Payments Data

UK EITI annual payment data reconciliation 

A core part of EITI requires oil, gas and mining companies to disclose voluntarily their payments to government agencies and for the reconciliation of these payments with government receipts from these companies. This ‘reconciliation process’ takes place on an annual basis and is conducted by an independent administrator (in the UK’s case, BDO LLP), overseen by the UK EITI Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG).

The UK has now conducted this reconciliation exercise seven times, meaning that we have now placed on public record seven years’ worth of verified data on the financial flows between industry and government, covering 2014–2020. Our aim in publishing this data is to explain the contribution that the extractive sectors are making to the economic and social development of the country and to increase public understanding of the social and economic impacts of the sector and enrich public debate on the governance and stewardship of the UK's oil, gas and mineral resources.

The results of the reconciliation process on 2020 payments data, which took place in 2021, can be found below. The results from previous years can be found in our Publications & Reports page, using the ‘UK EITI Reports’ filter.

Other sources of extractives payments data

Separate to the UK EITI payment reconciliation exercise and complementing the information in this report, a number of companies have reported their 2020 payments to governments around the world, including to UK government entities, under the Reports on Payments to Governments Regulations 2014 and the Disclosure Requirements and Transparency Rules and Prospectus Rules (before 21 July 2019) and the Prospectus Regulation Rules, which implement the EU Accounting and Transparency Directives.

Since 2014, large and publicly listed extractives companies in the UK have been required to disclose payments they make to governments on a country-by-country and project-by-project basis. This information is filed with the Companies House extractive service (UK-incorporated companies) and the Financial Conduct Authority’s National Storage Mechanism (London Stock Exchange Main Market-listed companies)..

There can be differences in the amounts reported under UK EITI and under the UK Regulations. These differences can relate to interpretation of the scope of payment categories, reporting currency and timing.

The Natural Resource Governance Institute maintains a database of Payments to Governments reports submitted by companies under UK, EU/EEA and equivalent Canadian legislation. Resource Projects provides a platform to collect, display, download and search extractive project information using open data. It aims to harvest data on project-by-project payments to governments—based on mandatory disclosure legislation—and link it to associated information about the project from a variety of sources.

The databases are as follows:

• Government Entity Payments Resource Projects – an open-source data repository on oil, gas and mining projects.
• Project payments – Resource Projects – an open-source data repository on oil, gas and mining projects.
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - Resource Projects – an open- source repository on oil, gas and mining projects.

In 2020, the extractives sector continued to make sizeable tax payments to the UK Government. However, principally in the context of oil and gas decommissioning activity, parts of the sector also received repayments from Government of tax paid previously where loss carry back for decommissioning costs reduced earlier years’ taxable profits.

In order to improve public understanding of these payments, this report analyses these payments against each relevant tax and licence. The data is based on a reconciliation exercise where we asked companies to disclose their payments/repayments to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), The Crown Estate (TCE) or Crown Estate Scotland (CES) at group level above a threshold level (£86,000). Additionally, the reconciliation included companies that paid more than £1 million to the Oil & Gas Authority (OGA), even if the company did not make any other payment/repayment above a threshold. Government agencies were also asked to disclose what they receive from oil, gas, mining and quarrying companies. These figures were then reconciled by an independent administrator. The UK EITI website contains information on the oil and gas and mining and quarrying tax regimes.

See full UK EITI Payments Report 2020 here

This is the seventh year the UK has published reconciliation data. The tables below provide detailed information on and a reconciliation of payment streams between companies operating in the UK extractive sector and the relevant government agencies in 2020.

The reconciliation process consisted of the following steps:

• Analysis of the reconciliation scope prepared by the Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG);
• Collection of payment data from government agencies and extractive companies which provide the basis for the reconciliation;
• Comparison of amounts reported by government agencies and extractive companies to determine if there were discrepancies between the two sources of information; and
• Contact with government agencies and extractive companies to resolve the discrepancies.

A total of 39 oil and gas companies and 16 mining and quarrying companies participated in compiling the report, with continuing high industry participation. This represents almost 96% of potential in-scope payments. We consider this to be a comprehensive picture as the vast majority of companies we approached provided their data. The MSG is grateful to all those companies that participated in the process this year. This report incorporates information collected up to 21 July 2021. Any information collected after this date has not been included in the report.