Payments Data

Reconciliation Scope

For the year 2022 the following payment streams have been included:

• Oil and Gas (O&G) sector: combined total for Ring-Fence Corporation Tax (RFCT) and Supplementary Charge (SC), Petroleum Revenue Tax (PRT) and Advance Petroleum Revenue Tax (APRT), Energy (Oil and Gas) Profits Levy (EPL)[1], payments to TCE and CES in respect of pipelines operated by companies that operate in UK extractive activities and monetary payments to local planning authorities as part of planning obligations. 
• Mining and Quarrying (M&Q) sector: Corporation Tax (CT), extractive-related payments to TCE and CES, and monetary payments to local planning authorities as part of planning obligations.

In line with the Reports on Payments to Government Regulations 2014, the materiality threshold applied to each revenue stream at group level remained unchanged at £86,000. The government agencies that were required to report for the 2022 UK EITI reconciliation exercise were HMRC, TCE and CES.

Based on historical results of the reconciliation exercises, the MSG agreed that for payments from 2022 onwards petroleum licence fees and the OGA Levy should be disclosed unilaterally by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).

Adjustments to the EITI reconciliation scope

Every year the number of companies assessed as in-scope varies as new companies’ payments move above or below the threshold of £86,000 or a reduction arises due to corporate mergers or acquisitions. In 2022 the reconciliation scope was adjusted slightly during the reconciliation exercise as more information on the extractive nature and materiality of payments emerged. We believe that all material financial flows have been captured. These changes are detailed as follows:

Table 3: Adjustments to the EITI reconciliation scope

The final number of companies (both Oil & Gas and Mining & Quarrying) included in the EITI reconciliation scope was 47. As the total amount reported by government and extractive companies for the companies participating in the reconciliation constitutes almost 99% of the total reported by government agencies, the overall reconciliation outcome is satisfactory.

Table 5: Mining & Quarrying companies

This table lists the mining and quarrying companies that participated in the 2022 reconciliation process and provides a breakdown of their total corporation tax payments and receipts and their total payments made to TCE that exceeded the materiality threshold. There were no payments by these companies to CES.

(in £000)

There were additional minor payments reported by the government agencies for companies that were in scope but whose payments were below the agreed materiality thresholds and for in-scope companies that did not participate in the reconciliation process. The totals of these payments are reported in the summary tables above and, for petroleum licence fees and the OGA Levy, are included in the online disclosure of project level payments and repayments, which also includes reconciled field level data on Petroleum Revenue Tax and project-level payments to TCE and CES.

Several companies have reported their 2022 payments to governments around the world, including to UK government entities, under the Reports on Payments to Governments Regulations 2014 as amended 2015 and the Accounts and Reports (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. This does not form part of the UK EITI payment reconciliation exercise but rather represents complementary information to this report. There can be differences in the amounts reported under UK EITI and under the EU Accounting and Transparency Directives. These differences can relate to interpretation of the scope of payment categories, reporting currencies and timing of payments. The Natural Resource Governance Institute maintains a database of Payments made to Governments and reports submitted by companies under UK, EU/EEA and equivalent Canadian legislation[6].

Beneficial Ownership

As part of EITI reporting, companies are asked to disclose their beneficial owners; that is, information on the people who ultimately own and control each company.

Most UK-registered companies are required to submit information on people with significant control (PSC) to Companies House. Publicly-listed companies are exempt from PSC requirements since they already provide beneficial ownership (BO) information under stock exchange requirements. Therefore, in order to disclose their BO information for EITI reporting, UK-registered companies need only to confirm their filings and provide the link to the relevant page at Companies House in their EITI BO declaration form. Private companies which have not filed information at Companies House on PSCs should disclose their BO information in the EITI BO declaration form.

All 47 companies which submitted EITI reporting templates also submitted a BO declaration form, duly signed by a senior officer. Thirty-one of the reporting templates received were from companies that are either publicly listed or wholly owned subsidiaries of publicly listed companies, meaning that they provide BO information under stock exchange requirements (see Table 8 below). The remaining 16 companies are privately held (see Table 9 below).

Table 8: Publicly listed or wholly owned subsidiaries of publicly listed companies

Table 9: Privately held companies

Information on the beneficial owners of these 16 privately held companies can be found on the Companies House website[18] by searching for the company of interest and using the 'people' tab to access information about PSCs. For ease of reference, all this information is available by following the links in the last column of the above table.

Private companies are also asked to disclose information on all owners who are identified as politically exposed people (PEP), i.e. those who have political influence or who, as family members or close associates, have links to senior political figures or government officials in the UK or abroad and who have a shareholding of 5% or more in the company. In 2022, no privately owned companies making material payments under the EITI Standard disclosed PEP. We cannot comment on whether companies which did not participate in this year’s reporting process are owned by any PEP.

Several extractive companies making material payments to the UK government are ultimately controlled by foreign government entities. It is considered important that the UK’s beneficial ownership system can accurately capture details of foreign government ownership of companies operating in the UK’s extractive sector.

More information on the UK’s beneficial ownership regime can be found on the beneficial ownership page of the UK EITI website.

The MSG agreed that it would be appropriate to use a separate template and request beneficial ownership (BO) information from the non-material and the NSTA licensee companies. The template was uploaded on both the UK EITI and NSTA websites. 

All licensees were requested to download the BO declaration form and return the completed version to the IA by 28 April 2023 at ukeiti@bdo-ifi.com.

However, no additional responses from companies not involved in the reconciliation exercise had been received as of the date of this report.