Our audience

The report aims to give an overview of our corporate responsibility performance for all Tullow stakeholders. Sections 1 and 2 are designed to provide an easily accessible summary of our progress, with detailed information for those who wish to read more in sections 3 and 4.

To increase accessibility to our full range of stakeholders the report has also been published online, both in interactive and pdf format and in French. In 2011, we will also be publishing a summary report for easy use in external engagements, particularly where the audience is large and the majority of readers may not wish to access the most detailed information.

Each Tullow operation identifies, prioritises and engages stakeholder groups that its activities have the most impact on. The stakeholder mapping process in key countries is managed by local Corporate Affairs teams. In other areas country managers are responsible for contributing to stakeholder mapping. Central support is provided by the Group External Affairs team, including input on relevant stakeholders with a global reach on issues that are material to Tullow's business.

Our stakeholders include, among others, local communities, government (national, regional and local, including regulators), NGOs (both advocacy and development), policymakers, intergovernmental organisations, academics, think tanks, investors, the media and employees.

Improving what we do

Every year we solicit feedback and suggestions on how we can improve our reporting. In 2010, recommendations included the need to more clearly establish the business case for corporate responsibility and to more clearly link corporate responsibility to Tullow's overall business strategy. As a result, this year's report is dedicated to explaining the approach to corporate responsibility introduced in last year's report – creating shared prosperity – and how we deliver this through every part of our business.

Other recommendations for improvements included the need to further demonstrate how stakeholder dialogue/feedback impacts our business strategy and to improve identification of our material issues. We have listened to this advice and during the year we have tried to use more structured methods to analyse trends in the type of issues raised by our stakeholders and that we have identified through internal engagement.

This resulted in a significant impact on the structure of this report. Four of the issues raised by our stakeholders have shown themselves to be more important than any others (in terms of the frequency with which they were raised). These receive additional focus in this report, in the form of special features and they have been expanded on both in Tullow's words, and in the words of our stakeholders.

We have also added in new 'performance' chapters on areas of our business that have developed significantly enough over the last 12 months to warrant more in-depth treatment. These include materiality, stakeholder engagement, sustainable supply chain and social enterprise.

GRI has confirmed that this report 'Creating shared prosperity' (2010) fulfills the requirement of Application Level B+. The GRI Content Index and the Basis of Reporting is available for download on our Downloads page.

Limited assurance has been carried out on Group-level compilation of environmental, safety and social performance indicators for the year ending 31 December 2010. An Internal Audit review of data collection, aggregation and reporting has also been conducted for social enterprise data.

Looking forward

While we are sure we have made progress in our understanding of and ability to report on our key stakeholder issues, this is very much work-in-progress. We know we have some way to go in terms of stakeholder input into our overall reporting strategy, both in the report itself and through the Tullow Oil website. This year we have reported for the first time on key external sustainability initiatives and standards to which we have signed-up or with which we are aligned. Our aim is to use such initiatives more effectively to guide us on what and how we report moving forward.