home
about us
news room
global priorities
regional pages
policy and research
tools
publications
print this page
Oil
Oil-rich Angola, Azerbaijan, Chad, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen all have extremely low scores on TI’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), indicating that they share high levels of perceived corruption. This also points to what has become almost a cliché: the oil curse; namely, the fact that many oil rich countries face inexplicable poverty and deprivation.
The oil sector provides ample opportunity for instant and concentrated wealth, making it especially prone to corruption. The industry faces very specific challenges. Oil-rich countries face a host of economic and governance issues that have the power to destabilise and undermine the private and public sector. Any strategy aimed at addressing the industry's problems needs to consider all players, including private businesses, host governments, international firms and their home countries, development banks, export credit agencies and civil society, right down to the community-level. In these countries, the oil sector is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of western oil executives, middlemen and local officials.
In its Special Report on Corruption and Oil TI points out that countries dependent on petroleum revenues for their livelihood (with the notable exception of Norway) are among the most economically troubled, the most authoritarian, and/or the most conflict-ridden in the world. This is true across regions – in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Oil-exporting countries grow more slowly than non-oil rich countries over time.
A number of initiatives to address transparency and corruption in the oil industry have been launched in the past few years. Among them, the Publish What You Pay Initiative and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative that aim at introducing transparency to oil revenue flows.
For additional information on this and other initiatives, you can look for example at the following websites:
