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May 2016 News and Analysis from NRGI

  • News from NRGI

  • 25 May 2016

Highlights

London Anti-Corruption Summit
NRGI staff were encouraged and inspired by much of what transpired at this month's landmark anti-corruption summit in London, particularly around commitments to tackle opacity in physical commodity trading. Some key NRGI content related to the summit:


Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari addresses the pre-summit conference "Tackling Corruption Together." (Photo used under Creative Commons license from Flickr / Commonwealth Secretariat)

Is There Evidence for a Subnational Resource Curse?
This paper evaluates the evidence of how extractive industries affect local economies and whether government policy can lead to positive development impacts while balancing costs borne locally.

Mineral and Gemstone Licensing in Myanmar

Licensing serves as the gateway into Myanmar’s lucrative and controversial mining sector. Improving governance of the licensing regime is therefore key to elevating economic and social outcomes.

Executive Course on Oil, Gas and Mining Governance: Applications Due 3 June
This intensive six-day course offered by the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and NRGI prepares senior policymakers from around the world to better manage and govern their nation’s oil, gas or mineral resources. Private sector executives are also encouraged to apply.

Spotlight on data

Angola, Good Deals, and Mining the Data Deluge
NRGI's David Mihalyi uses a dataset of oil prices and Angolan production figures to explore the nuances in the perennial question concerning whether a country has gotten a "good deal" for its resources.

Video

"Reversing the Resource Curse: Theory and Practice" Course Videos
Last month, NRGI and the Central European University hosted an advanced-level multi-stakeholder course on the resource curse. Watch as government officials, civil society actors and academics discuss the role of resource governance in the draft Libyan constitution; current issues and trends in Myanmar resource governance; resource management challenges in Indonesia; bringing accountability to Ghana's public finances; and mining policy and taxation in South Africa.

Blog

Azerbaijan: Low Oil Prices and a Troubled Civil Society
SOCAR, Azerbaijan's state-owned oil company, is in dire straits. The company initially announced that the oil crash halved its revenues and recently revealed that it made no profit last year. Meanwhile, it accumulated USD 6.3 billion in debt. The Eurasia Regional Extractive Industries Knowledge Hub's Farid Guliyev examines what went wrong. In another post, NRGI's Fidan Bagirova provides an update on the country's standing in international initiatives like the Open Government Partnership and EITI.

NRGI in the news and on the web

Upcoming events

Anglophone Africa Regional Knowledge Hub Course
NRGI runs a comprehensive, intermediate-level summer school for participants from Anglophone Africa. The two-week residential course, which runs from 5 September to 16 September, is open to government officials, civil society actors, journalists, parliamentarians and private sector actors.

Careers and opportunities

Call for ResourceContracts.org Usage Grants
The partners behind ResourceContracts.org are announcing a call for proposals for five grants of up to USD 10,000. CSOs, researchers, think tanks and journalists are encouraged to apply.

NRGI is hiring. Learn more.

The Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) helps people to realize the benefits of their countries’ endowments of oil, gas and minerals. We do this through technical advice, advocacy, applied research, policy analysis, and capacity development. We work with innovative agents of change within government ministries, civil society, the media, legislatures, the private sector, and international institutions to promote accountable and effective governance in the extractive industries. For more information, please see www.resourcegovernance.org. Copyright © 2016 Natural Resource Governance Institute. All rights reserved.

 

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