"New reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal payments around the globe. One takeaway? The U.S. government might be getting a bad deal."
"Tutu Alicante was studying in the United States when his sister, suffering from an ectopic pregnancy, was rushed to the hospital back home in Equatorial Guinea. It was 1996, a year after Mobil had discovered oil off the country’s coast. When she arrived at the hospital, Alicante recounted recently, there was no power and no doctor. His sister bled to death.
In 2014, Alicante said, his father was rushed to the same hospital and found similar conditions, and he, too, died. Over 18 years, Mobil’s oil field had brought soaring economic growth to Equatorial Guinea, but that wealth had failed to transform life for many of the nation’s poor, Alicante said.
Alicante is the executive director of EG Justice, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on corruption in Equatorial Guinea, and he told this story during a recent webinar highlighting new securities filings from American oil and mining companies. The reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are 14 years in the making, and for the first time reveal payments made by extractive companies to governments around the world, including the U.S. federal government.
The disclosures detail tens of billions of dollars in taxes, royalties and other payments last year from ExxonMobil, Chevron and other corporations. A chief goal was to discourage or uncover the corruption and unfair deals that have helped explain why oil, gas and minerals have often brought wealth to elites and economic growth to poor countries while failing to substantially lift many citizens’ standard of living."
Nicholas Kusnetz reports for Inside Climate News October 22, 2024.
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