Mideast oil majors rapped over transparency

TRANSPARENCY LACKING: TI said oil companies' lack of openness about revenues left the door open to corruption. (Getty Images)

Middle East oil and gas companies have come under fire for a serious lack of transparency in reporting revenues at home and abroad that is contributing to growing poverties in many resource-rich countries.

Anti-corruption organisation Transparency International (TI) said on Monday in a report on global oil and gas companies that the lack of openness about revenues left the door open to corruption and hampered efforts to fight poverty.

Four out of the 42 companies studied are based in the Middle East - Kuwait Petroleum, Qatar Petroleum, Saudi Aramco and Algeria’s Sonatrach - and the majority of them disclose very little information about revenues, payments or anti-corruption programmes in each country they operate, TI said.

“The tragic paradox, that many resource-rich countries remain poor, stems from a lack of data on oil and gas revenues and how they are managed. Companies must do more to increase transparency,” Huguette Labelle, Chairman of TI, said in a statement.

“Oil and gas wealth, if properly managed, should support better services and infrastructure. It should lead to a better quality of life for all citizens. It is the duty of civil society to work with companies and governments to unlock this potential.”

The organisation ranked Kuwait Petroleum and Saudi Aramco among the worst in terms of revenue transparency, while Qatar Petroleum and Sonatrach were placed in the ‘middle’ group along with firms such as Russia’s Gazprom and Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

However, even in the ‘middle’ group - TI put firms into one of three groups from ‘low’ to ‘high’ - disclosure of revenues was rarely broken down on a country-by-country basis, TI said.

TI called on oil and gas companies to proactively report in all areas relevant to revenue transparency on a county-by-country basis.

It said home governments and appropriate regulatory agencies should consider introducing mandatory revenue transparency reporting for the operations of companies at home and abroad.

It also said governments from oil and gas producing countries should introduce regulations that require all companies operating in their territories to make public all information relevant to revenue transparency.

Regulatory agencies and companies should improve the accessibility, comprehensiveness and comparability of reporting on all areas of revenue transparency by adopting a uniform global reporting standard, it said.

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