Posted on 12/14/2008 6:04:38 PM PST by thackney
Confronting an increasingly competitive environment around the globe, the major oil companies now face legislation that aims to use them to help keep corrupt regimes abroad from stealing their own people's oil wealth.
The incoming Congress is likely to consider a measure that would force oil producers, mining companies and other "extractive" industries that file annual reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to reveal how much they pay to foreign governments.
Championed by human rights groups and other transparency advocates, the proposal is intended to shed light on some of the billions of petrodollars that flow into often opaque, repressive regimes.
The goal is to help the citizens of oil-producing states hold their governments more accountable and to keep oil company money from fueling the civil wars that have plagued oil-wealthy nations.
Oil industry officials argue the measure could hamper voluntary transparency efforts.
And they fear it would disadvantage U.S. companies to the benefit of foreign competitors — particularly in China — that would not have to make such disclosures.
"In these economic times, do you really want to risk putting U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage when you're struggling with the issue of global energy security?" asked Walt Retzsch, a senior policy adviser for the American Petroleum Institute, the industry's Washington-based trade group.
U.S. companies raised similar concerns about competitiveness three decades ago with passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American firms from paying bribes when operating overseas.
Over time, however, the U.S. model became the norm of international business. But bribery demands remain a major problem in many countries.
Aiming 'for the big guys' The proposed Extractive Industries Transparency Disclosure Act, authored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., would require ...
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Those companies are going to follow Halliburton.
Any business with ANY sense (that is able) should relocate outside of the USA.
The leftists are making the final push towards communism, and we all know what happens to businesses under communism.
Exactly.
Liberals: "We don't care."
The incoming congress ain’t gonna be very nice to big business, especially energy companies.
You can easily find the information in their financial statements. Additionally, you can often find confirming financial data on file in the host countries' registration offices (e.g. the U.K. Secretary of Companies).
Moreover, the data is subjected to regular audits by independent CPA's, by co-venturers, by the IRS, and by the host countries' equivalents of the IRS.
Further, most U.S. oil companies comply religiously with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and require their suppliers to do the same, even though this often places these firms at a significant disadvantage to their competitors.
As a result, I see this proposal as nothing more than more governmental make-work BS demanded by ignorant liberal ninnies.
The people who write these laws completely misunderstand how the oil industry works.
The private oil companies in most cases merely act as contractors to the really big government oil companies.
If need be they’ll just write the contracts a little differently, to clarify who is paying who.
...price of gas is going to go UP....
Nothing wrong with that, it has worked to some degree in the illegal diamond trade.
There is another thread that spells it out - “Oil Companies Voting With Their Feet”.
The politicians have already chased many of the financial firms from NY to London with Sarbanes-Oxley, and now they are doing the same thing to the oil companies.
What will we have left? Will the US be the windmill capital of the world? Whoopee.
good information, thanks
You remember that during the election (when gasoline was at an all time high) the big issue was the need to encourage drilling inside the United States so we weren’t sending a half trillion a year out of the country buying fuel...
This is the Democrat’s answer. Not only will we not encourage drilling here, we will force American oil companies to not only drill overseas but ultimately base themselves overseas as well.
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