Transparency in Indo oil, gas sector

Eight major oil and gas companies are on the list for Indonesia's premier Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) reports, expected to be launched in October 2011.

Supported by the World Bank, the EITI aims at encouraging transparency in regards to state revenues from extractive industries. It has been so far implemented in 33 resource-rich countries and Indonesia is currently one of the EITI candidates.

Maryati Abdullah, member of the Indonesia EITI Transparency supervisory team, told the press here Tuesday that Indonesia was targeting to launch its first EITI reports in October this year as a mean of becoming an EITI-compliant country.

"We're targeting between seven and eight major oil and gas companies to be the subjects of the first round of EITI reports," she said.

Among the companies are ChevronTexaco, Petrochina, Total and two subsidiaries of state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina, Maryati said, adding that other are CNOOC, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.

Maryati explained each company would be required to provide data regarding taxes and other payments submitted to the state for some of their major oil and gas blocks, while the government would be required to provide data regarding the nominals they received from the companies.

"We will hire an independent auditor to verify the data," she said.