Oil and corruption in Uganda: the foreign donors’ plight
If this had been the UN, we might have sent a strongly worded statement to the Norwegians. They were absent from a forum in the heart of Africa on the corrupting effects of oil, an affliction for which Norway, more than any other nation, seemingly knows the cure. It wasn’t the UN – it was more »
Egyptian oil – looking through the rumour mill
On first appearances, the fact that there appears to be abundant information about Egypt’s oil and gas sector would seem like a sign of transparency, a well managed information dissemination system allowing citizens to know what is going on with their extractive industries. Under more scrutiny, however, it reveals the opposite. The information available contains more »
Invitation to an open discussion in Cairo, Sunday, April 7th
This Sunday, April 7th in Cairo, OpenOil invites all journalists and activists working on the extractive industries in Egypt to an open discussion: “Civil Society & the Egyptian Oil & Gas industry – how can we drive Transparency in the Digital Age?”
A tale of two giants: SOFAZ, SOCAR and the EITI in Azerbaijan
Some time ago I wrote about my initial bewilderment at the Azerbaijani government’s touting of its EITI record, given a personal experience of the country very much at odds with everything that the EITI stands for. Of course, the debate will always come back to the troubles of a broadly successful global mechanism overburdened with high more »
Support the creation of open source financial models
We’ve just submitted a proposal to the Knight Foundation News Challenge, based on creating open source financial models for published contracts. Find out more about our proposal here — http://kng.ht/13UCfwJ – and if you think having access to open source spreadsheets, to help you and others model revenue flows based on key terms in oil more »
Lost in the pipeline: transparency and the “transit curse”
Bloggers in the world of energy came to accept some time ago that our topic matter, while it might get us hot under the collar, is going to be hard to sell to the wider world as a sexy topic. But judging by the ridicule of my colleagues at the prospect of writing a blog more »
Facing climate change with “peak oil” down
News just in – Big Oil rebutting Peak Oil theory. Is this really news? Well, I think so. If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the debate. In one corner, we have some environmentalists and Peak Oil-ers, declaring that the world’s oil production has peaked, holding pictures of nice, aesthetically pleasing Hubbert’s Curve, more »
Yes but what do we REALLY know about the Niger Delta?
Nigeria is possibly the world’s best known exemplar of Resource Curse. There are – literally – coffee table books of poor people covered in oil with polluted lakes and gas flares behind them. I have one. There’s even something a little disturbing about the degree to which the Delta has become disaster porn, a morality more »
Beirut- a tale of two conferences
Last week, I attended two conferences, both related to the oil industry. The similarities between the two were clear ; both relating to the extractive industries, held in Beirut, a focus on the MENA region, but the differences were astounding and revealed a huge amount to me about potential pitfalls in the campaign for good more »
(Re)-introducing OpenOil
Since our official beginning in September 2011, our way of fulfilling our mandate here at OpenOil has evolved considerably. The main principle is the same; we work on resource curse issues, trying to ensure that citizens of resource rich countries can see the benefits from their natural resources. However, despite beginning as a purely research more »
Oil contracts in Uganda
Blog contributed by Lynn Turyatemba, a participant in next week’s contracts booksprint. Lynn is a lawyer by profession with a leaning towards social justice. She has for the last three years, while working with Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) as the Extractives Industries Governance Officer, worked closely with all stakeholders in the oil and more »
Upstream Petroleum Contracts: Where the “Rubber Hits the Road” in a Petroleum Regime
Blog contributed by Jay Park, a partner with Norton Rose, who will be one of the ‘sprinters’ in our booksprint initiative to write “How to Read and Understand Oil Contracts”. Zara Rahman’s recent blog post described OpenOil’s initiative to do a ‘booksprint’ to write a book about “How to Read and Understand an Oil Contract”. more »
Open Letter: to the EITI companies leading the fight against transparency
To EITI board members Mr Stuart Brooks of Chevron, Mr Alan McLean of Royal Dutch Shell, Ms Elodie Grant Goodey of BP, Mr Guillermo Garcia of ExxonMobil, and Ms Baiba Rubesa of Statoil ASA: Each of your companies is a member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which last week filed a lawsuit against the more »
Why Oil Companies Don’t Get Out of Bed for less than 50 to 1
We often hear, in general terms, about how the oil industry is driven by the risk-reward dynamic. It lies behind the vexed question of what is a fair government and oil company take: governments say oil companies are ripping them off because they make billions on big fields, companies reply that they need those margins more »
How to read and understand oil contracts
As some of you may know, at the end of October, we at OpenOil will be convening a group of world class experts to write a book on how to understand oil and gas contracts, aimed at the non specialist. We believe this will be the first book to open the process of oil and more »
