Partner Stephanie Stimpson and associate Brandon Schur have written "Canada completes first reporting cycle under new "publish what you pay" rules" for the International Bar Association's Oil and Gas Law Committee. The article covers the inaugural reporting season for companies working in the natural resources sector under a new disclosure regime, as well as some of the challenges and lessons learned from the first round of reporting. Below is an excerpt of the article.
Despite the publication of a guidance document by NRCan and a series of country-wide workshops and seminars, industry participants have been grappling with uncertainty on the proper approach to certain challenges in reporting under ESTMA [...] In many areas there appear to be disparate approaches to reporting payments to various governmental bodies (along with other errors and discrepancies), which suggests that there is room for clarification and further guidance from NRCan in subsequent reporting cycles, and that industry will likely try to develop a consistent approach to the reporting standards.
If you have a subscription to the IBA's publications, you can access the full article here.
Want a complete breakdown of the new ESTMA reporting rules? Get our team's full analysis here.