

Oil, Gas and Energy Law Intelligence (www.ogel.org, ISSN 1875-418X) invites submissions for a special issue on "Energy Law and Regulation in Low-carbon and Transitional Energy Markets". The guest editors of this special are Professor Raphael J. Heffron, Professor in Global Energy Law & Sustainability, Centre for Energy, Petroleum, Mineral Law and…

In the past year, the public debate in the oil sector in Indonesia revolves around the gross split scheme, which is meant to replace the production sharing contract (PSC) scheme. The urgency to adopt gross split is mainly grounded on the issue related to the cost recovery which has been unresolved for years. Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Indonesia highlights several issue around cost recovery and lifting also its correlation with the performance of oil and gas non-tax revenue in Indonesia.…

A mining operation which is considered consistent with sustainable development is one whereby planning for closure is present during the entire operation of the mine. With mines having a finite life span, it is important to ensure there is a plan for mine closure and post-mining transition once the economically viable products have been…

The French oil company Total becomes one of the first major oil companies to announce that they will advocate for the public disclosure by countries of their petroleum contracts and licenses. By coming out in favour of contract transparency, the company is joining ranks with mining giant Rio Tinto, as well as smaller oil companies Kosmos Energy and Tullow Oil. In a statement, EITI Chair, Fredrik Reinfeld…

Interview by Jasmin Blessing and Sarah Daitch

Nandinchimeg (”Nandia”) Batsaikhan is a Mongolian-based facilitator and mediator who has worked on Compliance Advisory Ombudsman (CAO) cases in Mongolia since 2013. Prior to working for CAO, she worked…

Disclosure of contract and license in the extractive industry sector, especially in oil, gas and mining are mandatory. Firstly, they are important to trace the income flows from extractive industry sector, and also to secure social and environmental justice. Contract and licensing documents of extractive industry sector always involve public resources and become the basis of many public policies for its fiscal, social, and environmental aspects. So the public has the right to know and aware…

This commentary was originally posted on the Brookings Institution’s Future Development blog on 26 March. It was co-authored by Daniel Kaufmann, president and CEO of the Natural Resource…

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has undertaken a bold reform in its mining sector. In March this year, DRC’s president Joseph Kabila signed into law a new mining code that increases royalties and taxes that mining companies pay. This happened even in the face of strong objections from international mining companies…