When fighting broke out in Libya in late February, institutional investors within the Conflict Risk Network (CRN) mobilized to engage with oil companies that had operations in Libya, seeking to persuade them to halt all payments to Muammar Qaddafi’s violent regime. Such funds could be used to support the government’s violence against civilians, the group argued. But recently, the CRN has shifted its focus to Libya’s opposition government, the Interim Transitional National Council (ITNC).
In late February and early March, the CRN, a coalition of nearly 100 institutional investors, among them the New York State Common Retirement Fund, CalSTRS and Calvert Asset Management, reached out to 23 companies in the oil sector, including Exxon, ConocoPhillips and BP, to ask about their Libya-related operations. About two-thirds of the firms responded and stopped their oil exports.
Since then, a series of sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United Nations and the United States have banned all business transactions with entities controlled by Qaddafi, thereby making a legal obligation what the CRN had asked companies to do voluntarily.
But today, the CRN issued a new request from its network of investors – this one aimed at the ITNC.
The new call is one for transparency. Reports last week indicated that opposition forces had begun exporting crude oil from areas under their control, and the CRN – in an appeal that echoed one that came from Human Rights Watch last week – stresses that in order to signal a break from Qaddafi’s traditional opacity and to ensure that oil funds aren’t being used to fuel corruption or further human rights abuses, internationally accepted standards of transparency must be followed in all of its oil transactions.
As part of its vision for a post-Quaddafi government, the ITNC has reportedly vowed to ensure that Libya’s extensive oil wealth will be used “for the benefit of the Libyan people.” Groups like Human Rights Watch and the investors within the CRN cheer that goal, and encourage the ITNC to be transparent in the pursuit of it.
