Today, August 1st, is a statewide day of action in California to end fracking and demand clean, not extreme, energy. (Click here to find an action near you.)

Also, in just a matter of weeks, Global Exchange and our allies have gathered over 150,000 signatures demanding an end to extreme oil extraction in California.

Global Exchange is proud to take a stand with the people of California in their fight to stop fracking and protect water, crops, communities and the climate from this dirty and dangerous practice.

Global Exchange has also long stood in solidarity with communities around the world who share the same struggle to stop dirty energy extraction. In that spirit, we’d like to highlight our upcoming travel delegations to Ecuador:

Ecuador: Social and Environmental Justice in the Andes and the Amazon
December 28, 2015 – January 5, 2016
April 22 – May 2, 2016
July 4-14, 2016

Travel to the northern Amazon region to look at the damaging effects of oil and other extractive industries while you experience the breathtaking diversity and beauty of the Amazon rainforest. Learn about the historic ongoing court-battle against Chevron and its toxic legacy of oil exploitation while seeing the oil pits for yourself.

Go to the fabled Yasuní National Park, a UNESCO world biosphere reserve and what many scientists consider to be the most biologically diverse region on the entire planet. Meet with indigenous leaders and healers, and visit ecotourism projects that provide alternatives to extractive industries like oil and logging. Back in Quito, discuss environmental, social, and economic rights with activists and leaders. 

Whether in California or Ecuador, the challenge of standing up to the power of Big Oil is real. Let’s stand in solidarity.

…

Today, August 1st, is a statewide day of action in California to end fracking and demand clean, not extreme, energy. (Click here to find an action near you.)

Also, in just a matter of weeks, Global Exchange and our allies have gathered over 150,000 signatures demanding an end to extreme oil extraction in California.

Global Exchange is proud to take a stand with the people of California in their fight to stop fracking and protect water, crops, communities and the climate from this dirty and dangerous practice.

Global Exchange has also long stood in solidarity with communities around the world who share the same struggle to stop dirty energy extraction. In that spirit, we’d like to highlight our upcoming travel delegations to Ecuador:

Ecuador: Social and Environmental Justice in the Andes and the Amazon
December 28, 2015 – January 5, 2016
April 22 – May 2, 2016
July 4-14, 2016

Travel to the northern Amazon region to look at the damaging effects of oil and other extractive industries while you experience the breathtaking diversity and beauty of the Amazon rainforest. Learn about the historic ongoing court-battle against Chevron and its toxic legacy of oil exploitation while seeing the oil pits for yourself.

Go to the fabled Yasuní National Park, a UNESCO world biosphere reserve and what many scientists consider to be the most biologically diverse region on the entire planet. Meet with indigenous leaders and healers, and visit ecotourism projects that provide alternatives to extractive industries like oil and logging. Back in Quito, discuss environmental, social, and economic rights with activists and leaders.

Whether in California or Ecuador, the challenge of standing up to the power of Big Oil is real. Let’s stand in solidarity.

…

 

Paul Prew in the Sarayaku, Ecuador 2007

Reality Tours started offering delegations to Ecuador in the spring of 2002. Now we are celebrating ten years of  rich, educational programming that examines pressing social and ecological issues affecting Ecuadorians from the Andes to the Amazon. While there are many special aspects of our program in this culturally and biodiverse nation, it is the indigenous struggles to protect their cultures, ecosystems and Pachamama in the face of major petroleum and mining corporate interests that lay at the foundation behind each eco-tour. As I prepare for my fourth trip to the Ecuadorean Amazon, I feel honored to engage and learn once again from the wisdom, experiences and successes of  communities like the Sarayaku. To know that our journeys keep their promise to inform and inspire make all our hard work in San Francisco and in Quito worthwhile! Just read the insights of past participant Paul Prew:

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Indigeneity and the Environment in Ecuador- A Past Participant Shares His Story by Paul Prew

I traveled to Ecuador in July of 2007 with Global Exchange.  While it has been a few years, the experience is with me to this very day.  While preparing a new course, I was reviewing a number of films on indigenous and environmental issues.  In the film Crude, I saw a number of the same people, organizations, and locations featured in the movie that I visited on the Global Exchange tour.  I was impressed with the ability of Global Exchange to plug us into a variety of social movements and organizations.  As an educator at a state university, I use the experience every term in a number of my courses.  In addition to my Indigeneity and Environment course, I use the Global Exchange tour for a number of my courses.  The Global Exchange tour was helpful in two specific ways.  First, the tour outlined the struggles faced by the people of Ecuador and others in similar nations.  Second, the tour also provided a number of concrete models of citizens tackling very difficult problems in their community.

Heather with Child in Salinas, Ecuador, 2007

The issue I have discussed often in my classes is the effects of oil exploration in Ecuador.  While on the Global Exchange tour, we visited Coca and participated in a “toxic tour” of the region.  As soon as we exited the plane, the smell of fuel oil was immediately present.  Our tour took us through towns with pipelines transecting them.  We visited a waste oil pit where oil was collected in a large pond with no lining to prevent it from seeping into the groundwater and surrounding ecosystem.  We also visited a waste oil pond that was cleaned up, but oil remained in the soil and in the shallow pond that replaced the waste oil pit.  We also stumbled upon workers fixing an underground pipeline that had been leaking.  As a result of the leak, we were able to film a home that was destroyed by an explosion resulting from built up gas.
Not all of the experiences regarding oil exploration focused on the problems people faced.  We also visited the indigenous community of Sarayaku where we saw people actively preventing environmental degradation.  In Sarayaku, the community members have successfully prevented oil companies from initiating oil exploration in their territory.  The Sarayaku have been able to attain this level of success through a number initiatives that have reorganized their society and reached out to the global community for support.  We learned about the changes in their governance structures, education, and environmental policies.  Their local model provides examples for other communities to follow.

Building Fish Ponds in the Sarayaku, Ecuador 2006 Image by Malia Everette

I think the lessons learned in the community of Sarayaku resonate with me the most.  In the United States, our privileges are dependent on resources we take from others around the world.  We tend to lack an awareness of our ecological boundaries.  The Sarayaku are acutely aware of their ecological relationships and attempt to proactively mediate their relationship with the surrounding environment.  While they have made many changes, one issue stands out.  Because of contamination and over-fishing outside of their territory, the Sarayaku have had to deal with declining fish populations.  To help supplement their fish catch, the Sarayaku, in conjunction with resource ecologists, have developed fish farms.  These fish farms are sustainable using plantain and termites for fish feed.  Because these fish farms were not a traditional means of meeting their needs, I asked the Sarayaku elder, Don Sabino Gualinga, how these fish farms fit with their notion of “balance.”  He replied that they must deal with the concentration of people, and there is hope that they will return to an equilibrium in the future. Now, they have other areas (nature preserves) where there is balance.  In this way, the Sarayaku are actively thinking about their relationship with nature and assessing how they can maintain their culture and also maintain their livelihood in the rainforest.  These ideas allow me to help students contemplate their own society and its relationship with nature.

Children and Blue Skies in Salinas, Ecuador 2007

The theme of struggle and success resonated throughout the tour.  We visited cooperatives in the mountain town of Salinas and also the community of Yungilla.  We heard from farmers fighting a mining company near the town of Intag.  We met with organizations such as Accion Ecologica where we learned about Plan Columbia and its effects on the local population.  After discussing these issues in one of my classes, a student talked with me after class.  She was stationed in the military base in Ecuador near area where Plan Columbia was implemented.  She began by telling me that the local population was not very friendly to her or the other US troops.  Knowing that this was the result of Plan Columbia, I asked her about how friendly people were when she visited other areas of Ecuador.  She admitted that her experiences outside of the military base area were very pleasant, and people were very friendly.  Because of the Global Exchange tour, I was able to help this student see that the people of Ecuador were not antagonistic toward “gringos” but were justifiably upset about the policies of the US government that affected their lives.  We were able to discuss this distinction and make it a learning experience.

The Global Exchange tour in Ecuador was a life changing experience.  I hope to join another tour in the future.  I am still amazed at the depth of the experience and how profoundly it has impacted my life and those who shared in the tour. 

—

Take Action! For those of you that would  like to learn more and get involved:


 

President Barack Obama will decide as early as September whether to approve a $7-billion, 1,700-mile long pipeline called Keystone XL to transport up to 900,000 barrels a day of tar sands crude from northern Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The Alberta tar sands is well known as the largest and most destructive industrial project in human history – causing massive environmental damage to the natural eco-system, killing resident and visiting animal and bird species, irrevocably polluting water and poisoning land and communities downstream of the Athabasca River and trampling on treaty and Indigenous rights in northern Alberta.

In 2008 I traveled with a group of fellow Canadians to the tar sands to understand the impact of bad government policy, corporate malfeasance and US oil addiction at this ‘ground zero’. We created this short video to convey the scope of the project and raise the alarm.

It’s astounding to think that what our small delegation saw in 2008 has continued to expand and wreak more havoc on people and planet. Approval of the Keystone XL would dramatically increase the strain on the tar sands and is a climate and pollution horror beyond description.

THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW!

From August 20th to September 3rd, thousands of North Americans – including Danny Glover, and NASA’s Dr. James Hansen – will be at the White House, day after day, demanding Obama reject Keystone XL. Many protesters will engage in peaceful civil disobedience, day after day to make their voices heard.

Twenty-eight organizational leaders including Global Exchange’s Founding Director Kirsten Moller, have endorsed the days of action and we want YOU to participate.

The Black Tide Book Tour hits Colorado tonight and tomorrow night, then wraps up in California for two final dates following a whirlwind tour that took author Antonia Juhasz throughout the US and over to London, England.

Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill is a searing look at the human face of BP’s disaster in the Gulf. This book tour lands in Colorado Tue 5/3 (tonight) at the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder and Wed 5/4 at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver. 7:30pm start time both nights. Then on to Moe’s Books in Berkeley, CA on Wed 5/11 at 7:30pm and last but not least, the tour culminates on Thur 5/12 at 7pm at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA.

Find more details about these events on our Black Tide Book Tour Dates page.

To get an idea of what to expect at the book launch events, here’s a video of Black Tide author Antonia Juhasz:

The following video originally aired April 20th on GRITtv. In it, Shannon Biggs & Maude Barlow speak about recognizing the Rights of Nature:
—

 


More GRITtv

Earlier this week, the President of Turkmenistan announced a short list of companies from whom his country will accept proposals to develop two offshore blocks in the Caspian Sea.[i] Since President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov came to power nearly four years ago, Turkmenistan’s vast hydrocarbon reserves have been the source of intense lobbying by petroleum giants from around the globe.  The efforts of four of these companies were rewarded, in part, this week.  Not unexpectedly, Chevron is among the shortlisted companies, joined by ConocoPhilips, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co. and newcomer TX Oil Limited, chaired by Neil Bush, son of US President George H.W. Bush.

Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most closed and repressive countries.  A small nation of approximately 5 million people, it is located in Central Asia and is bordered by the Caspian Sea to the west, Iran and Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the east, and Kazakhstan to the north.  Identified by Freedom House as one of the World’s Most Repressive Regimes in 2009 (and almost every year prior), Turkmenistan is a country with no freedom of the press, an authoritarian government, and a President who is quickly building a cult of personality rivaling that of the previous “President for Life,” Niyazov, who died suddenly of a heart attack in December 2006.[ii] Civil society has been all but destroyed by the repressive policies of the government of Turkmenistan.

Further alarming is the fact that Turkmenistan’s government has no accountability mechanisms for reporting oil and gas revenues.  The country’s previous president deposited petroleum funds in a semi-private, off budget account in Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt.[iii] President Berdymukhammedov has made no reforms in this area, and a newly touted “Stabilization Fund,” into which oil and gas revenues would be placed, remains a mystery as there is no public documentation that such a fund actually exists.[iv]

As we have seen repeatedly in neighboring Kazakhstan, where Chevron is the largest private oil producer, and elsewhere around the world, engaging with corrupt and opaque regimes to secure hydrocarbons without first insisting on significant improvements in transparency, rule of law and human rights leads to unjust and unsustainable policies and practices.[v]

When I raised this issue at Chevron’s Annual Shareholder Meeting this past May, CEO John Watson confirmed that his company was in negotiations with the government of Turkmenistan, adding “I think we can do some good in Turkmenistan” even though “we may not meet your standards”.[vi] Perhaps I had not been clear about my concerns, for at stake are not the standards of any single individual, nonprofit organization or even corporation.  At stake are the standards and best practices enshrined in national and international laws and regulations.  These are the standards that Chevron is obligated to meet, and encouraged to exceed.  These are the standards by which Chevron’s shareholders, the international community and the citizens of the Chevron’s host countries evaluate whether or not the company is “doing some good”.

As Chevron has yet to finalize a contract with Turkmenistan, we have a unique, but waning opportunity to urge the company to insist upon significant improvements in human rights and rule of law prior to active operations in the country.  For more on how you can get involved at this critical moment, please visit www.crudeaccountability.org.

Michelle Kinman is Deputy Director of Crude Accountability.

(michelle@crudeaccountability.org)

[i]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-13/chevron-conoco-bush-brother-s-company-may-get-caspian-exploration-rights.html

[ii] http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=505

[iii] http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/879/en/all_that_gas_the_eu_and_turkmenistan

[iv] http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/879/en/all_that_gas_the_eu_and_turkmenistan

[v] www.truecostofchevron.com

[vi] http://www.crudeaccountability.org/en/index.php?page=hagel

This article originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Progressive Magazine, The Big Spill.

IT SHOULD BE BLATANTLY CLEAR at this stage of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy that we are witnessing the failure of an entire system, rather than of one operator. Systemic solutions are therefore required. One obvious first step is a permanent moratorium on all offshore drilling—a model of energy extraction which the industry is unable to safely perform and the government is unable to adequately regulate.

In the last five years alone, there have been, just in the Gulf of Mexico, 400 offshore safety and environmental incidents, including blowouts and other major accidents, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis. BP is the leader with forty-seven violations, Chevron is second at forty-six, and Shell is third at twenty-two.

Among the unifying features of these incidents is the failure of the U.S. Minerals Management Service to act. The MMS failed to travel to one-third of the accident scenes, collected only sixteen fines out of 400 incidents, and did not investigate every blowout, as their own rules require.

Transocean, the company that owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, is another common thread. Transocean is the largest deep-water driller in the Gulf of Mexico, operating nearly half of all the rigs in the Gulf that work in more than 3,000 feet of water. It is the company of choice for industry leaders, including Chevron and Exxon, even though, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis, nearly three of every four incidents that triggered federal investigations into safety and other problems on deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf since 2008 have been on rigs operated by Transocean.

The companies also all use the same grossly negligent subcontractor, the Response Group, to write their disaster “preparedness” plans for their Gulf operations. On June 15, Congressman Ed Markey, chair of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, revealed that all five of the major oil producers in the Gulf of Mexico—BP, Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Shell—used the virtually identical, tragically inadequate disaster plan on how they would handle a spill at their Gulf operations.

The plan, required by the MMS prior to approval for drilling, includes glaring errors and omissions that “vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company’s preparedness to deal with one,” reports AP.

Three of the companies’ 2009 plans, including BP’s, listed as a consultant biologist Peter Lutz, who died in February 2005. Four ensured that their plans addressed the need to protect walruses, sea lions, and seals, although none of these live in the Gulf, revealing that the reports were not only cut and pasted between the companies, but also likely originally written for Arctic operations. Most importantly, the plans absolutely do not work, as BP’s response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has made horrifically clear. Nonetheless, each and every plan received the government’s approval.

Perhaps more disturbing, however, is Markey’s response: token recommendations for lifting the liability cap on oil spills, requiring that oil companies pay more in royalties, implementing new safety reforms, and developing new technologies for capping wells.

In 1981, a federal moratorium on all new offshore drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska was implemented. It was a direct response to the 1969 Unocal offshore oil rig blowout that released three million gallons of oil into the Santa Barbara Channel of California.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon tragedy is far worse, and far from an isolated incident. All around the world, every day, offshore rigs leak and spill. They far too often kill workers, release deadly toxins, produce methane, pollute the air and water, and destroy fisheries and livelihoods.

The oil industry has chosen to blatantly and disdainfully thumb its nose at the government’s regulatory authority, while the government has chosen to be an all-too-willing rubber stamp, demonstrating that it has neither the capability nor the will to regulate this industry. As it was in 1981, a moratorium is the only logical response.

Another key moment in U.S. oil history offers further solutions: the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil. The oil giant became too large for the government to regulate. In response to a massive people’s movement that built from the most local levels and reached the Supreme Court, Standard was broken into thirty-four separate corporate parts. Ultimately, the final step will come when we have retired the oil industry altogether once and for all.

Antonia Juhasz, author of “The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry—and What We Must Do to Stop It” (HarperCollins 2008), is working on a book on the BP disaster. She is a director at Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organi- zation (www.TyrannyofOil.org,www.GlobalExchange. org/chevron).

BP’s “Missing Oil” coats wetlands and beaches along the waterways near St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana, where no one is booming, cleaning, skimming, or watching.

(This article was originally posted on Huffington Post.)

I am traveling the Gulf Coast writing a new book on the Gulf oil disaster.

The good news is that the cap is holding. The bad news is that, with the well no longer gushing, the oil is out of sight and out of mind and BP is pulling up boom and pulling back workers, skimmers, cleaners, and the rest of the clean-up apparatus all across the Gulf. Even without new oil, the 40,000 barrels a day that spewed from the Macondo well for nearly 100 days continue to wash up on shores, including ones which no one is protecting or cleaning.

There is no shortage of people desperate to do this work. On Wednesday, July 28, Mayor Ron Davis of Prichard, Alabama took me to visit a packed Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) training class required for anyone involved in BP clean-up efforts. The city offers these classes for free. With unemployment at over 14% and poverty reaching 40%, the students who filled this, the tenth class, were effusive with gratitude. Although there is a waiting list over two months long to get in, as the the cleanup jobs shrivel away, this is the last class the city will offer.

The next night I attended a BP community forum in St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana with representatives from BP, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other agencies available to talk to the public.

Here I met fishermen desperate to be put to work as part of BP’s Vessels Of Opportunity (VOO) program, using their boats to fish for oil instead of seafood by laying boom and absorbents and skimming. When the Parish President announced that St. Mary’s Parish did not, does not, and would not have oil, he was immediately surrounded by local fishermen, one of whom said loudly, “then why does Kermit have oil in his bag right now?” At which point the President turned off the mike and, in Kermit’s words, “all hell broke lose.”

Kermit Duck’s (yes, that’s his real name) grandfather, great grandfather, and so on, have been fishers in St. Mary’s Parish since Morgan City was founded. Kermit had spent that day looking for oil. He found a lot of it and brought some to the meeting in a ziplock bag to prove that it is out there. He is not a part of the VOO program, although he has spent two months on a waiting list trying to get hired. Instead, thanks to BP, he is four months unemployed and desperate to see a real clean-up effort take place so that one day he might be able to fish again.

On Friday Kermit took me out on a boat to show me the oil.

We spent five hours on the water traveling between Oyster Bayou and Taylor’s Bayou. We saw a lot of oil. With the exception of a small amount of boom outside of the Mouth of East Bay Junop, we saw no boom, skimmers, absorbents, or clean-up crews. The Juno boom was coated with oil, as was the area behind it.

We saw plenty of freshly oil-soaked grass and beach. The strong harsh smell of crude filled the air as we neared. The oil had washed up in waves, covering a large patch of grass here, leaving a clean patch beside it there. Fields of oil glistened as the sun picked up the oil’s sheen.
We walked along a shell beach on the south end of Oyster Bayou speckled throughout with fresh tar balls that reached from the reeds to inside the water’s edge. Kermit’s friend Buddy used an oar to dig below the beach surface, revealing more oil beneath.

Over the last months I have traveled the coasts of every state affected by the spill. Until this trip, every time I walked an area with oil, clean-up crews were never far behind. The oil would wash up, the crews would clean it, and the oil would wash up again. It was a sad dance to watch.

This is far more disturbing. BP’s oil continues to coat the Gulf Coast. The oil I saw yesterday was washing up into Louisiana’s vital wetlands, the last barrier of protection from hurricanes. If the grass remains unprotected and unclean, the oil can enter the root system, killing the grass forever. The oil was also at the mouth of Oyster Bayou, at the heart of St. Mary’s Parish’s way of life.

Before I left, Kermit assured me that his Parish President would now act and hold BP accountable to clean up the oil. Hopefully, he will not be alone in his efforts.

+++
For an interactive reportback from the Gulf Coast, join Antonia Juhasz and Kevin Danaher as they host a webinar conversation and Q&A about the impacts of the BP Oil Spill and what it means for the Green Economy. August 26th, 12pm PST.

(Do not use pictures without attaching tag line and photo credit)

Oil in grass between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil in grass between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil in grass between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil onshore and in waters' edge at South end of Oyster Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil onshore at South end of Oyster Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil South end of Oyster Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Oil from reeds onshore between Oyster Bayou and Taylor's Bayou, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Kermit Duck, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Antonia Juhasz

BP Community Forum, St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, July 29, 2010, Photo credit: Antonia Juhasz

Prichard, Alabama, HAZWOPER Training Class, July 28, 2010, Photo credit: Antonia Juhasz.

Originally posted at www.earthrights.org/blog

After nearly two years of work and consistent opposition from big oil, substantive provisions of legislation initially introduced by Senators Lugar (R-IN) and Cardin (D-MD) as the Energy Security Through Transparency Act (ESTT), were signed into law by President Obama as Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on Wednesday.   Offered by Senator Leahy (D-VT), the provision will require both US and internationally-based companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to publish what they pay to governments for the commercial development of oil, gas, and minerals, while creating a new international standard for transparency in the extractive industry.

The provision, which will apply to 90 percent of the largest internationally operating oil and gas companies, made the cut during an all-night House-Senate conference committee meeting over the Wall Street reform bill.

The bill will have significant impacts in countries like Burma, where a lack of transparency has contributed to corruption, authoritarianism, and gross human rights violations, directly linked to the natural gas industry. According to EarthRights International’s new report, “Energy Insecurity: How Total, Chevron, and PTTEP Contribute to Human Rights Violations, Financial Secrecy, and Nuclear Proliferation in Burma (Myanmar), the lack of publicly available information on revenues received by the military junta in Burma has facilitated the misuse of these funds, including massive diversion of resource-related public monies.

In fact, data from a leaked IMF report indicates 70 percent of Burma’s foreign exchange reserves are from gas exports and that gas-related payments from corporations, amounting to billions of dollars, contributed only one percent of total budget revenue.  That means that less than one percent of the largest source of income for the Burmese state actually enters the state budget. Had these revenues entered the state budget, they would have accounted for 57 percent of the total 2007/2008 budget.  The majority of the gas revenues are believed to be held in offshore banks, with reports indicating that hundreds of millions are channeled into the personal bank accounts of individuals closely associated with the ruling military junta in two offshore banks in Singapore.

When this new transparency bill takes effect — likely in 2012 — companies including Chevron, Total, the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation, and others will be forced to disclose how much they pay the regime in Burma, something they have been resisting for years. For communities and civil society inside and outside of Burma, this information can be used in attempts to hold the authorities in Burma accountable for how these monies are spent.

The reach of this bill is truly global. Communities in Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, Columbia, Thailand, and around the world will know how much their governments receive from corporations including Shell, BP, Chevron, Exxon, Newmont Mining, and most of the other energy and mining majors operating in their countries.

EarthRights International was active throughout the legislative process, lobbying the U.S. Congress directly while providing public education, letter writing, advocacy, and training to other organizations in support of the transparency provision as a member of Publish What You Pay United States, a coalition of 32 nongovernmental organizations that advocated for the legislation.

This bill takes aim squarely at the “resource curse,” the documented pattern in countries rich in natural resources where this wealth leads to negative development outcomes. Senator Lugar (R-IN), one of the main supporters of the transparency provision summarized the importance of this measure quite well, saying: “History shows that oil, gas reserves, and minerals can frequently be a bane, not a blessing, for poor countries leading to corruption, wasteful spending, military adventurism, and instability, and too often oil money intended for a nation’s poor ends up lining the pockets of the rich, or is squandered on showcase projects instead of productive investments.”

While a major victory for communities in resource-rich countries, there are still several stages before the legislation is implemented and companies begin to report their payments. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must issue proposed rules that provide detailed guidance for companies covered by the bill. This process will take up to one year to complete. Groups like EarthRights International and our Publish What You Pay US colleagues will play an active role in this rule-making process, ensuring that critical information on payments is available in an effective, timely, and complete manner. Once the final rules are issued, companies will be required to disclose payments in their annual filings to the SEC going forward.

We expect that Big Oil will continue to resist these efforts as they did with the legislation. The American Petroleum Institute (API), a national trade association representing about 400 corporate members, including major oil and gas companies, made several misleading claims in a letter to members of the Senate in 2010, stating:  “API feels that requiring only U.S-listed extractive companies to disclose revenues creates a competitive disadvantage for these companies in the global energy marketplace.” Members of the US Senate were not persuaded by this specious claim, with Senator Cardin calling API’s claims, “a red herring.”

This bill may be the beginning of the end for the cloud of secrecy and corruption associated with resource extraction around the globe. With other countries like the UK considering similar measures, there is a great hope that revenue transparency becomes a norm for the industry, and we can begin to see the responsible use of these critical revenues for the benefit of local and national communities.

For more information on the transparency bill, visit www.earthrights.org