The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) recently adopted a final rule pursuant to Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”) requiring resource extraction issuers (companies engaged in the development of oil, natural gas, or minerals) to disclose in an annual report information relating to any payment made by the issuer, a subsidiary of the issuer, or an entity under the control of the issuer, to a foreign government or the U.S. government for the purpose of the commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals. Section 1504 added Section 13(q) to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”), which requires the SEC to promulgate rules requiring disclosure to be made by resource extraction issuers annually by filing a Form SD with the SEC. 

Bob Tannous, Editor of  the Federal Securities Law blog, has a post focused on the rule; as this may be of interest to many in the industry, we wanted to share it with you.