Effect of environmental costs on the financial performance of listed oil and gas companies in Nigeria

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of environmental costs on the financial performance of listed oil and gas companies in Nigeria. The ex-post facto research design was employed for the collection of financial statements of four listed oil and gas companies in Nigeria for a ten-year period from 2010 to 2019. The purposive sampling technique was used for the study. The Panel Ordinary Least Square of the multiple regression model was conducted using the E-views version 9.0 statistical software package. The findings revealed that staff development costs have a negative but insignificant effect on listed Nigerian oil and gas companies' return on assets, while community development costs and employee health and safety costs have a positive but insignificant effect. This implies that the amounts of these costs incurred by the studied companies are too small to have an impact on their performance metrics. However, studies are based on the quantity of information provided by a small number of companies, and as a result, these studies may be influenced by the costs that these companies incur as well as the extent to which they report those costs. The study is limited to only the oil and gas sector and some specific environmental cost variables. The utilization of environmental cost variables and the use of financial performance. The contribution of this study will be to help create a well-articulated employee health and safety cost system in order to provide the conflict-free working environment that managers and employees need for maximum productivity.