Title:
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Transparency in the petroleum sector : provisions, perceptions and practices
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The petroleum industry is generally regarded as one of the most secretive sectors and
Bangladesh's petroleum sector is no exception. In this thesis I examine how transparency,
supposedly an opposite notion to secrecy, works in Bangladesh's petroleum sector. Of the
many possible aspects of transparency, the study mainly focuses on its information flowfacilitating
and accountability-enhancing aspects, and on two benchmarks of transparency,
namely, access to information and public participation in the decision-making process.
Examination of field data through the lens of these two benchmarks leads to the finding that
within a legal framework, both transparency-promoting and transparency-inhibiting modes of
approaches can coexist; it is actually the actors whose actions determine the overall
transparency outcome in this sector with the actors preferring one mode over the other. It is
also found that factors such as perceptions, attitudes, cultures and even prejudices of the actors
involved in the sector can influence the actions of the actors when they apply rules and
procedures in the petroleum sector on a day-to-day basis. Depending on such influence the
actors' actions or the positions they adopt may either impede or promote transparency in
practice. However, it has also been found that while the petroleum industry's approach to
transparency may not be on a par with the benchmarks of transparency that this research set
out to explore, the industry indeed has its own kind of transparency occasions. The research
examines each of these occasions, exploring their meeting and departing points with the
transparency benchmarks, and looks for answers and explanations. The findings, therefore,
may help develop a nuanced understanding of the workings of the petroleum sector generally,"
and its interplay with transparency particularly.
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