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</font>Hi all,<br>
<br>
Just a quick introduction - I'm from Berlin-based organisation
OpenOil, seeking better outcomes from the oil and gas industry for
the people of producing nations. Our current projects include
producing public domain reference guides to extractive industries in
nine countries – http//wiki.openoil.net – and research into energy
subsidies and cash dividend models of achieving transparency, as
well as more generally running workshops for energy journalists, in
the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.<br>
<br>
I thought our latest project might be of interest to those of you
working with media or civil society in Africa and Latin America,
especially countries where oil issues are incredibly important but
where there is very little available information for the non-expert.
7 jurisdictions around the world have now published their oil
contracts, but we have found that there is generally very low
understanding of these crucial but complicated documents, which
determine how a country's oil industry will be governed for years
after the actual contract signing. These issues are of particular
importance in countries where contract disputes have lead to serious
economic disruptions, such as Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and
Iraq, to name just a few. <br>
<br>
To help solve this problem, we brought together a group of 10
experts from around the world to collaboratively author a book on
how to understand these contracts (a booksprint, in partnership with
Sourcefabric), written in a light hearted and easy to understand
way, complete with illustrations! The book has now been released
under the Creative Commons License and is available for download
from our site, <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://openoil.net">http://openoil.net</a> <br>
<br>
As you'll see below, we're looking to develop a training curriculum
from the book and run courses for activists and journalists- if this
is something your organisation would be interested in working with
us on, please let me know.<br>
<br>
Thanks! <br>
<br>
Zara<br>
<br>
------<br>
<br>
<div> We are proud to announce that the first book about oil
contracts for non-experts, "Oil Contracts - How to Read and
Understand them" - is out now!<br>
<br>
</div>
<div> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"
href="http://openoil.net/contracts-booksprint"><b>Download the
pdf here</b></a><br>
<br>
</div>
<div> It was written in a five-day booksprint by a group of
corporate lawyers, government negotiators and development
specialists.</div>
<div> Please excuse typing and formatting errors- they will be
corrected in coming weeks. For now though, we wanted to share with
you our first version of this living document.</div>
<div> What now? We are looking for organisations or people who want
to work with us to take this forward. This includes:</div>
<ul>
<li> Translation - Arabic, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish
ideally.</li>
<li> Training courses- we would like to run low-cost, localised
training courses with the book as a basis. The first step for
this is building a training curriculum, for which we are looking
for funding.</li>
<li> Country-specific books - would you like to see a book focused
on your country's oil contracts? We can take material from this
first, generic book and then build it out to be specifically
based on the contracts available from one country or specific
region.</li>
<li> Joining forces with contract monitoring or contract
transparency movements- how would you like to see the book used?</li>
</ul>
<div> Your comments on the book are most welcome. As you'll notice
when you read it, different people's voices can be heard in the
book, each chapter of which was written and rewritten multiple
times to produce this rich body of material.</div>
<div> We hope you enjoy it!!<br>
<br>
</div>
<div> Very best,<br>
<br>
</div>
<div> Zara</div>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Zara Rahman
Research Associate
OpenOil
Mobile: +49 163 170 6782
Skype: zara.rahman
Twitter: @Open_Oil
Imagine an Open Oil Industry -- <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://openoil.net">http://openoil.net</a>
Download free now - "Oil Contracts - How to Read and Understand them" from <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://openoil.net/contracts-booksprint">http://openoil.net/contracts-booksprint</a></pre>
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