It’s that time again. EITI “week” in Washington, DC.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted but I wanted my loyal readership to know what I have been up to since Doha. In March I spent a few days in Europe and took the opportunity to meet some of the new board members of the EITI. While in London Radhika Sarin the international coordinator of Publish What You Pay, Diarmid O’Sullivan and I visited with Tony Hodge who is President of the ICMM, the International Council on Mining and Metals. I also saw Stuart Brooks of Chevron along with my fellow PWYP colleagues Joe Williams as well as Diarmid from Global Witness. We got a chance with both of them to catch up on our various perspectives on the issues the new board of EITI will face. We also talked about about where EITI is heading – big picture, blue sky conversations, and also some of the nitty gritty of the board’s work. In Berlin I was hosted by Peter Eigen, Chairman of the Board of EITI, and he pulled together a half-day of roundtable meetings with German ministries and German NGOs. Unfortunately Ulla Mykota, the German EITI board member, wasn’t able to be there from Bonn, but I look forward to seeing her next week. Germany is so important for EITI and is also playing practically the leading role within the European Union in shaping relations with countries to the East, including the former Soviet states.



In fact a German company, RWE, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk, just recently signed an MOU with the government of Turkmenistan for offshore gas exploration, the Oil and Gas Journal reports. Given RWE’s role in Nabucco it would also be good to hear about RWE supporting EITI. In Brussels I had an espresso with EITI Board member Henk Mahieu, General Counsellor, Dept. of Economic Issues, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which Belgium is involved with natural gas and they have some major terminals for LNG as well.




Back home in the US I traveled to Houston, Texas, with Sarah Pray and Ian Gary (Oxfam) of the Publish What You Pay US campaign, to meet with ExxonMobil Production CEO Rich Kruger and John Kelley (another colleague from the EITI board). We then spent a couple of hours with Marathon, after a break for some pretty good Texas barbecue. The main item on the menu however with ExxonMobil and Marathon is the Extractive Industries Transparency Disclosure Act. PWYP US’ Open the Books campaign is making good progress and we are trying to communicate our respective positions and get a bit closer as the bill moves towards being reintroduced in the US Senate and the House with bipartisan support, which may be soon.

Looking ahead to the EITI week we have a number of interesting developments. As validation gets underway in earnest all of the National Coordinators will be in Washington getting their operations in high gear.

Revenue Watch will hold its board and advisory board meetings looking at everything from the natural resource charter, the commodities boom and the impact on extractives transparency, unpacking "package deals" and a hot new index to track transparency in resource rich countries. RWI is also holding a workshop on how transit revenues could be included into the framework of EITI based on a recent report looking at Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Georgia.

The EITI is going to look at progress of the now more than two dozen countries seeking to get validated as EITI compliant. Some are moving swiftly, like Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, with Cameroon, Kazkahstan, Timor-Leste and Mongolia also doing well. There is reason for concern about other countries experiencing political or governance disruptions. If you look at the list of the countries you can more or less figure this out on your own but Publish What you Pay and Revenue Watch are also looking at the situation and trying to figure out what can be done to help the process along. Meanwhile more countries are still trying to get into EITI, proof that our brand is strong: Albania, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Zambia and lately Afghanistan are all seeking candidacy. It will be a busy week.