Big energy companies transition towards sustainability

A LOT has changed since Trinidad and Tobago’s big energy companies such as bpTT, NGC, DeNovo and Heritage Petroleum began their journeys toward sustainable energy transition. Company leaders, David Campbell, president of bpTT, Bryan Ramsumair managing director of DeNovo Energy, Arlene Chow CEO of Heritage Petroleum and Mark Loquan, president of NGC, said during a panel discussion at the first day of the Energy Chamber’s three-day sustainable energy conference at the Hyatt, that not only has the world changed, but these companies have changed as well.

Campbell said it has invested about US$800 million in TT for the year already and over the past four years it has invested almost US$3.5 billion. He said the company’s change in purpose – helping the world and the company move to net zero by the year 2050, has triggered changes in operations and investments.

“We were making about three per cent of our investments in non-oil and gas. This year it is going to be about 30 per cent,” he said. “In two years’ time it is going to be about 50 per cent. It is a massive change in how we are focusing our investments.”

Ramsumair said DeNovo’s value propositions now have terms and concepts that were non-existent when the company started in 2016.

“The language that we use now is around carbon intensity,” he said. “We speak about what your GHG emissions look like; we speak about what is the sustainability report, we speak about the managing director of sustainability.”

“Terms and concepts from 2016 to 2023 that were never in the vocabulary before are part of our everyday existence in terms of how we do business,” he said. “When we speak about a field development one of things we look at is what our GHG score is going to be – how it will add to the carbon intensity of a project.”

For Chow, the path is not so clear as the CEO of Heritage Petroleum. She said as a oil and gas company it has to continue producing oil and gas as it is the main revenue earner for the country. However she said the company’s revenues may be what is needed for transition itself.

“The dilemma is how do we do that (transition) because (oil and gas) is essential to even get the money to transition,” she said.

Loquan said one of the answers to the dilemma of transitioning in a way to provide affordable and sustainable energy to the region and the world as a whole, was getting through the early years while looking forward to the distant future.

“In the energy business you are talking about having a view to 2050 or possibly to the end of the century,” he said. “It is understanding how you are going to get through the next few years because we have gas constraints.”

Loquan said a lot of the activity toward transitioning in the short term, is looking at how companies use energy, how they manage power and how they take GHGs out of the environment while pivoting the organisation toward the future.

Chow added that it showed its path to cleaner energy transition through focusing inward and looking at where, as an oil and gas company, it can support the sustainability goals.

“In 2019 when we started we did not have ESG as one of our core sustainability elements. We added that about a year ago,” she said. “We understand our emissions and we have been partnering with NGC to determine how best we can lower our carbon intensity.”

Campbell said bpTT will also balance its approach to energy transition, making equal investment in oil and gas as it will in clean, sustainable energy. He mentioned its investment in solar energy in TT, but pointed out that energy efficient platforms such as the Cassia C plant and production facilities focused on efficiency will also do its part to get more out of the reservoirs that the company already has.

“The world wants to decarbonise, but it also wants a planned and non-chaotic move to transition. That is extremely important,” he said.