bpTT president: Elimination of waste not 'cost-cutting'

PRESIDENT of bpTT David Campbell said an announcement earlier this year of cost-saving measures is a bid by the company to make operations more efficient.

In January, global giant BP announced it would be cutting five per cent of its workforce or some 4,700 staffers to reduce costs.

Speaking to reporters following the opening of the Caribbean Sustainable Energy Conference 2025 hosted by the Energy Chamber of TT on June 2, at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, Port of Spain, dismissed the term "cost-cutting," believing it did not fully represent what the company was doing.

"I don't really think about 'cost-cutting.' That's got a sort of negative connotation but elimination of waste wherever we see it, trying to be a more efficient producer? We should be trying to do that all the time and that's what we've been focused on and our teams have been bringing forward ideas.

"I want people to feel empowered to point that out and use new technologies, use new techniques, learn from others. You see us for instance partnering- we just mentioned Mento and our partner EOG, you see what we're doing in deepwater with Shell and with others, the co-operation with Perenco. So I think there's lots of opportunities to make our system of working much more efficient."

Mento is a 50/50 joint venture between bpTT and EOG, the latter of which is the operator. It safely delivered first gas through connection of the initial discovery well last week. bpTT's
Cypre project safely delivered first gas just over a month prior. These were part of ten projects that the company is hoping could cumulatively produce a peak production of 250,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

With these recent favourable developments, Campbell said he is satisfied with the progress being made for the year.

"Production has been stronger, the underlying performance of the business has been good. I think cooperation across the industry has been very positive. I have to give credit to the government that we worked with before and the early conversations that we've had with the new government as well. I think that augers well for TT."

Campbell did not respond to questions about if bpTT employees would be among those getting axed.

According to a BBC report, BP chief executive Murray Auchincloss, who announced last year his intentions to simplify the business, is understood to have set a cost reduction target of US$2 billion (£1.6 billion) by the end of 2026, of which US$500 million is to be saved this year.

Campbell was a panel member for a discussion during the conference, focused on the implications of the recent scaling back of resources to cleaner energy by larger countries on the Caribbean region. While he admit there had been several of these changes within the last year, it has not altered the company's commitments.

"We've changed our strategy partly in response to the world but we still have committed to net zero by 2050 or sooner and we're committed to sustainability in the wider sense."

Campbell said that the world's energy requirement continues to grow for both sustainable and fossil fuels. This is why he believes sustainable energy sources need to be looked as an additional source to fossil fuels instead of "one or the other."

"We're not losing one. We're gaining one."

In her opening remarks at the conference, the chamber's chairperson, Mala Baliraj, pointed out that while larger countries like the US were taking a step back from the net zero goal, overall global investments into low carbon energy have continued to grow, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimating that total clean energy investment worldwide exceeded US$2 trillion in 2024.

"This includes renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps. This is double the estimated one
trillion US dollars going to coal, gas and oil developments."