U.S. back out of oil & gas anti-corruption treaty

The United States will not be part of a recent international treaty to fight corruption in revenues management, according to a new decision from the White House, reported by Reuters.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) was designed to aid in the effort to regulate oil, gas, and mineral profits around the world, and the US is withdrawing “effective immediately” according to Gregory J. Gould, director of the US Office of Natural Resources Revenue, in a Thursday note to the EITI board.

The EITI was founded in 2003, but the US did not join until March 2014.

“It put more information in the hands of the public,” Michael Ross, executive director of the Project on Resources Governance and Development at the University of California Los Angeles, told Reuters. “It involved the U.S. government disclosing all the money it was getting from oil, gas and mining companies and getting these companies to publicly disclose the payments they were making.”

So far, 52 companies have taken part in the EITI, and American withdrawal has sparked the ire of many politicians and non-profits who have condemned the government for its decision to rescind its participation in the international agreement.

“The EITI is making important gains in global efforts to address corruption and illicit financial flows,” the EITI board said in the statement: “It’s important that resource-rich countries like the United States lead by example.”

Crude oil exports from the United States hit another record last week, at 2.133 million bpd, as production also continued growing, the Energy Information Administration said. This is the first time U.S. oil exports have breached the 2-million-bpd level. The authority said average daily production stood at 9.55 million barrels, up by 46,000 bpd from a week earlier and from 8.52 million bpd a year earlier.