New Push for Crooked Oil Crackdown

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In the wake of last’s week Senate report on how dirty foreign money still flows into the US, an international group of energy activists pointed to the report’s findings as fresh evidence for the need for more transparency in the oil, gas, and mineral industries. The exhaustive report, published by the Senate investigations subcommittee, details four corruption cases—three of them previously unreported—in which foreign individuals all from nations rich in oil or other natural resources funneled millions of dollars in “suspect funds” into the US for money laundering purposes. In several instances, that dirty money likely came from the countries’ burgeoning energy sectors. The energy-transparency organization, the Publish What You Pay coalition, said the Senate’s findings reveal the shadowy, corrupt figures in energy-rich nations like Angola, Nigeria, and Gabon—three countries cited in the report—and show the need for disclosure on how multinational energy companies do business in those countries. “More transparency is needed in these countries to empower citizens to prevent the theft of public funds,” Isabel Munilla, Publish What You Pay’s US director, said in a statement. “A comprehensive US policy response requires the passing of the Energy Security Through Transparency Act.”

That legislation, introduced by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) in September 2009, would force SEC-registered energy companies, like ExxonMobil and British Petroleum, to disclose how much they pay to foreign countries like Nigeria and the Congo to extract natural resources. Right now, information on those kinds of payments remains in the dark; the final destination of that money—be it the extraction company or the pockets of powerful foreign leaders—remains unclear. Lugar and Cardin’s bill would go a long way toward tracking that money and potentially preventing those funds from ending up in the wrong hands—an all-too-often occurrence in countries where resource wealth is a curse and not a blessing and transparency is the exception and not the rule.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate