ABSTRACT
Environmental transparency became a necessary condition for managing relationships with stakeholders and attracting investments for extractive industries. The changing competitive environment and stakeholder demands are pushing oil and gas companies from various countries to disclose additional information on environmental management and environmental impact. Nevertheless, the level of environmental transparency of oil and gas companies still differs. Our study aims to assess the transparency of the world’s largest oil and gas companies in terms of the availability of environmental data. We build this research on our successful experiences in the national environmental transparency ratings for Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. Our sample includes 32 oil and gas companies, global leaders in terms of daily production of liquid hydrocarbons (oil and gas condensate). When assessing environmental transparency, we take into account only information published on corporate websites, in non-financial reporting, and other accessible public resources. Our analysis shows some regional patterns in the distribution of companies: high transparency is most typical for European, American, and Russian companies, while companies from Asia and Africa tend to be less transparent from the environmental point of view.
