Analysis of determinants of accounting policies in oil and gas companies in Tanzania: a case of depletion, depreciation and amortization (DD&A)

The study aimed at examining the key determinants of accounting policies choices in the gas and oil industry focusing on Depreciation, Depletion, and Amortization (DD&A). It focused on organizational, economic and regulatory factors as well as the type of operations as categories of selected hypothetical determinants. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire, which involved 119 companies oil and gas companies in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. Data was processed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. Further analysis was done manually. Findings revealed that different companies utilized different accounting DD&A methods and treatments ranging from allocating costs of PPE into components and depreciating each separately, straight-line depreciation, reducing balance, depletion of upstream oil and gas assets based on unit of production, to use of proved and probable reserves. Further, majority of companies disagree on the influence of both organizational (68.1 percent) and economic factors (84.3 percent). While many disagree with their influence, regulatory factors retained a significant number (21.8 percent) that agrees that it is influential compared to economic (3.3 percent) and organizational (7.4) ones. Type of operations had unequal influence on different methods and treatments. It concludes that a focus on the relationship between specific methods and associated factors in a specific context makes more sense compared to categorization of factors. Among others, the study recommends for rationalization of accounting treatments, policy harmonization, and the use of qualitative or mixed methods design on the same topic.