A federal advisory committee tasked with improving extractive industry reporting transparency, will host a public meeting from 4-7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, at the Fire Fighters Conference Center, The Greer & Lowdermilk Conference Center, 4225 Interwood North Pkwy, in Houston.
The public information session will discuss the US Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The EITI (http://eiti.org)is a set of international standards promoting increased transparency of the extractive industries. In 2011, President Obama announced the decision to hold the United States to the same transparency standards that EITI holds other countries.
"With the benefits of extractive resources come responsibilities, and we want to hear from the communities most affected by extractive resources to ensure that this policy will help them in real, meaningful ways," said Danielle Brian, U.S. EITI Advisory Committee co-chair and executive director of the Washington-based nonprofit, Project On Government Oversight (POGO). "The EITI offers an opportunity to advance transparency and enhance revenue collection from our natural resources in the United States, and while the EITI is a voluntary international initiative, it presents several ways to improve transparency on a local level."
Houston is one of a number of cities where a public information session will be held this fall. Texas is the country's leading producer of energy, and, in the past decade, the state has received an average of $20 million per year from federal mineral leases on state land. Harris County has also been the top recipient of revenues from offshore leases. The EITI process will help to prove whether communities are receiving what they are owed for the extraction of these public resources. The meeting will provide an overview of the U.S. EITI and gather public comments, which will inform the application to the international EITI Secretariat later this year.
Since the US EITI Advisory Committee started meeting in February, the federal government has agreed to release more information online than it currently does about extractive resources in the United States. The goal is to make sure that communities impacted by oil, gas, coal and hard rock production are getting every federal tax dollar that they are due.