The Quantity and Quality of Environmental Disclosure in Annual Reports of National Oil and Gas Companies in Middle East and North Africa

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.


Introduction
Petroleum industry has become the main industry in many economies of countries over the world.However, environment surroundings of the petroleum industry have become threatened by oil pollution.The Land or marine environment faces many the environmental risks as a result oil pollution from petroleum industry.In recent decades, the oil industry has developing included all oil operations in land or seas and oceans alike.Pulsipher et al. (2001) state that there are at least 6,500 oil platforms located in the Gulf of Mexico.In addition, many oil tankers roam the seas and oceans.On the other hand, there are many oil pipelines buried in the ground for the transfer of points and its derivatives.Moreover, the refineries are spread along the coast of many countries, especially in the oil producing countries.All this contributed to the increase in environmental risk as a result of oil incidents which cause environmental Catastrophes.For example, the oil spill resulting from the explosion in one of the oil platforms owned by BP, leading to leakage of large quantities of crude oil caused oil pollution of the marine environment in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, as well as the oil spill incident in the oil tanker Exxon in 1989.In addition, the oil spill occurred in the Arab Gulf during the Gulf War II.
The occurrence of environmental incidents as a result of activities of companies, including oil companies, have contributed to the increase of environmental awareness in many countries over the world, especially developed countries.In this context, much legislation has been enacted in many developed countries in order to protect the environment.Additionally, environmental organizations have played a significant role in Protection of the environment in many developed countries through the exercise of pressures on firms in order to limit corporations' activities affecting the environment.Moreover, the companies themselves have contributed to the increase of environmental awareness through increased disclosure of environmental information in annual reports.(Kamal) found that the amount of environmental disclosure has increased in the oil companies after the oil tanker Exxon incident.However, over the past years, attention on the environmental disclosure has been confined to the companies of developed countries such as the USA, the UK, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the countries of the European Union, while the developing countries suffer from environmental disclosure practices in corporations.
Countries in the Arab region are still suffering from few research studies in the field of accounting studies, especially studies addressing environmental disclosure in companies.Although the Arab countries have oil wealth and control approximately 77% of global oil reserves, these countries are classified within developing countries.The oil wealth of many Arab countries contributed to the establishment of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1968, which includes in its membership Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Iraq.Therefore, this study seeks to examine the quantity and quality of environmental disclosure in domestic oil companies in OAPEC through examining the annual reports of companies for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Overview of Arab World
The Arab world contains 2 regions, divided into the continents of Asia and Africa.Arab countries in Asia are 12 namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain, UAE, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan, while 10 countries are located in Africa namely Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia and Comoros (Findly 2003).The area of Arab world is estimated at 14,291,469 km² whereas the population of Arab homeland is 338,621,469, according to estimates by 2007 (Agency 2009).The most important natural resources of the Arab world are oil and gas.Therefore, some oil countries established oil Organization named the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, namely Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait.In addition, the Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria, Qatar, UAE, Iraq and Kuwait are members of Organisation Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Petroleum Industry in Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
The lifeblood of the planet Earth is the energy which assists to expanding the global economy over the world.Since the discovery of oil, the main resource of energy over the world is oil and gas.Therefore, since few last decades, oil and gas industry has become global industry.The operations related to this industry are conducted in every corner of the globe, in addition to many other industries which depend on petroleum products.However, as a result of the conflict on acquisition of natural resources between developed countries and producing countries, international oil companies seek to acquire investment opportunities in oil countries.Nevertheless, it is worth noting that many national firms become have a greater role in the global oil industry especially in Oil-producing countries such as countries of the Middle East and North Africa (Findly 2003;Jahamani 2003).
In recent years, the world has been aware that oil is still the real source of energy in the world.According to (OPEC, 2011), the world has global proven reserves estimated at almost 1,193 billion barrels.The share of national oil companies of these reserves is estimated at 88.33%, while 18.67% of reserves are controlled by international corporations.For this reason, many national companies seek to re-evaluate their strategies in line with the evolution of the global oil industry in order to obtain advanced positions in the oil industry which was under the control of international companies for a long period of time.It should be noted, according to Oil and Gas Journal (2012), that among the 20 largest oil companies in the world there are 14 national companies, including 10 national companies owned by the governments of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.3).This increase in gas reserves has enabled some countries of the Arab world such as Qatar and Saudi to occupy an advanced position in the world regarding proven natural gas reserves where they are third and fourth respectively after Russia and Iran.In the beginning of the second decade of the third millennium, the Arab world has witnessed popular uprisings against power regimes.These popular uprisings represent a historic turning point in Arab region.Because the Arab world represents economic importance, these events have economic impact on the region first and on the whole world in a second phase (Ratner & Nerurkar 2011).These implications become clear on the oil markets.Jahamani (2003) studied annual reports of Jordanian firms and UAE firms in 1998.The finding indicated the existence of 9 and 11 companies only presenting environmental disclosures in annual reports out of 86 and 94 surveyed firms in Jordan and UAE respectively.In another study conducted in Qatar, Al-Khater and Naser (2003) examine different aspects of corporate social responsibility disclosure by perceptions of various user groups.They concluded that the inclusion of corporate social and environmental disclosure in annual reports would reflect social responsibility to the public as well as companies that seek to justify their existence within the society, by highlighting the social responsibility of the company in their reports.Thereby supporting the results of the low level of disclosure in companies in the developing world, including companies in the Arab region, the results of a study presented on environmental reporting in the UAE companies by Jahamani (2003) showed that only 12 percent of the companies in the UAE issued environmental reports.The results of the low level of disclosure in companies in the developing world include companies in the Arab region.In Libya, Ahmad (2004) provided study on environmental disclosure conducted in 18 companies from major industrial companies in Libya indicated that there was no evidence of environmental disclosure in annual reports of industrial companies in Libya.Kamla (2007) conducted study in nine of the Arab Middle East countries which examined the volume, quality and nature of social reporting practices in the annual reports of 68 companies from nine Arab Middle East countries.The finding indicated that only 10 companies, 15% of the sample, provided some form of environmental information.In addition, most disclosed information related to employee issues.In other study conducted in Egyptian context, Rizk et al. (2008) studied corporate social and environmental reporting practices of Egyptian corporate entities.Findings of the study indicate a significant variation regarding social and environmental disclosure practices in 60 companies operating in industrial segments.The researchers also mentioned that reviews of disclosure practices in different parts of the world are always welcome and are arguably somewhat limited in developing countries.
Furthermore, Hossain and Hammami (2009) and Naser et al. (2006) conducted studies in Qatar regarding environmental disclosure including companies listed in Doha Securities Market.These studies concluded that there are variations in corporate social disclosure in the sampled Qatari companies.It is also indicated that disclosure is associated with firm size measured by the firm's market capitalization, business risk measured by leverage and corporate growth.In addition, the findings indicate that age, size, complexity, and assets-in-place are significant and other variable (profitability) is insignificant in explaining the level of voluntary disclosure.
During 2010, study conducted by Elsayed and Hoque (2010) found that 55 firms out of 100 Egyptian corporations provided environmental information.In Saudi Arabia, Al-Gamrh (2010) concluded that the level of disclosure in the annual reports of 93 companies surveyed is very low.Results of the study refer to only one company which disclosed all items of disclosure (the study included 25 items of environmental and social disclosure) while there are 13 companies which did not record any disclosure items.In 2011, Al-Janadi et al. (2011) examined annual reports for the available financial years 2006 and 2007 in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.They prove that the level of voluntary disclosure is low with an average of approximately 36 per cent for the whole sample of companies.Voluntary disclosure was found to be lacking for most of the items of social and environmental information.In addition, the results of Ahmad and Mousa (2011) research confirmed the notion that a little improvement in corporate environmental disclosure occurred in Libya between 2001 and 2007 compared with a study conducted during 1998 and 2000.Furthermore, In Jordan, Islam (2011) examined the level of environmental disclosure in Jordanian firms using a sample of 60 companies in the manufacturing and service sectors.Results find that 85% of the companies disclose some social and environmental information.Islam (2011) commented on the results of his studies as improved as compared to other studies conducted on Jordanian companies such as (Al-Khadash 2003) which concluded that 26% of the companies covered in the study were known to release environmental information.As well the study of Jahamani (2003) who found that 10 percent of out of 86 Jordanian firms presented environmental reports as part of their annual reports in study which examined the extent, awareness and level of environmental responsibility of Jordanian companies.
Two studies were conducted in Tunisian context during 2011, Gana and Dakhlaoui (2011) concluded that the average disclosure score has slightly improved over the years of study.This finding was concluded from study conducted on 36 Tunisian firms over the period 2000 to 2005.Belhaj and Damak-Ayadi (2011) examined environmental disclosure in 31 Tunisian firms and related it to financial performance and environmental performance in 2007.The findings indicated that the mean disclosure score is 9.77 and firms from industries with higher sensitivity to the environment tend to provide more environmental disclosure than firms from less environmentally sensitive industries.It is worth noting that out of 500 largest Tunisian firms; only 53 have published environmental information in their annual reports or in their websites (Belhaj & Damak-Ayadi 2011).
During 2012, it has been witnessed some attempts of some researchers in order to add some studies dealing with environmental issues.For example, Ismail and Ibrahim (2012) found that 85% of the Jordanian companies disclose some environmental information where the sample included 60 companies in the manufacturing and service sectors.As well, Bayoud et al. (2012) found for annual reports 60% of companies from different sectors disclose four categories "employee disclosure; community involvement disclosure; consumer disclosure; environmental disclosure" of corporate social responsibility (CSR) whereas 5% of companies do not present CSR information in their annual reports.However, the trend towards environmental disclosure for companies in MENA refers to an increase in the number of companies that disclose environmental information.

Study Method
This study investigates the extent and content of environmental disclosure in annual reports of local oil and gas corporations operating in Arab oil countries.Content analysis used word count in order to measure quantity environmental disclosure and disclosure index in order to measure quality environmental disclosure in corporate annual reports issued in 2008, 2009 and 2010.It is worth noting that these methods have been used by many researchers in their studies to examine environmental disclosure.Along similar lines, Cowan and Gadenne (2005), Mahadeo et al. (2011) and Suttipun (2011Suttipun ( , 2012) ) who have used word as a unit of measurement in content analysis to determine level of environmental disclosure in annual reports.Thereby supporting the study to use word count, Campbell (2004) justified use of words as a unit of measurement, because it provides a greater amount of detailed description.Moreover, the application of words in business research allows the analysis to be more precise and defined upon identification of the subject matter being sought (Ahmad 2004).In next part of measurement, the quality of environmental disclosure has applied the environmental disclosure index.This measurement technique derived from content analysis (Al-Tuwaijri et al. 2004).Many studies have adopted this technique in measuring the quality of disclosure, such as (Ahulu et al. 2010;Al-Khadash 2003;Buniamin et al. 2011).
Based on previous studies by Burritt (1982), (Wiseman 1982), (Deegan & Gordon 1996), and Hackston and Milne (1996), there are 16 items that can be used in this study to categorise environmental information in annual reports.Therefore, in order to measure the quality of environmental disclosure of items, this study assigns the greatest weight (+3) to monetary disclosures related to the environmental items, and assigns the next highest weight (+2) to quantitative.Finally, general disclosure receives the lowest weight (+1).Firms that do not disclose information for a given indicator receive a score of zero for that item.Thus, a total score of each company equal 48 score.In other word, the highest quality of environmental disclosure is 48 while the lowest quality is zero.
The data needed for this study were collected from the annual reports of each of the companies sampled.The sample in present study included 100 oil and gas companies operating within the Group of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries.This group is composed of 11 Arab countries exporting oil are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria.Syrian and Iraqi companies were excluded from the study due to the current security conditions in Syria and the lack of data for Iraqi companies.Oil and gas companies registered in the Oil Ministry in each country have produced their 2008, 2009 and 2010 annual reports, whether in Arabic or English, and were obtained from websites of the companies or from visits to the company's offices.

Descriptive Analysis
This section provides a brief overview of some of the general facts and characteristics that were identified in respect to this study.Discussion concentrates on two aspects: -response rates, countries breakdown.Based on the details outlined in the following two sections it is worth noting that most of the firms surveyed are representative of the total of oil industry in each country.

Response Rate
This study sought to examine the annual reports for 2008, 2009 and 2010 of 58 oil and gas companies.A table 4 illustrates number of target companies in Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (APECs).They also present number of companies that meet the conditions of a sample in this study.Table 4 focuses on the national companies operating in APECs.It can be noted that Algeria had the lowest rate of the number of companies that met the requirements of study (28.57%).The number of companies targeted was 5 companies, whereas there were only two companies which provide annual reports according to the conditions in this study.In contrast, the United Arab Emirates had the highest percentage of companies that met the conditions of the study.The percentage of these companies is 67%.It is interesting to point out that although Arab Emirates has the highest percentage of firms in the sample in this study Saudi Arabia had the largest number sample.The actual number is 9 Saudi companies.In general, to derive a final score for percentage of the sample study, it can be said that the percentage of companies that meet the conditions in this study for national companies were 57%.In comparison with other studies which have used the annual reports, it is of paramount importance to point out that response rate of this study is similar to the response rates in other studies.Momin (2006, p. 199) for example responded rate of 27% where his study was in one nation.Although the proportion of the sample in his study were 68%, Cowan considered that sample size of twenty-five was appropriate for an Australian study where Cowan (2007, p. 105) states that "when considered in comparison to other published Australian studies".Zunker (2011, p. 116) examined the annual reports for 649 companies out of 970 targeted company, where the percentage of the sample was 68%.

General Descriptive Statistics of Environmental Disclosures
Through review of annual reports of organisations surveyed in this research study, it can be noted that companies that disclosed at least one item of environmental information in annual reports had increased during study period 2008, 2009 and 2010.Table 5 summarizes companies surveyed and corporations that disclosed at least one item in their annual report.To regarding national companies, it can be argued that total companies had increased significantly from 2008 to 2010 by almost 50%.In 2008, number of companies was 23 firms whereas it was 43 companies in 2010.Therefore, it can said that percentage of national oil and gas firms that disclosed at least one item has increased over three years from 45.09% in 2008 into 84.31% in 2010.In contrast, international companies witnessed a relative increase in companies that disclosed at least one item.While the number of companies was 89 per 2008 by 90%, the number of companies in 2010 reached 98 companies increased by 100%.In general, it can be observed from the following figure that national oil and gas firms have witnessed increase in the number of corporations that disclose at least one item of environmental information in their annual reports.Through a review of corporations and environmental disclosure items referred to in Table 11, it can extract the number of companies; whether national companies that have provided at least one item of environmental disclosure are shown in tables 6.This table contain countries and number of companies surveyed of each country as well as number of companies which provided at least one item for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, and in addition the percentage for each country.In terms of raw numbers, in 2008, companies in Algeria and Tunisia had not disclosed any item in their annual reports.However, in 2010, although they had lowest number of companies surveyed, they had 33% of companies that provided at least one item of environmental disclosure.In contrast, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE had a highest percentage of number of companies that provided at least one item in their annual reports which was 100%.Therefore, it can be said that during 2010 there were 43 companies presented in their annual reports with at least one item of environmental disclosure items of 51 companies surveyed.All Saudi companies that were surveyed provided in their annual reports at least one item whereas there were 7 Saudi corporations which provided at least one item in 2008.Environmental disclosure practices in countries surveyed which provided at least one item in their annual reports shows that percentage of companies was similar to other studies national or international.Differences in the results as a percentage between this study and other studies covering other regions of the world are not substantial.Therefore, review of the results of previous studies on disclosure of environmental in many countries across the world and comparison with the results of this study set out in table 7 shows growth in most countries of the study whether the Arab oil-exporting or developed countries that have companies operating in the oil sector in the Arab oil-exporting.

Quantity and Quality of Environmental Disclosure
With respect to the quantity and quality of disclosure made by companies in their annual reports, it can conclude that the amount of disclosure in general has increased during the study period.As mentioned before, word counting is used to evaluate the quantity of corporate environmental disclosures whereas environmental disclosure index is used to measure the quality of disclosure.
6.4.1 The Quantity of Corporate Environmental Disclosures Table 7 shows descriptive statistics of environmental disclosure word counts for national corporations respectively.With respect to national oil and gas during a period study, the amount of environmental disclosures had increased significantly from 0 in 2008 to 288 words in 2010 where the average quantity of environmental disclosure had increased almost 73 percent from 2008 to 2010.
On the other hand, in order to obtain the differences in disclosure between countries, it is important to examine the amount of disclosure in annual reports of organisations for each country.This study was based on word count to examine environmental disclosure contained in the annual reports of oil and gas corporations in order to measure the amount of disclosure.The following table 8 summarizes the information on amount of disclosure word count for NOGCs in Arab oil countries.As shown in Table 8, it can be concluded that national companies in the OPAEC presented environmental disclosure information in their annual reports.This disclosure varies from year to year and from one country to another.Generally, Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had the highest amount of disclosure in annual reports amounting to 356 words and 326 words respectively.This is consistent with study of Al-Janadi et al. (2011) who concluded that the level of disclosure in the UAE companies is larger than Saudi companies.In contrast, the lowest amount of words in the annual reports are 22 and 26 words for Libyan and Tunisian companies respectively, if excluded 2008 for Algerian and Tunisian companies due to there being no companies which disclosed at least one item of the environmental disclosure items.The extracted finding from Libya companies is compatible with Nasr's studies (2004,2011) who concluded that Libyan firms did not present any information related to environment in their annual report in 2004 whereas the result in 2011 indicted that environmental disclosure had been improved.As for the Tunisian companies, the level of disclosure is similar to the level of disclosure in the study of Belhaj and Damak-Ayadi (2011) which showed that the highest level of disclosure in the 31 Tunisian companies is to 23.Moreover, it also can be noted that the quantity of disclosure has grown in all the national companies in OPAEC.UAE companies have showed biggest increase in the amount of disclosure which was 199 words from 2008 to 2010, while Tunisia recorded a lesser increase in the amount of disclosure which was 27 words.However, the percentage of the number of words shows a substantial difference between the Arab countries.Largest proportion was for Saudi Arabia in 2008 at 31.29% of the total number of words disclosed in the annual reports for 2008.In 2009, the largest proportion was 28.05% for the United Arab Emirates.In 2010, although UAE had a largest percentage, it had decreased from 28.05% in 2009 into 25.61% in 2010.On the other hand, countries such as Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Bahrain had low rates which did not exceed approximately 5%.

The Quality of Corporate Environmental Disclosures
Table 9 shows that the quality of disclosure has increased over the three years of study.The average was 19 in 2008 and it increased in 2010 to 26.66 in national corporations.In relation to international companies, the increase in the average quality of disclosure was very modest during the years of study.However, in spite the modest increase, it was higher than the national companies.. Overall, in spite of the fact that the quality of environmental disclosure for IOGCs is higher in some countries than others, the quality of environmental disclosure had increased for all countries over three years.

Items of Environmental Disclosure in Oil and Gas Companies
Previous research that addressed the environmental disclosure sought to examine many of the items.However, this study relied on previous studies in determining the items of disclosure and adopted the items described in the table 12 which would give a broader dimension of environmental disclosure in companies.In particularly, environmentally sensitive companies include companies operating in the petroleum industry.Previous studies have shown that items such as environmental policy, environmental management and environmental spending are among the more common disclosure items in annual reports (Suttipun & Stanton 2012).Table 11 illustrates the disclosure for each item of disclosure items.It can be noted that most companies gave great importance to Education and Training item where it scored the highest disclosure over the three years followed by environmental management and risk management.On the other hand, the items of Environmental Cost Accounting and Environmental awards were not disclosed in the annual reports of any companies covered in this study.To derive a final score for each country, table 12 displays comparison of environmental disclosure in accordance with the quantity and quality of disclosure in order to show the picture as complete.Most previous studies in the literature concerning the disclosure of environmental accounting that dealt with the countries in this study did not address a comparison between the amount of disclosure and quality of disclosure.This study is one of the first studies that make this comparison in order to fill gaps in previous studies.

Conclosion
In conclusion, this study intended to give an overview of variations in the environmental disclosure practices between national oil and gas corporations which are operating in OPAEC.To derive a final score, analysis of environmental disclosure practices across OPAEC was undertaken at three different levels.The initial findings indicate that number of oil and gas surveyed companies which made environmental disclosures in their annual reports has increased over period study.However, this study concludes that environmental reporting practice in Arab oil countries is still low.Furthermore, in spite a general increase in environmental disclosures by oil and gas corporations during the period 2008 to 2010 in terms of both the quantity and the quality of disclosure, differences were noted regarding the number of companies from each country providing at least one environmental disclosure, an addition to the themes being reported and the amount of disclosure in annual reports.Moreover, the analysis shows that the extent of environmental disclosure practices vary between companies according to country.It is interesting to point out that there was a big gap in the level of environmental disclosures across sample companies.It has to be recognized that some national oil and gas corporations (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE) had provided a quality of environmental disclosure superior to similar corporations in other countries.
This study was conducted under several limitations.Most of the petroleum activities in Arab oil countries are under the control of main national oil company and affiliated to the government.Consequently, many other local companies play a secondary role in the oil industry.In addition, many of the local oil companies do not provide annual reports on their websites.Moreover, only three years of data is considered in the current study.Hence, it would be interesting to conduct a longitudinal study on more than three years which may help to trace the trend of environmental disclosure.
However, this study sets the first step for future research which focuses on the oil sector in Arab countries.These results showed a difference in disclosure between the Arab countries.Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature which examine reasons for the difference of environmental disclosure between oil companies as well as it contributes to the comparisons with international oil companies.

Table 4 .
Response rate of National oil and gas corporations In Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries

Table 5 .
Number and percentage of national companies with environmental disclosures Table 6 focuses on national oil companies in countries of Arab Petroleum Exporting (CAPE).Overall, it is interesting to point out that number of companies that provided at least one item have increased during 2008 and 2010, where it was 23 in 2008 and 43 in 2010.The percentage of increase from 2008 to 2010 was almost 85%.

Table 6 .
National Breakdown of EDPs for NOGCs

Table 7 .
Descriptive Statistics of Environmental Disclosure Word Counts for National Companies

Table 8 .
Amount of disclosure word count in Arab oil countries * Percentage of Word Count equals words count divided on total words for each year *

Table 9 .
Descriptive Statistics of Environmental Disclosure Index for national Companies Table10summarises a quality of environmental disclosure using environmental disclosure index for national.Measuring the quality of disclosure for each country in this study relied on the following: If the disclosure in the annual report disclosure is monetary, item scored as 3, but if the disclosure is quantitative, the score of disclosure to be 2. Finally, the score is 1 in case disclosure of information is qualitative.The final score for each country is a collection of scores of all companies surveyed from that country.Regarding NOGCs, from table 10, the highest score was 37 for Qatar firms in 2010 whereas the lowest score was 8 for Tunisian firms in 2009 if excluded years 2008 and 2009 for Algerian and Tunisian corporations.

Table 10 .
Quality of disclosure by EDindex in Arab countries

Table 11 .
Items of environmental disclosures in annual reportsThe table 11 displayed the important items disclosed in annual reports of oil and gas corporations.It is worth noting that most of firms have paid attention to some of the items without the other.From the table 12, it can be seen that the Education and Training, Environmental management and Spill were disclosed in the annual reports of companies more than other items over three years.Regarding 2010, Education and Training was reported in 1212 words in annual reports of companies included in the study sample followed by both Environmental management and Spill with 901 and 847 words respectively.In 2009 and 2008, the largest number of disclosed words were Education and Training, Environmental management and Risk management which reported 969, 813 and 727 respectively in 2009 whereas they reported 825, 768 and 663 words in 2008.It is relevant to point out that the number of times to disclose item spill increased significantly in 2010.This increase was due to the spill incident which occurred from oil platforms owned by BP in the Gulf of Mexico.In other hand, items such as Awards and Environmental Cost Accounting were not disclosed in annual reports by any corporation over the study period.Quantity vs. quality of environmental disclosure

Table 12 .
Environmental disclosure index and word counts for Arab oil Countries