Report Says Reforms Were Hard to Drill Home at Petrol Authority

The Cambodian National Petroleum Authority restricted vital information and failed to cooperate with consultants working for the Asian Development Bank who were deployed to the authority between 2007 and 2010 as part of a $1 million project to strengthen governance at the body, a new ADB report says. In a project appraisal released this week, the ADB outlined serious difficulties in implementing the project, which was requested by the government after an announcement in 2005 from Chevron Corp that it had discovered oil in Cambodian waters in the Gulf of Thailand. The authority is currently working on a draft petroleum law, which is designed to regulate how the government collects revenues from companies in the oil and gas sector.