Ireland

Although Ireland is not a resource rich country, some oil has been discovered off the coast. According to Providence Resources, the Barryroe site (30 miles off the Cork coast) should yield 280m barrels of oil. Extractive companies listed on the Irish Stock Exchange include Tullow Oil, Dragon Oil and Ovoca Gold. Currently headquartered in London, Tullow Oil is an Irish company founded in 1985 in the town of Tullow, to work on gas exploration in Senegal. Tullow Oil’s presence in Africa has become increasingly important over the past few years.  Notably, Tullow oil has been active in recently oil-producing Uganda and Ghana : exploring the Lake Albert basin in the former and have purchased operating the Jubilee Field in Ghana. Ireland have the EU Presidency for the first half of 2013, and it is hoped that the European Accounting and Transparency directives (which contain amendments for extractive transparency) will be finalised under their mandate.

Sources: BBC; Irish Stock Exchange; Tullow Oil