Down the tubes: Following Pipeline Revenues

A quick post on transit revenues, before the EITI board meeting starts: Revenue Watch and EITI are jointly hosting a workshop today on how and whether we include transit fees for piping or shipping hydrocarbon resources in the framework of EITI, which has quickly become the global standard for extractive revenue disclosure. In particular we will be looking at the European case mostly, of gas and oil that comes from the Caspian and Russia going through Ukraine and Bulgaria(or the Caucasus and Turkey) It's a tricky business for a number of reasons and the European case is in a way anomalous as the pipeline is owned by the consumers rather than by the producers as is normally the case. Then there is the murky nature of the midstream / downstream trade which in a way is even more riddled with corruption and of a pettier more brutal type than the upstream. If you haven't read it yet, do take a look at Global Witness' 2006 report It's a Gas Funny Business in the Turkmen-Ukraine Gas Trade and if you want a more technical view read Revenue Watch's Expanding the EITI Agenda to Transportation of Hydrocarbon Resources. Either way, European energy security and the great cause of good governance mean that this issue is not going away anytime soon.