Financial Accounting and Reporting Practices at Woodside Petroleum

This report provides an overview of Woodside Petroleum Limited, an Australian petroleum exploration and production company. It examines the company's mission, vision, values, and strategies. The report further analyzes the qualitative characteristics of Woodside Petroleum Limited's financial information, focusing on fundamental characteristics like relevance and faithful representation, as well as enhancing characteristics such as comparability, verifiability, timeliness, and understandability. The analysis references the Corporations Act 2001, AASB, IFRS, and IASB principles, highlighting Woodside's compliance and the accessibility of their financial data through annual reports and financial statements. The report concludes that Woodside Petroleum Limited's financial reporting exhibits the necessary qualitative characteristics for stakeholders to make informed decisions.

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING
AND REPORTING
Woodside Petroleum Limited

OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Woodside Petroleum Limited is regarded as one of the
major Australian company operating in the industry of
petroleum exploration as well as production. Woodside
Petroleum Limited is considered as the largest
independent dedicated oil and gas company in the
Australian oil and exploration industry (woodside.com.au
2018)

OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Woodside Petroleum Limited was established in the year of
1954 on 26 July and the company is headquartered at
Woodside Plaza, Perth, Western Australia. The main strategy
of the organization is provide their shareholders with the
superior returns across three major horizons. These three
time horizons can be characterized as cash generation from
2017, unlocking value from 2022, and repeating our
successes from 2027 (woodside.com.au 2018)

OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Mission Statement
The mission of Woodside Petroleum Limited is to deliver
superior return to the shareholders
Vision Statement
The vision of the company is to become a global leader in
upstream gas and oil industry (woodside.com.au 2018)

OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Values
Integrity
Respect
Working Sustainably
Working Together
Discipline
Excellence (woodside.com.au 2018)

OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Woodside Petroleum Limited has developed three major
strategies for the achievement of their vision and mission;
they are as follows:
1. The maximization of the base or main business of the
company
2. To build value of the business portfolio of the company
3. To ensure the growth of the business of the company
(woodside.com.au 2018)

QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF
FINANCIAL INFORMATION
The qualitative characteristics of financial information make
the financial information of the companies useful to different
kinds of users; such as potential investors, lenders,
investors, shareholders and others. This aspect helps these
stakeholders of the companies in making correct investment
decisions (aasb.gov.au 2018)

TYPES OF QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTICS
OF FINANCIAL INFORMATION
Two types of qualitative characteristics of financial
information can be seen; they are:
1. Fundamental Qualitative Characteristics,
2. Enhancing Qualitative Characteristics (aasb.gov.au
2018)

QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTICS
There are two elements under Fundamental qualitative
characteristics; they are:
Relevance
Faithful Representation
There are four elements under Enhancing qualitative characteristics;
they are:
Comparability
Verifiability
Timeliness
Understandability

FUNDAMENTAL QUALITATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
In order to make the financial information of the companies
useful, they need to be relevant and faithfully represented.
At the same time, business organizations can increase the
usefulness of the financial information in case they are
comparable, verifiable, timely and understandable
(aasb.gov.au 2018)

FUNDAMENTAL QUALITATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Relevance
Relevant financial information of the companies can make
positive difference in the decision making process of the
stakeholders (aasb.gov.au 2018). In case of Woodside
Petroleum Limited, the company follows Corporations Act
2001, AASB, IFRS and IASB principles for the preparation and
presentation of financial information. Compliance with these
aspects makes the company to deliver relevant financial
information to the major stakeholders
(woodsideannouncements.app.woodside 2018)

FUNDAMENTAL QUALITATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Faithful Representation
It is needed for the business organization to provide all the required
information about the economic phenomena of this business
(aasb.gov.au 2018). It can be observed that Woodside Petroleum
Limited provides all the information about their economic
phenomena like assets, liabilities, income, expenses and equities
through different financial statements; like consolidated income
statement, statement of comprehensive income, statement of
financial position, statement of cash flows and statement of change
in equity while complying with all the required accounting standards

ENHANCING QUALITATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Comparability
Financial information of the companies become more useful
when they can be compared to the same financial information
of other companies (aasb.gov.au 2018). In case of Woodside
Petroleum Limited, the stakeholders can easily compare the
financial information of the company to the other companies
or the different timeline of the same company. It shows the
presence of comparability characteristics in the financial
information of Woodside Petroleum Limited

ENHANCING QUALITATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Verifiability
In the presence of verifiability characteristic, users can apply
their knowledge as well as observation to reach to consensus
about the financial aspect of the companies (aasb.gov.au 2018).
In case of Woodside Petroleum Limited, the users can directly
verify the provided financial information of the company with the
help of provided assumption as well as explanation in the notes
to the financial statements and it shows the presence of
verifiability characteristic in the financial information of Woodside
Petroleum Limited (woodsideannouncements.app.woodside 2018)

ENHANCING QUALITATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Timeliness
In the presence of timeliness characteristic, the users can
get the financial information at the right time of their
decision making process (aasb.gov.au 2018). It needs to be
mentioned that Woodside Petroleum Limited releases their
financial information through the annual reports at a specific
time of the year so that the users can access them at the
time of their investment decision-making

ENHANCING QUALITATIVE
CHARACTERISTICS
Understandability
In order to be useful, the financial information need to be fully
understandable to their users (aasb.gov.au 2018). It can be
observed that Woodside Petroleum Limited provides all the required
assumption, clarification and justification of their financial
statements in the noted to the financial statements so that the
users can gain the required understanding about the financial
standing of the company. It implies the presence of
understandability characteristic of financial information in Woodside
Petroleum Limited (woodsideannouncements.app.woodside 2018)

REFERENCES
Woodside.com.au. (2018). About Us | Woodside Energy. [online] Available at:
http://www.woodside.com.au/About-Us/Pages/about-us.aspx [Accessed 7 Jul. 2018].
Woodside.com.au. (2018). Profile | About Us | Woodside Energy. [online] Available at:
http://www.woodside.com.au/About-Us/Profile/Pages/home.aspx#.W0BT0NUzbIV
[Accessed 7 Jul. 2018].
Woodside.com.au. (2018). Strategy | About Us | Woodside Energy. [online] Available at:
http://www.woodside.com.au/About-Us/Pages/Strategy.aspx#.W0BT0tUzbIV [Accessed 7
Jul. 2018].
Aasb.gov.au. (2018). [online] Available at:
http://www.aasb.gov.au/admin/file/content105/c9/ACCED264_06-15.pdf [Accessed 7 Jul.
2018].
Aasb.gov.au. (2018). Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting. [online] Available
at: http://www.aasb.gov.au/admin/file/content105/c9/ACCED264_06-15.pdf [Accessed 7
Jul. 2018].
Woodsideannouncements.app.woodside. (2018). Annual Report 2017. [online] Available
at:
https://woodsideannouncements.app.woodside/14.02.2018+Annual+Report+2017.pdf
[Accessed 7 Jul. 2018].

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