TOTAL’s new CSR report published — almost

By Dominic Jones

ACCORDING to this news release issued by the company yesterday, oil giant TOTAL S.A. (NYSE: TOT)  has produced a 92-page report that complies with the IPIECA Oil and Gas Industry Guidance on Voluntary Sustainability Reporting and is in line with the Global Reporting Initiative.

I’m sure many people worked really hard putting the report together and I believe it’s important for companies to gather material information and report their tripple bottom lines.

TOTAL (IRWR Score: 33.60)  says the report is designed to “facilitate dialogue” with its stakeholders. They ask you to email comments about the report to direc.contact-internet@total.com

I’d love to, but this is all I get when I try to view the document, which is offered right now as a PDF file of unknown size.

There are a couple of other PDF documents on the site that I have no problem viewing, so it’s not my system or platform that’s the problem.

So I’m wondering if this means companies themselves don’t use PDF, but they’re happy to make others use it. Or is it simply a case of uploading such an important corporate document and not bothering to test it?

Makes you wonder how important it really is, and who exactly is using these things if no one has yet told the company about the problem.

Update: If you click around the ReportAlert.info website, the service TOTAL used for the news release I referred to, you’ll learn that the company paid 1,700 Euros for a full report alert. That includes email distribution to “18,500 stakeholders,” according to the service page on the site. Makes you wonder.

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