silent vs. shadow reports: what can we learn from bp's sustainability report versus the...
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Silent vs. Shadow Reports: What can we learn from BP’s Sustainability Report versus the Financial Times? Lorraine Ruffing1 Editor’s Note: This piece is a response to discussion about (a) how we might start to generate a new yet rigorous literature and (b) the different ways in which silent/shadow accounts might be produced (and produced in simpler ways). This piece adopts a more polemical style and it is not as precisely referenced as would typically be the case in an academic journal. The author is not only a long‐standing Fellow of CSEAR but is of international renown in the field. The paper is offered as a stimulant and experiment. The views expressed are explicitly those of the author.
Introduction
ccording to the Corporate Register over 3500 companies now produce stand‐alone corporate social
responsibility (CSR) or sustainability reports ‐ up from three in 19902. The area of CSR or
1 Lorraine Ruffing is the former Head of Enterprise Development at the UN Conference on Trade and Development. She now consults on corporate governance. 2 www.corporateregister.com accessed on 12 February 2007.
sustainability reporting, while it has spread rapidly, has a long way to go before it meets the needs of users for materiality, consistency, completeness and responsiveness. Although CSR indicators have been under development for the last 15 years and many recognize the necessity for harmonizing a set of core CSR indicators for monitoring and comparing performance within and across companies, there is still no universally accepted guideline on which indicators should form the basis of every corporate report. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is probably the most ambitious and well‐funded exercise and offers a wide range of CSR indicators. But this allows companies to pick and chose, thus weakening performance measurement and comparisons. While company CSR reports have become very polished, the relevancy of the information is often questionable so that PR puff still abounds after 15 years of work.
UNEP/Sustainability research, for example, concludes that other than for the very best firms, the quality of the reports has risen little3. Since many of the reports look good, the companies tend to look good. The paradox is that they can have a poor environmental and social performance and still win awards for reporting ‐ or at least be short‐listed for one. Managers appear to be more interested in image than in constantly improving performance via measurement and disclosure. And, it would seem, little is still known about how companies and their shareholders actually use the reports and their indicators4.
3 See also a report in Accountancy January 2007 (pp52‐52) and the ACCA Reporting Awards Judges Report 2004, 2005 and 2006. 4 Apart, that is, from the inferences that might be drawn from the market‐based studies and the more specific data derived from, for example, the field work around SRI information use.
A
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Empirical research might be typified as showing that good CSR reports do not necessarily raise share prices but bad news frequently does lower share prices (example, after BP’s Texas City oil refinery blast, stock underperformed the world oil and gas sector by 10.7% (See the Financial Times 06/10/06)5. Evidently, investors know that CSR reporting is still biased toward the good news and is short on the bad. In evaluating a company’s sustainability report one has several options. A company’s report’s content can be compared over time to a CSR guideline for consistency, completeness and responsiveness. Or the reports can be compared to `shadow’ reports, that is, to information and facts about the company that appear in the press and elsewhere. Case study of BP’s Sustainability Report6 vs. Financial Times7 (Shadow Report) The fact that extractive companies historically have had bigger environmental and social footprints and they often work with governments apparently uninterested in environmental protection or social justice could have an impact on the corporate culture and management of these companies. Companies that regularly make the news in terms of such problems include Shell (Nigeria), BP (America) and Newmont Mining (Peru) to name a few. Most of the large oil companies have similar problems but not all of them produce award‐winning
5 FT hereafter – most references are drawn from the FT archives and, where not referenced specifically, an FT reference can normally be assumed. 6 BP, Making Energy More, Sustainability Report 2005, Beacon Press. 7 Financial Times 2005‐2006 various issues.
reports. Two of the companies mentioned above have professed to be committed to environmental and social protection and have won awards or been short‐listed for them. What can a case study of the quality and completeness of BP’s sustainability report for 2005 tell us about the ability of sustainability reporting to alert stakeholders to any problems which might underlie financial performance? First, how did BP’s reporting compare with the usual templates (Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), UN Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting etc)? Second, even if BP complied with the GRI template was that sufficient to understand what was really happening? Is the template/ guideline deficient or did management succeed in making a more `flexible’ interpretation of requirements and thereby perhaps succeed in avoiding reporting on certain aspects of CSR? It is instructive that BP is still in denial mode about its recent environmental and social shortcomings. It describes them as `isolated’ incidents rather than fundamental flaws in corporate culture and management. It appears that one has to rely on the Financial Times `shadow’ reporting to counter balance BP’s sustainability report in order to see these management gaps. Thirdly, can we identify what CSR indicators could have alerted shareholders and stakeholders to the fact that the management of BP were experiencing (even encouraging perhaps) more fundamental problems? BP is a good choice for a case study. The company was rated number one in 2005 among the Fortune Global 100 companies by AccountAbility for its CSR communications. It was short‐listed for the ACCA Award for
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Sustainable Reporting in 2005. SustainAbility rated it number three in its 2004 Global Reporters Survey. BP has also analyzed the GRI framework in its sustainability report and the company identifies the indicators for which it has group data, for which it has some data and for which it has no data. Therefore, one can begin to learn what has been left out and, more importantly, which elements of the GRI framework have been employed. Thus one should be able to go directly to BP’s five year performance group indicators to tell if they were relevant and sufficient.
The Shadow Report by the Financial Times The information in this section comes almost exclusively from the Financial Times in order to have consistent information albeit with a pro‐business tinge. Facts are distinguished from opinions. During 2005‐2006 BP America was implicated in: the Texas City oil refinery blast; the Alaskan oil pipeline spill; alleged misrepresentations in the sale of its chemical plant in Flint Hills, Ill.; listing oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico; and alleged price‐fixing on the propane, oil and gas markets. Yet BP is respected as a leading‐edge exponent of corporate responsibility. Since BP America accounts for 38% of BP’s total market capitalization, a third of its workers, and a third of its sales, problems at this location cannot easily be accepted as `isolated’ but rather have to be considered endemic to the corporate culture and management. Interestingly, BP global insists that `normal’ management practices were followed in Alaska. If so, the results were
disastrous. A chronology of events is included in Figure 1 These FT clippings could lead one to infer that these events have common elements: a pervasive lack of management oversight and risk awareness plus an imperfect global corporate culture. BP was failing to invest in maintenance and upgrading while threatening whistleblowers, who tried to inform company executives of their safety concerns, as well as allegedly falsifying environmental inspection data. BP has also inherited a number of problems through its acquisitions of American companies which negotiated substandard contracts with indigenous peoples. Perhaps this is a case in which due diligence did not alert BP America to its possible liabilities or perhaps it just assumed that indigenous claims were irrelevant. While BP’s new motto is `Beyond Petroleum’, BP America was not beyond oil spills, refinery blasts and possibly falsifying data and price fixing Oil experts interviewed by the FT opined that while BP set the tone at the top for safety and environmental protection, it failed in implementation. A gap has clearly emerged between the corporate centre which established the business principles and the local management. BP admits it failed to integrate fully its different safety systems. Plants still use a range of procedures entrenched by local custom and practice. Plus, the dominant BP culture is that of cost‐cutting; thus too many corners were cut on maintenance and safety. Hence BP’s under‐ investment during the period of falling prices during the 1980’s and 1990’s. But yet, BP senior executives steadfastly maintain that recent events in the US are unconnected.
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Figure 1: Financial Times Chronology: BP America
Alaska • 1999 ability of staff to respond to critical events hampered by workloads; BP ordered the injured back to work to keep number of days‐away‐from‐work cases to a minimum (FT 17/04/06)
• 2000 pleaded guilty to illegal disposal of hazardous waste (FT 17/04/06)
• 2002 high number of safety accidents; staff complained before Congress (FT 08/08/06)
• 2004 Staff representatives reported that employees wanted to see corrosion problems addressed; BP response: hunted for the whistleblowers (FT 09/08/06)
• 2005 Staff representatives notify EPA of problems with corrosion control operations (FT 17/04/06)
• 2005 BP removes the head of corrosion monitoring unit for intimidating workers (FT 08/09/06)
• 2006‐March:270,000 gallon oil spill; staff said it was not an isolated incident; due to lack of maintenance and focus on cost‐cutting and short term profits (FT 17/04/06); BP had not used high‐tech maintenance and corrosion‐testing procedures on some pipelines in 14 years (FT 27/04/06)
• 2006‐April BP reported to US authorities it couldn’t do corrosion tests on time due to sludge in the pipes (FT 27/04/06)
• 2006 August BP shuts down entire Prudhoe Bay oil field for a week due to `unexpected severe corrosion’ in pipelines after corrosion tests were completed. It said the model it was using to gauge corrosion was flawed. Reopened the western part of field once further testing proved it was safe. BP estimated that repairs would cost about $90 million (FT 08/08/06, 09/08/06, 10/08/06).
• Whistleblowers reported that 50 of its wells were leaking; BP admitted problems at 57 wells and closed down 37 (FT 19/07/06).
• 2006 August employees allege that BP manipulated inspection data to avoid replacing pipelines (FT 21/08/06)
Gulf of Mexico • 2005 Thunder Horse oil platform, (the world’s largest) lists due to construction defects and failures with hydraulic control system: ballast water moves into and within the lower hull causing flooding (Sustainability Report); delayed operations from 2005 to 2008 causing a jump in oil
prices and momentary increase in an otherwise downward trend of BP share prices (FT 19/09/06)
Texas Oil Refinery • 1975‐2005 one death every 18 months (FT 17/04/06)
• 2005 Telos audit revealed safety problems and predicts more deaths. BP decided against installing modern process control equipment that could have prevented the accident (FT 17/04/06). Alleged that BP wrongly told state regulators that it had installed the equipment (FT 18/09/06).
• 2005 March 15 deaths; 170 injured; plant shut for $1 billion in repairs. Further fires and leaks in July/August. Government requests BP appoint a panel to investigate its `safety systems and culture’. Government found 300 violations and fined BP $21 million (FT 20/10/06).
• 2006 October US Chemical Safety Board said BP knew it had significant safety problems at the refinery and cost‐cutting had compromised safety (FT 31/10/06).
California • 2005 Carson Refinery fined $31 million for alleged air quality violations
• 2006 September Long Beach gas oil leak of 1000 barrels (FT 19/09/06)
Ohio • 2006 BP cited for unsafe operations in refinery and fined $2.4 million (FT 20/10/06)
Illinois • 2006 BP is sued for 50 misrepresentations concerning environmental compliance, mechanical integrity, and production capacity in the sale of the Flint Hills chemical plant (FT 24/08/06)
New Mexico • 2006 BP American Production Company vs. Burton, 05‐669), BP allegedly significantly under estimated the market value of gas thus under paying royalties to the Jicarilla Apache nations & the US Government (www.indianz.com)
Propane, oil and gas markets • 2006 US authorities charge BP with price‐fixing in 2003‐04. BP has been ordered not to shred any documents relevant to the charges (FT 20/09/06, 30/06/06).
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Questions This situation raises inter alia the following questions:
1. Was this the behavior of a rogue affiliate or symptomatic of BP’s structure and operational strategy?
2. If this behavior was not sanctioned by headquarters, was BP effectively communicating its strategy and values to all its executives?
3. If communication was sufficient, were there incentives to comply and the penalties for non‐compliance?
4. Was BP’s global structure and strategy defective like its corrosion model?
5. Is this evidence of a company providing rhetoric but little substance on environmental and social concerns in order to improve the bottom line? Is there really a triple bottom line mentality at BP?
6. Did a selective use of CSR indicators allow BP to emphasize the good news? What changes are needed in CSR reporting to tell the balanced story? Do we need more work on developing the core indicators that can measure performance, good and bad?
7. Should we stop giving awards for reporting and give them for actual performance?
Again industry experts are of the opinion that BP’s organizational structure is too decentralized in terms of its business units (3), functions (22) and regions (4). Thus, they say Lord Browne will have to change not just the safety system but the entire organizational structure.
Analysis of BP’s Sustainability Report (2005) and Website8 In the foreword to its sustainability report, BP says that its mission is to satisfy human needs, generate profits and satisfy the need for sustainable development. Immediately, one can see the conflict in its goals: particularly between satisfying current human needs which are insatiable and securing a sustainable future. Economists and companies alike assume few natural limits to economic or company growth. Until natural resource use and waste disposal are priced into products, companies will continue to practice `limitless’ growth and individuals `limitless’ consumerism. BP says that the purpose of BP is business and to maximize long‐term shareholder value by selling goods and services. (Ignoring here the `stakeholders’ who are negatively impacted by BP’s `business’). The current model of capitalism emphasizes short term gains and shareholder value and ignores the destruction of natural capital. This business model makes it difficult for BP to put sustainability at `the heart of its business’. Nevertheless, BP says that it is trying to transcend the environmental tradeoff. While BP is a leader among oil companies in issues such as global warming, is it enough for BP to cut CO2 emissions and invest in renewable energy? Sustainable development probably requires ending government oil subsidies and paying the full costs of fossil fuel extraction and energy production. One important issue is the question of the amount of energy recovered compared to energy expended during energy production.
8 www.bp.com/sustainability reporting; www.usresponse.bp.com (visited 05/09/06)
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By 1985 the ratio had dropped to 2:1 and is still dropping. Already, I am led to believe, in some situations energy in oil found is not equal to total energy expended. In examining the report’s quantitative content vs. the rhetoric the amount of economic, environmental and social information provided by BP is truly impressive and goes well‐beyond silent reporting since it partially follows GRI guidelines. However, did the collection of this information and its release allow BP to manage the environmental and social risks inherent in its operations? While there is plenty of information, much of the report is qualitative and narrative and the group metrics do not give us a sense of BP’s performance relative to industry averages or how it improved over time relative to financial performance. The concept of eco‐efficiency is notably absent except for some of the emissions data which are normalized by energy production. The five year performance data consists of:‐
• Financial and operating • Safety and operational integrity • Environmental • Employees • Contribution to communities
In comparing BP’s reporting to the GRI guidelines, the bulk of the GRI indicators on which BP can report are on policies and processes (33 out of 64). Information on the remaining GRI indicators (31 indicators) is collected on a local level but not aggregated for the group. BP reported on six out of 26 environmental indicators and on eight out of 24 social indicators. Putting aside the question of GRI compliance, let’s look at the 2005 sustainability report to see if the group indicators reported, whether or not
advocated by GRI, can explain the risk management failings described by the FT. A. Safety Indicators Group Level, 5 year Performance Data 1. Fatalities; BP reports that one worker died
along with 26 contract workers giving them 27 work‐related fatalities for the year but if one adds in the bystanders (23) the total comes to 50. Total fatalities (50) is a more complete and accurate number than fatalities in the workforce (23). The latter indicator intentionally or unintentionally narrows the impact of BP’s footprint.
2. Days away from work due to injuries per 200,000 hours worked rose from 230 in 2004 to 305 in 2005. Recordable injuries declined in 2005 from 1513 to 1471 (although a change in the reporting methodology may be a factor). In the case of the Texas City refinery half the workforce was injured according to the Financial Times. BP reports that besides the fatalities, `many more’ were injured. How many, 100? 500? Are they contained in the 1471 injuries?
3. Oil spills: BP reports that 2005 was a good year in that the overall number of spills decreased to 541 as did the volume. However, the volume of spills upstream increased four times despite 100,000 inspections on the North Slope, 225 corrosion experts, and 370 `open talk’ cases (some of them on compliance with health and safety)9. There is no indication that BP increased its scrutiny of upstream operations. Then in March 2006 a real disaster hit with the Alaskan pipeline spill. BP admits that it didn’t `run pigs’ to clean and/or inspect the affected pipeline. This evidently contributed to the severe internal corrosion and even interfered with BP’s own ultrasonic testing after the spill.
9 usresponse.bp.com and Sustainability Report 2005
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B. Environmental Performance Data BP reports on six out of 26 GRI environmental indicators. The most comprehensive data are the emissions data. This is possibly because there has been relatively more work in this area than in others. The environmental data are quantitative as opposed to qualitative. They do measure changes over time and some are standardized per unit of production. But the use of value added might have been preferable so as to get a better idea of the eco‐efficiency of their operations. Some of the indicators such as CO2 emissions show absolute improvements but these improvements were due to shutdowns and disposal of business entities as well as efficiency. Other indicators show a deterioration for example, the disposal of hazardous waste increased 49 percent. 4. Environmental fines increased from
$4.8m to $56 million but there is incomplete information on the number of violations. BP said it paid the fines for the alleged violations without admitting guilt.
C. Employee Data Most relevant to BP America’s current problems are the `open talk’ cases. Open talk invites anyone at BP to raise confidentially any concerns or enquiries about compliance, ethics or the code of conduct. It is operated 24 hours a day by an independent third party. 5. Total Open talk cases increased from
343 in 2004 to 634 in 2005 that is, they almost doubled. BP says this was due to the introduction of a code of conduct. In North America, open talk cases increased by 58%.
The growing number of open talk cases and the fact that Alaska and Texas employees’ concerns about safety were apparently not given sufficient weight may indicate a less than healthy labour environment. BP has subsequently appointed an independent ombudsman to look into their concerns over safety and environmental problems. The narrative in the sustainability report leads one to believe that the fatalities, days away from work and spills seem to be under control since progress is being made even for the `isolated’ incident in Texas City. BP assures the readers that it has programmes in place to do better. However, if fines and employee complaints were increasing one might be tempted to infer that there must have been something very wrong with the environmental and safety systems and culture in BP America. D. Other Social PerformanceIindicators Relevant quantitative social performance indicators are largely absent. Eight GRI social indicators out of a possible 24 are reported for the group. There is no complete information on:‐ • the percentage of contract workers, • the percentage of workers covered by
unions, • amount of training given to workers (all
types), • human rights violations/ discrimination
(complaints/court cases), • positive and negative impacts on local
communities including revenues shared.
Concerning the last category, BP gives figures for `community investment’ by region. What we see in 2005 is a shift from investment in developing countries to investment in the US and the UK. In the US, BP provided assistance after Hurricane Katrina and in the UK it established a new chair of economics at Oxford. Is this all at the expense of developing countries’ communities?
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Conclusions It appears that BP was collecting a number of relevant safety and environmental indicators that might have shown the stakeholders, if broken down by region, a problem with the American operations. But we do not know what use global managers made of this information or if it was brought to the attention of shareholders. We might choose to infer that the shareholders were pacified with a 26 percent increase in the 2005 dividends per share. More importantly ‐ what indicators would have given a more accurate reading of environmental and social performance? Several recommendations come to mind. First, more emphasis needs to be put on quantitative CSR indicators as opposed to qualitative ones (policies and processes). The quantitative indicators need to be normalized in some way and compared to industry averages. Second, BP needs to provide more explanation when the indicators do show a deterioration. If methodologies change, they need to present a comparison of the data under the old system as well as the new during the transition year. Third, there is a need for the international CSR community to cull the indicators offered in frameworks like GRI (95 indicators) so that BP and others always report on a core set and introduce some consistency and significance to the reporting. If sustainability reporting continues to remain largely a public relations exercise, then selected environmental and social information need to be required as part of the annual report
(as has happened in a number of countries already). Fourth, management needs to start using the information in the reports. This is probably the most important finding in this case study. No matter how good BP’s report, what difference did it make? Was the report just advertising if it wasn’t used by managers, the board (particularly the committee on environmental assurance) and shareholders? Fifth, BP’s conflicting goals: satisfying human needs as opposed to sustainable development points to a need for BP to engage the public in a more frank analysis of the risks, the full costs and the sustainability of its operations. If these reports merely describe continuous improvements without explaining the real environmental and social costs of its operations, then the stakeholders ‐ especially customers and governments ‐ will not find these reports much use in changing behaviour and policies. Lastly, BP’s current problems seem to point to gaps in subsidiary governance. Most transnational corporations that are committed to CSR struggle with translating the vision at headquarters into a working reality for their subsidiaries. In a recent IMD survey, 93 percent of the executives surveyed said that managing subsidiaries means trusting the local management. Did BP managers look closely enough at the American data? Or did Lord Browne put too much trust in BP America? Were the American and UK corporate cultures just different enough that it was impossible to have a `group‐wide’ culture which is usually the backbone of subsidiary governance? Many believe that subsidiary governance is corporate governance. Clearly, BP America is a case of failed CSR and subsidiary governance. BP’s sustainability report was silent on this point but it was all too clear in the Financial Times shadow report.