Continuous strengthening of petroleum transparency in São Tome and Principe

The EITI Board commends São Tome and Principe (STP) for its continued commitment to improving transparency in petroleum operations and revenue management ahead of any potential production.

29 June 2018 – São Tome and Principe was today assessed as having made meaningful progress in meeting the EITI Standard. In making its decision, the EITI Board acknowledged the significant efforts of STP in addressing its corrective actions raised from the first Validation – the EITI’s quality assurance mechnism.

Moving beyond the minimum requirements

The Board recognised STP’s efforts in disclosing comprehensive information on the distribution of extractive industry revenues. The 2015 STP EITI Report provided a detailed description of how petroleum revenues are managed, including transfers from the national oil account to the central budget. This demonstrates STP’s efforts in going beyond the Standard to ensure more information is available to the public and other stakeholders.  

José Cardoso, National Coordinator of STP EITI said,

‘Transparency in the terms of petroleum activities and revenues from exploration is essential for our nascent oil industry. Making continuous progress in meeting international standards for transparency remains a priority as we expect the economic contribution of the petroleum sector to increase in the coming years.’

Bridging extractives disclosure gaps

The Board recognised STP’s progress on pushing for transparency in the Joint Development Zone (JDZ) with Nigeria. STP has proposed to re-establish the Nigeria–STP EITI sub-committee, and both countries have engaged in constructive discussions on the management of the Joint Development Zone. STP has nominated members to the Joint Ministerial Committee.

The country’s second EITI Validation has shown there is a drive to systematically disclose extractives data online. An online license register has been established on the National Petroleum’s website, and petroleum agreements are now published on Resource Contracts.

The STP-EITI multi-stakeholder group aims to encourage more data to be systematically disclosed, in line with the EITI Board’s recommendation. Their updated workplan includes plans for mainstreaming and objectives related to promoting regular disclosures by government agencies.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, Chair of the EITI, said:

‘São Tome and Principe has made commendable progress since its first EITI Validation, in particular to disclose oil contracts and revenue distribution. I encourage São Tome and stakeholders to continue to make improvements in meeting the extractives transparency standard.’

Scorecard

Notes

• Validation is the EITI’s independent evaluation mechanism. It assesses countries against progress made in meeting the 2016 Standard.
• See here for a full explanation of the various levels of progress under the EITI Standard.
• See the interactive scorecard for Sao Tome e Principe here.
• The Board's decision in full: 2018-36/BM-40/BP-40-6-E
• The documentation of Sao Tome e Principe's Validation can be found here.
• For further information about the EITI in Sao Tome e Principe, please visit the country page on the EITI website.