Eliminate waste in all areas of energy sector

FEW CAN question the logic of David Campbell’s preference for the phrase “elimination of waste” over “cost-cutting.”

Addressing reporters at the Energy Chamber’s green conference at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, Port of Spain, on June 2, the bpTT president said, “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.”

Mr Campbell’s remarks come amid BP’s global operations being in the throes of an announced five per cent cut, with 4,700 staffers facing the axe and 3,000 contractor roles poised for elimination.

According to a BBC report, BP chief executive Murray Auchincloss is believed 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 in 2025.

The socio-economic context of all of this is, arguably, the US drive, under the Trump administration, to venerate efforts aimed at eliminating wastage in governance. Elon Musk’s time in the White House has ended – and Mr Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” clearly repudiates the idea of contracted government – but the notion of applying a chainsaw to state regulation and supposedly unnecessary expenditure remains and is likely to remain a key idea within Republican party dogma for some time. Echoing these ideas – as recently seen in UK government aid cuts – is a way, perhaps, to curry favour.

Whatever the context, nobody can dispute businesses, especially energy businesses, need to be nimble in these uncertain times, rocked as they are by geopolitical turmoil which has had a direct impact on the energy sector’s fortunes and the essential transition to green energy. There’s something self-evident about Mr Campbell’s remarks.

Notwithstanding, it is worth noting that “elimination of waste” in terms of operational efficiency is one thing; literally eliminating waste in terms of pollution is another. Both need to be tackled. And not just by bpTT, a key player in TT’s energy industry, which still earns billions upon billions in foreign exchange and taxation revenue.

The startling backdrop to the dual approach of holding on to hydrocarbons while committing to net zero by 2050, which has been embraced by both industry stakeholders with a direct interest and government players who hold a duty to diversify the economy while protecting citizens, is the alarming pace of climate contagion.

The dream of limiting temperature rise below 1.5°C already seems out of reach; a Durham University study published on May 20 concluded that “mass loss from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica has quadrupled since the 1990s and now represents the dominant source of global mean sea-level rise from the cryosphere.” Coastal areas all over the world face submergence at a faster rate. Energy companies do need to trim the fat to adapt to current needs. Those needs, however, are only set to get more dire. All kinds of waste need to be tackled.