The quantity and quality of environmental disclosure in annual reports of national oil and gas companies in Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

The increased activities of oil companies around the world have contributed to increasing environmental concern over the past few years. The international oil corporations have a significant role in shaping global politics and economics. Therefore, there has been a global trend to increase environmental awareness in the international companies, especially oil companies in order to better manage natural resources and reduce environmental pollution as a result of the exploitation of natural resources. Arab oil exporting countries are not immune from the global calls for the protection of the environment and especially the Arab countries’ rich oil and gas resources. This study seeks to examine the quantity and quality of environmental disclosure in the oil companies in the Arab oil exporters. 174 annual reports of 58 national companies were surveyed for the years 2008, 2009, and 2010. Content analysis was applied in this study in order to study the environmental disclosure. The word count was used to measure the amount of environmental disclosure in the annual reports whereas environmental disclosure index was used to measure the quality of disclosure in the oil companies. Results of the study indicate differences in environmental disclosure between the countries of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, but overall, environmental disclosure in the Arab oil countries is still low compared with other oil companies in developed countries.