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Featured speakers
- Patrick Heller, advisor, NRGI
- Daniel Kaufmann, president and CEO, NRGI
- Mark Robinson, executive director, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
- Zainab Usman, social development specialist, World Bank


At this event, the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) launched the world’s largest open public database on national oil companies, www.nationaloilcompanydata.org. Guests and online viewers were the first to see a presentation of the database and associated analysis, which provides new insights into these critically important companies.

National oil companies are massively influential, producing the majority of the world’s oil and generating trillions of dollars in revenue every year. And as shown by recent headlines from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Ghana, decisions about how to manage these companies can have major impacts on the health of national economies and the wellbeing of citizens. But in spite of their importance, they have traditionally been poorly understood, in large part because a lack of consistent and open data. This has impeded accountability.

NRGI has addressed this problem by assembling the National Oil Company Database, which features more than 70,000 data points on more than 70 NOCs worldwide. The database provides detailed information on the production, revenues, expenditures, balance sheets, tax payments and performance of NOCs, and facilitates comparison over time and across companies to support governance and strategy-making.

The global launch featured a presentation of the database and two associated reports, as well as commentary from global experts on NOCs, transparency and governance.