In the US and the European Union, the fight over new disclosure rules for oil, gas and mining companies is still being fought, but transparency campaigners are already opening a new front. Their new proposal – to expand transparency to include the sale and trading of commodities – deserves support.
The Dodd-Frank bill requires US-listed companies to publish details of payments to countries where they extract resources. The European Commission has presented similar proposals. In the US, specific rules have yet to be formulated; in the EU, member states and the Parliament need to agree to a version of the Commission’s proposal. Some are exploiting the process to push for the rules to be watered down – helped, in Europe, by governments such as Germany.
To still-contested “publish what you pay” non-governmental organisations now want to add “publish what you sell/buy” for national oil companies and commodity trading houses to unveil missing barrels of oil or marketing ploys designed to facilitate corruption. Some will call this overreach. In fact, it addresses the worst industry fears.