Shortly before Christmas, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed to adopt Rule 13q-1 and an amendment to Form SD to implement Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act relating to disclosure of payments by resource extraction issuers. This is the SEC's third attempt to fulfill this requirement. In 2013, a U.S. District Court vacated the SEC's rules. American Petroleum Institute v. SEC, 953 F. Supp. 2d 5 (D. D.C. 2013). In 2017, the U.S. Congress disapproved of the revised rules pursuant to the Congressional Review Act. See Can Congress Veto A Rule Adopted By The SEC?; There's Still Time For Congress To Void The SEC's Resource Extraction Rule; and Will Congress Deep Six The SEC's Resource Extraction Rule?
Amazingly, Congress had ordered the SEC to adopt a resource extraction rule more than eight years ago - by April 17, 2011. After the SEC missed this deadline by over a year, Oxfam America filed suit to force the SEC to comply. See Waiting for the SEC . . . and Supreme Court Fails To Bite At Bulldog And Oxfam America Sues The SEC. Eventually, the SEC adopted its initial, but not so final, resource extraction rules on August 22, 2012 - only 600 days late!
