On December 18, 2019, a divided SEC issued a new proposed rule
on the disclosure of resource extraction payments.
The proposal comes almost three years after a 2016 iteration of
the rule was disapproved by a joint resolution of Congress, six
years after a federal court vacated the 2012 iteration of the rule
and nine years after the Dodd-Frank Act first required the SEC to
adopt the rule.
The SEC was faced with the daunting task of crafting a new
proposal that manages to meet the detailed directive in the
underlying statute, comply with the Congressional Review Act
prohibition on reissuing the 2016 rule in substantially the same
form and address the issues that had caused the court to vacate the
2012 rule. As a result, the new proposed rule is similar in many
ways to both prior iterations, but there are some important
differences, most of which are favorable to affected companies as
they expand available exemptions and attempt to both reduce the
risk of competitive
