Senator Fischer Helped ExxonMobil Block Transparency on Payments to Foreign Governments

Senator Deb Fischer is more than happy to do the bidding of the oil and gas lobby. Over her career, the oil and gas industry has poured $529,917 of campaign donations into Fischer’s campaign war chest. ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies, has pumped $16,413 into Fischer’s campaigns between 2012-2024 according to www.opensecrets.org.

One issue that ExxonMobil pushed hard on was a February 2017 vote to repeal a regulation requiring disclosures for the payments that energy companies make to foreign governments. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) foreign payments rule was mandated by a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and was meant to reduce corruption in resource-rich countries by detailing the royalties and other payments that oil, natural gas, coal and mineral companies make to governments.

Fischer joined every other Republican in voting to repeal the regulation, which passed on a party line vote of 52Y to 47N. Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, framed the resolution as a vote for corruption.“The rule they’re trying to repeal protects US. citizens and investors from having millions of their dollars vanished into the pockets of corrupt foreign oligarchs,” he said on the floor. “This kind of transparency is essential to combating waste, fraud, corruption and mismanagement.”

The oil industry has made it a priority to lobby against the SEC rule. Exxon Mobil Corp., (whose former CEO, Rex Tiller son, was confirmed the same week as the Senate vote as secretary of State), was one of the most outspoken opponents, owing in part to its business operations in scores of countries around the world. Anti-corruption advocates slammed the move by Congress. “Voting to roll-back basic transparency rules provides zero benefit for the public but will instead allow corrupt elites to continue to stuff their pockets with oil money and steal from their citizens,” Isabel Munilla, senior policy adviser for extractive industries at Oxfam America told The Hill.