A letter to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)

Dear friends,

By now you must know that though I harbor some reservations I support most of your initiatives, and most specially their spirit. That said…

In the video “Making resources work for people” that is posted on your web Obiagely “Oby” Ezekwesili says that “It ought to be the case that these revenues [from natural resources] can transform the life of the citizens but then you see the opposite happen.. It is the challenge to move the benefits of the natural resources out of the hold of a smaller club of people and instead diversify the opportunity that it offers to a larger number of people that is what will reverse the curse and that is the most important issue of the day for mineral rich countries.”

I could not agree more. And that is why I hereby express my deepest reservation about your second principle that says:

“We affirm that management of natural resource wealth for the benefit of a country’s citizens is in the domain of sovereign governments to be exercised in the interests of their national development.”

The management of natural resource wealth for the benefit of a country’s citizens should be managed by the country’s citizens... otherwise, how will they ever learn how to manage it? The role of the government is to provide government not manage wealth for the voters.

Also, in the same video, Peter Sutherland Chairman of the Board of BP, talking sort of both for the consumers and the producers of oil, expresses that a steady predictable supply of natural resources at a reasonable price is in the interest of everyone... and that stability and predictability is dependent on good governance... for which transparency is a very important component.

I agree completely, on the first part, but instead of transparency on the status quo, and which I have equated to being able to see when the torturer extract your nails, I would much rather prefer that Peter Sutherland would help intermediate between oil producing and oil consuming countries in order to offer directly to all the citizens of an oil producing country, the true shareholders of oil, long term take up contracts, which would provide them with equitable and stable dividends and the consumers with equitable and stable oil prices.

Sincerely yours

Per Kurowski

An oil cursed citizen.

We don’t need more transparency

A new group of well intention academicians who want to help those countries blessed with natural resources to transform these in development and wealth for their citizens has recently been created. This group will summarize its conclusions in something named “The Natural Resource Charter”.

Just like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI, one of its guiding principles is that helping make more transparent the information of the origin and destiny of the funds obtained from the natural resources, will make the citizens request better results. Forget it!

We Venezuelans do not need more transparency to be absolutely sure that we are anchored in an infamous oil feudalism where or feudal lord on duty keeps all the seeds and shares out what is left or what he has digested. More transparency would be like the tortured clamoring for their rights to also be seeing how they extract their fingernails.

We Venezuelans do not need more transparency to be absolutely sure that the most we can expect substituting for the feudal lord on duty with another from the same tribe of the getoutoftheway-toplacemyselfs is that he will hopefully do just what the previous did a little bit better, though always running the risk he will do it worse.

We Venezuelans do not need more transparency to be absolutely sure that our lives are wasted fighting among each other for a share in our own net oil results, wallowing in a sort of eternal piñata at the feet of the benevolent on duty who distractedly observes us with a sarcastic smile.

We Venezuelans do not need more transparency to be absolutely sure that instead of a feudal system that administers our own net oil results we need a normal government that governs our country.

We Venezuelans do not need more transparency to be absolutely sure that we are much better off trusting each one of us a little, instead of trusting a chief so much that we elevated him to be our feudal lord.

In conclusion we Venezuelans do not need the slightest bit of more transparency to be absolutely sure that what we most need is the strength and will to free ourselves from this feudal oil state in which we are trapped by requesting they give us our oil results directly, so that we can plant them… instead of discussing so many stupidities and believing in so many pregnant birds.

Translated from “El Universal” Caracas, Venezuela, April 9 2009.

Plain awful

It is plain awful to be a citizen where the government is independently wealthy because of income from national resources and does not really need the citizens.

EITI´s unacceptable principle.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative states as its 2nd EITI Principle the following:

“We affirm that management of natural resource wealth for the benefit of a country’s citizens is in the domain of sovereign governments to be exercised in the interests of their national development.”

That, to me, a resource cursed citizen, is an unacceptable principle.

I hold that the individual citizens will always be better, on average, at making the most out of any resource blessings than any government managing all of them.