If you’re in the oil business and trying to hide your payments to host governments, last week was a rough one.

Most notably, on Wednesday the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved new European Union legislation that requires oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their country and project level payments in every country of operation. The final tally was 657 for and 17 against. This broad backing of payment disclosure from across the political spectrum was a stinging defeat for Shell, BP and other companies who lobbied European member states and European Members of Parliament. They failed to weaken the final provisions in the Transparency and Accounting Directives that will bind companies in Europe to the same standards as those who report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission as a result of the “Cardin-Lugar” or Section 1504 provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

The European Parliament vote approves the political agreement reached in April after long negotiations between the Parliament, European Commission and member states of the European Council. Importantly, the new European requirements contain no reporting exemptions—a clear sign that member states and parliamentarians were unconvinced that alleged host government prohibitions exist. (Oil companies have alleged that such prohibitions exist, but have not been able to provide a single example to the public or the court.)

Also on Wednesday the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a conservative politician, said Canada would move to adopt mandatory disclosures for oil and mining companies raising capital in that country. The announcement, coming days before this week’s G8 meeting where the UK hosts have made extractive industry transparency a priority, was warmly welcomed by Oxfam Canada and other groups. The Harper government announcement was quickly followed by the publication Friday of a framework for mandatory reporting developed through a roundtable process by the Mining Association of Canada, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada as well as Publish What You Pay Canada and Revenue Watch Institute. The framework recommends no exemptions for future Canadian requirements in line with Dodd-Frank and EU rules.

To make matters worse for those companies who want to hide the truth, even Switzerland, a country not known for financial openness, are backing mandatory disclosures. After a motion was passed by the Swiss Parliament last week calling on the government to require disclosures by extractive companies and commodities traders, the Swiss governments said it would approve this approach. (Switzerland is home to, among others, the giant commodity trader and miner Glencore Xstrata as well as oil trading firm Vitol.)

These events in the European Parliament, Canada and Switzerland represent huge breakthroughs in the battle for transparency. Oil companies who are pursuing litigation to try to overturn the Dodd-Frank provision and weaken the SEC rule are now being overtaken in their secrecy fight by real world events.

During oral arguments on June 6^th in the American Petroleum Institute vs. Securities and Exchange Commission case, the District Court judge seemed to express skepticism regarding industry claims that they have a First Amendment right to keep payments secret. Judge John Bates said there are “oodles and oodles” of situations where the government has compelled disclosure requirements in all sorts of regulatory contexts that have not merited heightened protection under the First Amendment. Oxfam and SEC lawyers pushed back strongly on industry arguments.

Rather than dropping the lawsuit (take action to call for this here), which former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called a “strategic folly”, companies such as Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron have said in letters to the Publish What You Pay coalition that they continue to back the US litigation. Too bad for Shell and BP that they’ll now have to disclose in the EU as well.

All-in-all it was a very bad week for oil industry secrecy-mongers, but a great week for citizens in resource-rich nations who have a right to know how much their governments are being paid for resources extracted from their lands.

The chair of the Africa Progress Panel, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, has pushed back on an oil industry attack against the landmark US Dodd-Frank Act oil and mining payment disclosure provision. In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Annan said the lawsuit launched by the American Petroleum Institute against the US Securities and Exchange Commission was a “strategic folly” and those companies supporting the suit, such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell were “swimming against the tide of reform”.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Chair of the Africa Progress Panel. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

The Africa Progress Panel’s 2013 report “Equity in Extractives” was released today in Cape Town and focuses on steps to take to ensure that Africa’s oil, gas and mining boom actually benefits the majority of African’s rather than a select few. The panel includes the former head of the IMF, Michel Camdessus; former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo; former first lady of Mozambique Graca Machel; and Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International and former chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, among others.

These heavy hitters stand behind a report that says there “is no credible evidence to indicate that the Dodd-Frank requirements will impose significant additional costs, let alone threaten the competitive position of some of the world’s largest companies.” The report says that the “Cardin-Lugar” or Section 1504 provision of Dodd-Frank and forthcoming European Union disclosure requirements provisions represents an important opportunity for African civil society groups to work with multinational companies to “achieve higher standards of disclosure” but notes that some companies appear “to be squandering that opportunity” with the US lawsuit.

In advance of June’s G8 summit, the report says “all countries must adopt and enforce” project-by-project disclosure standards such as in the US and EU—“as major players in Africa’s extractives sector, Australia, Canada and China should be the next countries to actively support this emerging global consensus.”

Oxfam’s new Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, is from Uganda, a country undergoing its own oil boom, and is in Cape Town for the World Economic Forum Africa. She said “African governments must use oil, gas and mining to raise revenue, but this boom must not steamroll the rights of communities living on top of Africa’s mineral wealth. It is important that local communities are informed and consulted about extractive industry projects that affect them.”

With the political boost from today’s African Progress Report we are one step closing to realizing the so far unrealized potential of Africa’s resource endowment.

A few weeks ago, a few House Republicans introduced H.R. 1613, the innocuous sounding “Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement Act”. A little over four pages long, H.R. 1613 is primarily designed to provide Congressional approval to a US-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement (TBA) signed by both governments over a year ago.

Oxfam has no problem with the approval of the US-Mexico TBA which simply lays out the rules for how hydrocarbons reserves in the Gulf of Mexico that straddle our maritime borders would be developed.

We do have a big problem with an irrelevant provision inserted into the bill designed to weaken the payment disclosure requirements in Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, also known as the Cardin-Lugar provision. That law provides for the annual disclosure of payments made by oil, gas and mining companies to host governments around the world – final rules were issued by the SEC in August last year. H.R. 1613 would exempt any covered company from reporting payments from in accordance with any transboundary hydrocarbons agreement anywhere in the world.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) – backed by companies such as Exxon, Shell, Chevron and BP – is suing the SEC in federal court and is now hoping that its Congressional allies can help weaken this landmark law. Oxfam is intervening to defend the rule. Meanwhile, the European Union has reached agreement to put in place similar reporting requirements.

I spoke this week with Neil Brown who was, until very recently, a top Senate Republican aide working on energy issues for Senator Lugar, who was the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His response: “this exemption is unnecessary and inclusion would only forestall quick approval of this important agreement.”

He should know. As both the co-author of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority staff report for Senator Lugar on “Oil, Mexico and the Transboundary Agreement” as well as someone intimately familiar with the “Cardin-Lugar” provision in  Dodd-Frank, Mr. Brown would know if the reporting requirements in Dodd-Frank Section 1504 present any issue in approving the US-Mexico TBA. The short answer – they don’t. The minority staff report envisions reporting under Section 1504 and says that under Section 1504 covered companies “would already have to disclose payments” to the SEC if “they invest in Mexico”.

The US-Mexico TBA requires that certain information be kept confidential unless disclosure is required by law. The TBA text demonstrates that the US and Mexico have already made the correct policy judgment that the specific confidentiality provisions of the TBA should be subordinated to each country’s commitment to openness and subject to each country’s disclosure requirements. Nothing in the TBA would require the exemption provided by H.R. 1613.

Tellingly, the Senate Energy Committee has introduced a bi-partisan bill, S. 812, sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to approve the US-Mexico TBA, and it contains no Section 1504 exemption provision. If Congress is truly interested in approving this agreement and providing the “rules of the road” for joint development of oil and gas reserves straddling the US-Mexico maritime boundary, then it should adopt the clean Senate bill without the reporting exemption.

Former Senator Jeff Bingaman, past Senate Energy Committee chairman, told Reuters that the exemption proposed by the House “complicates things significantly” for passage of the bill. Referring to the Section 1504 exemption language, he said, “They’ve added in some things that are going to make it difficult to pass in that form.”

The Mexican Congress ratified the TBA a year ago, and the Obama administration – and the oil industry – would like to see it approved. The Obama administration, though, has made clear that implementation of Section 1504 is a priority.

In a letter to Oxfam, Sec. of State Kerry said, “The Department of State and Administration strongly support transparency in the extractives sectors, as outlined in Section 1504 of Dodd-Frank, and the new rule issued by the SEC. The new SEC standard directly advances our foreign policy interest in increasing transparency and reducing corruption, particularly in the oil, gas and mineral sectors.”

My guess is that the oil industry lobby wants this TBA approved far more than it wants this unnecessary Section 1504 exemption. Surya Gunasekara, a tax and trade counsel with the American Petroleum Institute told me that there is “no doubt” that API cares more about Gulf of Mexico access than the proposed Section 1504 exemption.

Two key moments stand out for me last week. On Monday I saw former Senator Lugar (R-IN) receive Transparency International USA’s “Integrity Award” for his work to combat corruption, whether through his oversight hearings of World Bank projects or his leadership on the Dodd-Frank Act, specifically the Cardin-Lugar oil, gas and mining payment disclosure provision. . During a dinner co-sponsored by Exxon, Senator Lugar recounted his lobby visits from oil company representatives during the consideration of this legislation that now requires oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their payments to host governments. After hearing them out, Lugar and his staff simply weren’t persuaded by industry arguments about competitive harm or compliance costs. Looking forward, Lugar referenced the litigation that the American Petroleum Institute has launched against the provision bearing his name and said that no matter the outcome, “The trend is in our direction.”

The case will now go back down to the district court, where Oxfam believes the weaknesses of oil industry arguments will be demonstrated.

Indeed it is. On Friday morning I learned that the US Court of Appeals was not persuaded by the jurisdictional arguments of the oil industry’s lawyers, (Eugene Scalia and company from Gibson Dunn). The Appeals Court dismissed the case agreeing with Oxfam’s lawyers that the case should be heard in the district court first as Congress had instructed. Oxfam, as an intervener, was the only party to argue that this case does not belong in the Appeals Court and the court adopted Oxfam’s reasoning throughout the entire opinion.

This is a victory for transparency campaigners in the Publish What You Pay coalition. With the dismissal, the case will now go back down to the district court where there will be more opportunity for a comprehensive review of the administrative record. Such a review, we believe, will demonstrate the hollowness of industry arguments.

While the legal process continues, global momentum for increased transparency in the oil, gas and mining industry gains steam. In April, the European Union agreed on tough new rules that mirror Cardin-Lugar, with no exemptions for companies for alleged host government prohibitions. Once again, politicians and regulators were not persuaded by industry arguments and fear mongering. In Canada, Publish What You Pay is working with the Mining Association of Canada to develop mandatory disclosure proposals for the government. Later in May, Newmont Mining, the US and UK governments, and investors will highlight the importance of mandatory disclosure rules on the sidelines of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative global conference in Sydney, Australia. Finally, the UK government is championing transparency as part of its hosting of the G8 in June.

As the transparency tide reaches many corners of the globe, the war on transparency being waged by companies such as Shell, BP, Exxon and Chevron will seem increasingly doomed and misguided.

It sounds like a late-night TV infomercial, but it’s true. In the midst of a fiscal crisis, the US government receives no royalty payments for gold extracted from federal lands. Yesterday, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on mineral extraction and revenues from land administered by the Department of the Interior. The report, requested by Senator Tom Udall and Rep. Raul Grijalva, found that not only does the government not collect any royalty for “hardrock minerals” such as gold, silver, copper, and uranium, it does not even know how much of such minerals are being produced! “We found that federal agencies generally do not collect data from hardrock mine operators on the amount and value of hardrock minerals extracted from federal lands because there is no federal royalty that would necessitate doing so,” the report said.

This bizarre state of affairs is a result of the General Mining Act of 1872 which, amazingly, still governs hardrock mining and allows operators to mine without paying any royalty. No benefits and significant impacts on the environment and Native and other communities—sounds like a great deal. In contrast, oil and gas royalties from federal lands provided $10.1 billion to the Treasury each year in 2010 and 2011.

The government has been “leaving a huge pot of money on the table”, says Rep. Grijalva. “There’s no reason to keep these extraction and royalty laws out of date… Keeping the public and Congress in the dark any longer about what’s going on with federal property doesn’t serve any public purpose, and it should end.” said Grijalva, a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Even when royalties are collected for oil and gas, the rates are quite low. Many offshore oil lease royalty rates are as low as 12.5 percent. But it gets worse. The “effective royalty” rate found by the GAO study—the amount the government actually collected—was in some cases significantly lower than the rate specified in the lease. (Though it was not a focus of the report, it is worth noting that for the years studied in this report, FY10 and FY11, surprisingly little revenue from these offshore leases, unlike oil and gas activities on public lands, comes back to the coastal communities and states bearing the brunt of the risk from these activities, particularly across the Gulf of Mexico. Much has been written in recent weeks about incoming Senators Ron Wyden, Lisa Murkowski, and Mary Landrieu’s interests in addressing this disparity in revenue sharing in the 113^th Congress.)

It should not take Members of Congress asking the GAO for information for citizens to know how much is being generated by our nation’s oil, gas and minerals. One part of the fix is implementation of the Section 1504 (the so-called “Cadin-Lugar” provision) of Dodd-Frank. The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued final rules for Section 1504 that require all oil, gas and mining companies reporting to the SEC to disclose royalties and other payments on a project-by-project basis—both in the US and abroad.  The Interior Department has expressed support for this provision. Oxfam and the Publish What You Pay US coalition has been working for the past two years on getting this provision implemented and Oxfam is now part of a legal battle pitting the US oil industry against the SEC.

US implementation of the international voluntary Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative by the Department of the Interior may also help. But as the GAO notes it is unclear whether production of hardrock minerals will be required—as in some other countries—and full reporting and implementation may be four years down the road.

Ultimately, it is up to Congress to reform the outdated 1872 mining law. Rep. Grijalva has cosponsored a bill, the Fair Payment for Fair Payment for Energy and Mineral Production on Public Lands Act, which would set a 12.5 percent royalty rate on hardrock minerals and says “he looks forward to supporting and strengthening an updated version in the upcoming Congress.”

Ghanaians go to the polls for presidential and parliamentary elections this Friday and political observers and polls both indicate an extremely tight contest between the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

These two main parties have profound differences when it comes to managing the oil sector and spending revenues. In an African nation that stands out by having five democratic elections in a row, including two peaceful transfers of power between parties, this election also stands out as the first where control of oil revenues is an important political “prize”.

Ghana’s “world class” Jubilee field started producing oil in late 2010 with great fanfare—so far, though, production results have been disappointing and revenues have been well under the $1 billion a year predicted. Ghana’s oil boom comes with big challenges to Ghana’s democratic development and in many countries oil has fueled increased conflict, corruption, and authoritarianism.

Ghana has made progress putting a transparent system for managing oil revenues in place.

The Western Corridor Gas Infrastructure Development Project.Atuabo, Ghana. Anna Fawcus / Oxfam America.

The passage of 2011’s Petroleum Revenue Management Act mandated the establishment of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) which is tasked with monitoring compliance with the revenue law. All payments are disclosed by the government on a quarterly basis and the current government has taken the notable and step of disclosing many of Ghana’s petroleum agreements—a rare step in the African oil context.

Much of this progress is directly attributable to a vibrant civil society sector—including the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas—that has demanded policies and taken government, parliament, companies and donors to task when they haven’t delivered. The legal framework is still incomplete. A Petroleum Exploration and Production Act, Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Act, and implementing regulations for the newly created Petroleum Commission and PIAC are still in limbo. In addition, contract disclosure is currently at the whim of the present government and not required by law.

Creating a transparent system is one thing, holding government to account quite another. It is heartening to see that when the PIAC issued its first report earlier this year noting that some payments were misdirected or not reported the government and state oil company—the GNPC—were forced to respond.  Yet, the government has not provided the new accountability and regulatory institutions—the PIAC and Petroleum Commission—with the bare minimum of resources to be able to function.

How do the two main parties differ on the approach to managing Ghana’s oil boom?

First, the NDC has focused on investing oil revenues in infrastructure while the NPP believes that the country should go to the private capital markets for big ticket infrastructure items such as roads. Instead, it has campaigned on a platform of “free” secondary education for all Ghanaians with a focus on building human capital. (Both parties are likely overpromising based on the expected levels of oil revenues.)

Second, they differ on the role of the state in relation to oil production. The NDC believes that government revenues should be used to build up and capitalize the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) so it can eventually become an operator of oil fields and not just a passive partner. The NPP, meanwhile, would see GNPC as a joint venture partner, raising money on capital markets rather than relying on government subvention.

Third, before losing power, the NPP had favored working with Trinidad and Tobago to develop Ghana’s gas potential. The NDC has gone with a Chinese contractor, Sinopec, and is in the process of constructing gas processing infrastructure. It is unclear whether this strategy would change if the NPP gained power and whether they would re-evaluate the Sinopec contract, which has been the subject of controversy regarding whether the government was getting value for money. Yet, both parties are keen to use gas reserves to fuel a local petrochemical industry.

Ghana’s next government must focus on completing the job of constructing a transparent and accountable system for managing the oil and gas sector. Contract disclosure, competitive and transparent licensing, and disclosure of beneficial owners of oil and gas blocks should become mandatory. New institutions such as the PIAC and Petroleum Commission must have the resources, implementing regulations and political space to do their job. The Ghana Revenue Authority must have the expertise and staff to be able to properly monitor and collect oil revenues. Ghana’s budget preparation and execution system must be strengthened; including by bringing more transparency to the process (Ghana scores poorly on the Open Budget Survey). Finally, the government should respect the rights of local communities who are and will suffer the onshore and offshore impacts of Ghana’s oil boom.

It took far longer than I—or any of us at Oxfam—expected, but the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has finally issued binding regulations to implement the oil, gas, and mining disclosure provisions contained in the 2010 landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. Starting in 2014, an estimated 1,100 companies will have to start disclosing the payments they make to governments on a country-by-country and project-by-project basis. This includes American companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, foreign companies, such as BP and Shell, and some companies from emerging markets such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia.

On August 22, the SEC approved regulations to enforce Section 1504 (“Cardin-Lugar”) passed over two years ago. (Since the SEC was more than a year past the Congressionally mandated deadline, Oxfam America used public pressure tactics—including stunts in front of the SEC and Chevron—as well as litigation to try to compel the SEC to act.)

Oxfam activists outside Chevron's headquarters in Houston. Photo by Scott Dalton.

While many were worried that the SEC would give in to the demands of the oil industry to issue watered-down regulations, and Oxfam America is still completing a legal review of the regulations, the agency appears largely to have stuck to the statutory language and Congressional intent. For example, the SEC did not grant any exemptions to the disclosure requirements for covered companies. Some oil companies had said that they should be allowed to withhold disclosures in certain countries that legally prohibit disclosing government payments, but Oxfam America and its allies in the Publish What You Pay US coalition made it clear to the SEC that such prohibitions have not been shown to exist.

The requirements as enacted have been hailed in the developed and developing world. Such ideologically diverse publications as the Financial Times and The Nation have both praised the SEC move. The FT said in an editorial (“Sunshine Rules”) that the new SEC regulation “puts legal force behind a demand long pushed by civil society organisations: that extractive companies disclose the payments they make to host governments… the transparency rule will make a real difference.”

Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, one of the founders of WACAM, a mining activist group and Oxfam partner. Jeff Deutsch/Oxfam America.

On the ground, activists are eagerly awaiting the disclosures. In Ghana, Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, an Oxfam partner from WACAM, a mining activist group, said the project-level disclosures required will “provide communities and local officials in Ghana with detailed information on the revenue flowing to government from gold extracted from their lands.” (Just before the SEC vote, I was in Ghana’s Western Region – a part of the country rich in gold and oil – looking at our district assembly budget monitoring work. SEC project-level disclosures will certainly help district officials and citizens “follow the money”.)

In Cambodia, a country rich in natural resources but where more than 50 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, very little public information about oil and mining revenue is available. SEC disclosures by Chevron and others will put information into the hands of activists who have been failed by international voluntary measures such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The SEC move has made a big splash, with coverage in the Phnom Penh Post and Khmer-language media. Oxfam partner Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency hailed the regulation as a landmark for the transparency movement.

Reading through the SEC’s 231-page explanation of the rules (and I’ve never been more excited to read a government regulation!), I was inspired by the involvement and impact of civil society groups from around the world who shared their views—and evidence—directly with the SEC drafters in Washington through a transparent regulatory process. Input from groups in Ghana, Peru, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Nigeria, Burma and elsewhere shared a common theme—this information will be vitally important in our fight for transparency.

Enactment of the regulations is now having a global ripple effect. In Europe, the European Parliament has scheduled an important committee vote on a proposal to possibly match—or go beyond—the US requirements and European Members of Parliament are pointing to the final SEC rule to push for strong requirements there. (Companies that are “cross-listed”—on stock markets in the US and Europe—already have to comply with the strong SEC rules, so Oxfam believes they should drop their efforts to slow or weaken progress in Europe.) Also, last week Publish What You Pay Canada and Revenue Watch Institute announced an agreement with the two largest mining industry associations in Canada to develop mandatory reporting requirements for Canadian stock exchanges.

Real social progress takes time (and monkeys). It’s been a 10 year fight to get this far. Next week the Publish What You Pay coalition celebrates its 10^th anniversary with a well-timed global conference in Amsterdam bringing together more than 250 activists from 50+ resource-rich countries. The next 10 years must be focused on finishing the job and putting this information to work to ensure that oil and mining billions are invested in people, not lining pockets!

Publish What you Pay US Director Isabel Munilla and Oxfam America staff deliver petitions to the American Petroleum Institute. Photo by Jessica Forres/Oxfam America.

Almost a month ago, Oxfam America and allies in the Publish What You Pay US coalition took the gloves off in our campaign to stop Big Oil from succeeding in a behind-the-scenes push to gut the landmark oil and mining payment transparency provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

Who knows how this fight will ultimately end, but we are making real progress. Since the start of this campaign spike, we’ve had dozens of media hits and turned this from a secret struggle at the SEC into a very public fight about oil company secrecy. And we’ve had fun along the way—Our fabulous “oil companies in bed with the SEC stunt” was quickly followed frisky group of “see no evil” monkeys in an oil barrel outside the Chevron tower in Houston—a stunt that was covered in the Houston Chronicle and the San Francisco Chronicle.

We’ve had high-profile figures weigh in as well, from Bill Gates to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In her remarks at a Senate hearing last week—watch a video of her remarks here—Clinton said the SEC should “go as far as possible” in implementing the final rule. “We know that there are challenges in doing this. I hope the regulations expected from the SEC reflect the clear intent of the law, namely to require all relevant companies operating in this sector to disclose the payments they make to foreign governments. I think everybody is benefited from the disinfectant of sunshine and the spotlight to hold institutions accountable.”

Fourteen senior Members of Congress led by Rep. Frank—including eight appropriators who will certainly have the ear of SEC Chairman Schapiro as she goes to Capitol Hill to fight for her agency’s budget—wrote to the SEC on Feb. 15 to say that they are aware of efforts by industry to press the SEC to release a “watered down rule that does not reflect the statutory language” and urged Chairman Schapiro “to resist this pressure and promptly release a strong and effective final rule.” Schapiro told appropriators this week that the rule will be finished “shortly”, but she’s made promises before and the SEC is almost a year beyond the Congressional deadline to implement this provision.

Oxfam’s supporters have also really come through—more than 24,000 have signed a petition to the oil industry and we delivered those petitions today to the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s lobbying arm. (Our ally Revenue Watch Institute also pitched in to add some signatures to the pile.) The ONE campaign has delivered more than 100,000 signatures to the SEC calling on them to quickly issue a strong rule.

Finally, we are getting elite business media opinion on our side. In a great editorial, the Financial Times said that “oil companies are wrong to resist publication of payments” and that lobbying efforts aimed at overturning progress in the US and Europe “should not be allowed to succeed”. The Economist ran an article at the end of February saying that if oil companies go to court to block the SEC final rule it could “become a public-relations disaster”. Indeed.

If oil companies thought they could hide behind the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), they may want to think again. Oil companies have long held that EITI—which only requires company disclosure when a country faithfully implements the initiative—is the only way to go and that mandatory regulations would destroy EITI. Clare Short, board chair of EITI, has a different view—mandatory regulations and EITI are perfectly complementary.

It’s clear that both the oil companies and the SEC are feeling the heat. We need to keep piling on the pressure so we can make it over the finish line with a strong regulation.

In the first Star Wars movie, Luke Skywalker and friends somehow blew up the Death Star. That’s a bit how we felt in 2010 when after years of fighting we got a new global financial transparency requirement into the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. The provision requires oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose tax and other payments in every country of operation. As I’ve been writing about in the last two weeks, we now feel like we are in The Empire Strikes Back. The oil industry has threatened to sue the SEC if they don’t get a regulation they like and are using lobbyists and lawyers to try to roll-back our victory.

Now it’s time for Revenge of the Jedi and the gloves are off. Oxfam and our allies in the Publish What You Pay coalition are mounting a big campaign to tell oil companies to stop fighting transparency—join us to take action. We have a six-figure ad campaign running the next two weeks, including a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, and online ads in the Washington Post, The Hill, Politico, and the Huffington Post. (The Wall Street Journal ad is endorsed by Global Witness, Revenue Watch Institute, Global Financial Integrity, EG Justice, and the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development.)

In addition to mounting an e-action campaign targeting Chevron, Exxon and ConocoPhillips, Oxfam is reaching out to our university campus-based CHANGE student activists for a petition drive to SEC Commissioners telling them to issue a strong final regulation. The ONE campaign is also pressuring the SEC with a petition that has over 84,000 signatures so far.

Last week Oxfam activists portrayed Chevron, Exxon, and the SEC in bed together outside SEC headquarters in Washington, which generated good coverage including the morning commute on NPR. This week, the “hear no evil, see no evil” monkeys will be outside the Chevron tower in Houston, telling the company and its employees the time for silence is over.

Congress is ramping up the pressure on the SEC to issue a strong final rule and to follow the law—five prominent Senators wrote on Jan. 31, and we are expecting more Congressional pressure this week.

The battle is also being fought on a number of fronts. Over in Europe, activists staged a stunt a government building in London and the ONE campaign has a big petition drive to make sure European regulators stand up to oil company lobbying there. Elsewhere, allies in resource-rich countries such as Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Senegal, Cambodia, and Ecuador are writing to the SEC to make sure they know how important this information is to hold their own governments accountable for the spending of oil and mining wealth.

Oil companies have a lot on their plate and this lawsuit has the makings of a classic PR nightmare. (Imagine the headlines—“Oil companies sue to keep tax payments secret”.) Let’s win again and bring this saga to an end.

Oxfam SEC oil transparency stunt. Photo by Oxfam America.

The oil and gas industry loves to trumpet their support of international transparency initiatives and their tax contributions to the US government, but when a new law requires them to tell the public exactly how much gets paid to whom around the world, they bring out the lobbyists and lawyers.

Browse through the corporate social responsibility reports of the top oil and gas companies, and you’ll see them singing from the same transparency hymnbook. Chevron says it “believes that the disclosure of revenues received by governments and payments made by extractive industries to governments could lead to improved governance in resource-rich countries.”

Many oil and gas companies are also “supporters” of the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). (Companies can become a “supporter” simply by declaring “their support publicly”.) Unless a country decides to implement EITI, though, they are obliged to disclose nothing. For a company such as Chevron, this means disclosing tax and other payments in Nigeria (perhaps years after the fact), but nothing in next-door Equatorial Guinea, a classic petro-dictatorship. For the citizens of Equatorial Guinea—mala suerte (tough luck)!

In July 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act was signed into law. Dodd-Frank contains an important provision (“Section 1504″) that requires each oil, gas, and mining company to disclose their tax, royalty and other payments to governments in every country of operation. (Oxfam and our allies in the Publish What You Pay campaign fought hard for the inclusion of this provision—alongside our support for EITI.)

Many of the same companies praising transparency have been actively lobbying since the law passed to gut implementation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The hypocrisy is out there in the open if you know where to look. Senate lobbying disclosure forms show that Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Conoco Phillips, Marathon, Occidental, the American Petroleum Institute (API), and others have been very active in Washington on this provision, targeting not only the SEC, but the House of Representatives, Senate, Department of State, Department of the Interior, and the National Security Council.

As I wrote last week, API (revenues of more than $198 million in 2009) has now threatened to sue the SEC unless the agency withdraws its proposed rule and starts from scratch to meet big oil’s secrecy wishes rather than the law and Congressional mandate. (Five API member companies are also on the EITI board, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, and Statoil.)

Wiston House where the EITI board meeting will be held next week. Wikimedia Commons.

No one knows how much the oil and gas industry is spending specifically to undo the Dodd-Frank provision, but the oil and gas industry is one of the biggest lobbyists in the US, spending more than $145 million on lobbying activities in 2011. ConocoPhillips, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP were the top five oil and gas spenders on lobbying in 2011, with ConocoPhillips spending a staggering $20.5 million. API spent more than $7 million in lobbying in 2011 and is spending a “significant amount” on its faux “grassroots” advertising campaign called “Vote 4 Energy”. These are the same companies who complain that the cost to disclose information they already collect is too onerous.

The yawning gap between the transparency rhetoric of companies and the reality of their actions has never been more apparent than it is now. The SEC may shortly issue a final rule to implement the Dodd-Frank provision, while on February 14th the oil industry’s designated transparency groupies, governments, and civil society groups will convene in the UK for the latest EITI board meeting. While the EITI board members enjoy the lovely and historic “Downton Abbey”-esque country manor setting of their board meeting, the industry’s lawyers and lobbyists will be working hard in Washington to gut a new global corporate transparency standard.

It’s time to blow the whistle on the industry’s transparent hypocrisy. For the more than 1.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day in resource-rich countries, there’s no time left to wait.

Village residents fetch water from a communal pump in Faloumbou, Senegal Tuesday. Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America.