On be­half of the T&T Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, I write to com­mend you on your No­vem­ber 9 ed­i­to­r­i­al ti­tled "En­er­gy trans­paren­cy need­ed" and your recog­ni­tion of the piv­otal role that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the EITI will play in en­hanc­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor in the years to come.As in­ti­mat­ed in the ed­i­to­r­i­al, the present ad­min­is­tra­tion must be com­mend­ed for its ac­tion in De­cem­ber 2010 of reaf­firm­ing the coun­try's com­mit­ment to the EITI and the ap­point­ment of a steer­ing com­mit­tee to over­see the EITI im­ple­men­ta­tion and for the achieve­ment of mem­ber­ship of the EITI and can­di­date coun­try sta­tus in March 2011.

The next key step in achiev­ing ex­trac­tive sec­tor trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty is the dis­clo­sure of pay­ments made by pe­tro­le­um and min­ing (quar­ry­ing) com­pa­nies to the Gov­ern­ment and, in turn, the dis­clo­sure by the Gov­ern­ment of the amounts re­ceived from those com­pa­nies.This ob­jec­tive is achieved by the pro­duc­tion of a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion re­port of pay­ments and re­ceipts.EITI rec­on­cil­i­a­tion re­ports are pub­lic doc­u­ments writ­ten in a way to help the av­er­age cit­i­zen un­der­stand how the ex­trac­tive sec­tor op­er­ates and how the rev­enues they pro­duce flow from com­pa­nies to the Gov­ern­ment.The pro­duc­tion of such a re­port is a prin­ci­pal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed EITI steer­ing com­mit­tee charged with en­sur­ing T&T be­comes EITI com­pli­ant by Au­gust 28, 2013.

This 19-mem­ber tri­par­tite com­mit­tee, chaired by well-known trans­paren­cy ad­vo­cate Vic­tor Hart, is com­prised of six gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istries of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs and Fi­nance, as well as state ex­trac­tive sec­tor com­pa­nies NGC, Petrotrin and Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Ltd; eight civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea, T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute, the T&T and En­er­gy Cham­bers, and the OW­TU, as well as four of the largest pri­vate en­er­gy com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in T&T (bpTT, BG T&T, BHP and EOG).It should be not­ed that while this com­mit­tee is ap­point­ed by Cab­i­net, it is, by its con­struct, an in­de­pen­dent mul­ti-stake­hold­er body free of po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion.

T&T's first rev­enue rec­on­cil­i­a­tion ex­er­cise will com­mence ear­ly in 2012 and be com­plet­ed by Ju­ly 2012. The re­sult­ing re­port will be pub­lished on the com­mit­tee's Web site (www.tteiti.org.tt) and val­i­dat­ed by the EITI's in­ter­na­tion­al sec­re­tari­at based in Oslo, Nor­way.It is ex­pect­ed that this re­port will go a long way to­ward de­mys­ti­fy­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor as well as ed­u­cat­ing the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on how the coun­try's nat­ur­al re­sources, our col­lec­tive pat­ri­mo­ny, is mon­e­tised and utilised for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.All stake­hold­ers are in­vit­ed to vis­it the TTEITI Web site to track and com­ment on the progress T&T is mak­ing to­wards achiev-ing its stat­ed ob­jec­tive of im­prov­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in this key sec­tor of the econ­o­my.

Mark Reg­is

In­ter­im Head, TTEITI sec­re­tari­at