[open-government] OpenOil is looking for partners to analyse oil contracts around the world

[Stefanie Heerwig]

*OpenOil is looking for partners to analyse oil contracts around the world*

Are you looking for a way into promoting transparency and public
understanding of your country's oil and gas contracts? At OpenOil we are
looking for partners to work with across the world to take the conversation
around contracts to the next level by beginning to examine oil contracts
country by country, working with model contracts.

We would like to identify by *Friday October 19th* partners in *five
countries* who we will work with over the next few months to produce a
joint preliminary of model contracts. OpenOil will contribute professional
technical advice to enable country-level partners to formulate a list of
questions to be addressed to government on those model contracts. We will
then jointly publish the questions in English and any relevant national
language.

If you or your organisation would like to work on this with us, please fill
in the form* **here*<http://openoil.net/1420-2/work-on-oil-contracts-with-us/>
* *on our website by then*. *We* *guarantee to work with partners in five
countries to publish such analysis by March 1, 2014. See below for more
detail.

*What Are Model Contracts and What We Want to Do With Them?*

Only a few countries have already published their final signed contracts.
But many more have published “model contracts” which give the general
structure and language, and many of the terms. These are industry documents
in fact published to give oil companies an idea of the likely agreements to
be signed, so that they can determine whether they would like to bid or not.

Model contracts have limitations. They do not contain the all-important
financial terms, and you can never be certain that any particular clause or
article has been retained in the same form in the final signed contract –
the government and companies may have negotiated changes.

But they do represent a general structure to the contracts. And that allows
the public in oil producing countries to begin work on understanding
contracts, which lie right at the heart of the industry, by getting an idea
of the structure of their country's contracts.

What we basically want to achieve is that each country gets more specific
and moves away from a general, theoretical debate of “why should contracts
be published” to “what are the specific questions around these contracts in
this country” such as “What bonuses are due to be paid at the start of
commercial production?” or “How much money the contract specifies to be
spent on social projects in areas where Petroleum is produced?”

This process itself should answer one of the main objections put forward by
those who oppose contract transparency – what public use or understanding
could come of it? Analysis of the model contract also familiarises people
with the basics of understanding and reading their country's oil sector
contracts.

OpenOil and the Center for Public Integrity pioneered this approach in
Mozambique this summer, jointly publishing a list of
questions<http://openoil.net/2013/05/22/an-open-letter-to-the-mozambican-government/>on
Mozambique model contract of the 4th licensing round, which closed in 2010
with an award of the Lower Zambesi area to the Norwegian company DNO. The
letter was addressed to Esperanca Bias, Mozambique’s Minister of Resources,
on the occasion of Mozambique’s accession to the EITI mechanism, and as a
result the minister was asked about the confidentiality of Mozambique's
contracts at a press conference at the EITI summit in Sydney, Australia.

This is only the start. We know that model contracts for the following
countries are currently publicly available:

Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, Cyprus, Equatorial Guinea,
Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia,
Nicaragua, Senegal, Tanzania, East Timor, Trinidad and Tobago,
Turkmenistan, Uganda

-- 
Stefanie Heerwig
Open Oil <http://openoil.net/> - Imagine an Open Oil industry
Oil Contracts, How to Read and Understand
Them<http://openoil.net/contracts-booksprint/> -
out now!
Twitter: @Open_Oil <https://twitter.com/Open_Oil> Skype: stefanie.heerwig
Tel:  +49 1743548224
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