US District Court Vacates SEC Resource Extraction Payment
Disclosure Rules   On July 2, 2013 the US District Court for the
District of Columbia granted a motion for summary judgment
vacating the rules adopted by the US Securities and Exchange
Commission (the “SEC”) requiring resource extraction issuers to
disclose payments made to governments in connection with the
commercial development of oil, natural gas and minerals. The SEC
has not revealed how it will respond to the ruling, but it
remains obligated under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”) to promulgate
rules requiring disclosure of such payments. In a separate,
parallel case, a similar challenge has been brought against the
SEC’s conflict mineral disclosure rules, and a ruling in that
case is expected shortly. Despite these events, companies
subject to the SEC’s resource extraction and conflict mineral
rules should not assume the rules will be revised significantly,
but should continue to collect and doc