Arthur Alexander is Senior Health, Safety, Environment and Carbon (HSE+C) Manager at bpTT.
Here he talks about the energy transition and what it has meant for the company.
Q: How would you describe bp’s journey since it launched its Net Zero ambition?
Although that was only 2020, a lot has changed for bp and the world. At that point, bp set out to transition from an international oil company to an Integrated Energy Company which was a big undertaking. Since then, the world has faced a pandemic and, more recently, war in Ukraine. Both have affected global energy demand and supply in different ways.
While we respond to these developments, our strategy has remained the same. We continue to focus on the energy trilemma, as we call it, or meeting the world’s need for energy that is secure, affordable, and lower carbon. As our CEO Bernard Looney put it recently, it’s a case of “and” not “or”. Globally, we are investing in today’s energy system which is predominantly oil and gas, and at the same time, we’re investing in cleaner forms of energy.
And globally we are making progress. We announced up to $8 billion more investment into what we call our transition growth engines—bioenergy, convenience, EV charging, hydrogen and renewables, and power. In three years, the capital we’ve invested in our transition growth engines has gone from 3% to 30%.
Q: More recently, bp launched its Sustainability Frame. How is that connected to the Net Zero aims?
Globally, a strong environment, social and governance (ESG) framework is no longer a “nice to have”. Consumers and shareholders are focusing more on how organisations operate. This goes beyond companies operating in the energy sector.
Our Net Zero aims focus on reducing emissions from our operations and helping the world get to Net Zero. Our Sustainability Frame goes a step further, including aims which lay out how we are going to go about improving people’s lives and caring for the planet. The frame lays out how we operate as a company, with the understanding that even as we provide energy, we are doing that in a way that demonstrates our care for people and the planet.
Q: How has the company changed?
A lot has changed. Using my experience as a guide, I would say that up to a few years ago, the role of a leader within HSE would have been different. The focus remains on keeping our people safe as well as ensuring the safety of our operations, but my role is now aligned more closely with the Sustainability Frame which includes social and environmental impacts. This approach is manifested in different ways. For example, our approach to managing environmental issues has widened to include social impact. bp has also added management of carbon emissions to the traditional HSE role. Our team is now HSE+C but it’s more than a name change. We’re changing our approach to Health, Safety and the Environment, and as I like to say, it is all guided by the silent “S”—sustainability. Importantly, it’s more than my role that has changed. Although I am ultimately responsible, strong HSE+C performance is delivered by each team and must be embedded into our operations.
That, for me, is probably the biggest difference and it is really exciting to be part of the evolution of this approach.
Q: What has the transition meant for bp in T&T?
As the major natural gas supplier locally, we remain committed to meeting our gas supply commitments. We’re focused on safely producing energy in a way that is aligned to bp’s Sustainability Frame.
Once bp announced its Net Zero ambition, a lot of work went into identifying opportunities for sustainable emissions reductions and we were quite successful in this in T&T, reducing what we call our “business-as-usual emissions” by 3.5% in 2019 and about 10% in 2020 and 2021.
Those achievements were the result of collaboration and integration among several teams across our business and a deep ownership by everyone to find ways to lower our carbon emissions.
We had to identify opportunities, plans, and resources to achieve our targets. We were able to do this, and in fact, we were recognised by the Energy Chamber and AMCHAM for efforts to lower emissions.
I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish because it demonstrated in a tangible way how Trinidad and Tobago can play its role in the energy transition.
Q: What’s next—where does the transition go from here?
Since last year we have been evolving our approach from seeking out “big-ticket” items that we used to achieve emission reductions, to more of a focus on how we manage emissions in our daily operations. We are improving our measurement and managing emissions in a way that is similar to how we would monitor our operations across the company. This includes installing meters to first understand what we’re emitting. From there we will set targets for our emissions. This is part of our commitment to bp’s Aim 4 which calls on us to install methane measurement systems by 2023 and drive a 50% reduction in methane intensity.
Our focus now is on embedding this approach in our operations and ensuring that everyone who works for us understands their role in managing emissions.
We’re also making progress in terms of our wider sustainability aims on people and planet.
Our onshore pipeline replacement project, Ocelot is a great example of this. Ocelot is the first project to include biodiversity goals in planning and execution. We are aiming to have a net positive impact on the biodiversity of the area where we are executing the project and I’m really proud that bp is taking this approach. We are already learning a lot from Ocelot and our experience will benefit bp’s operations in other parts of the world.
These are exciting times. We have only just begun this newest part of the journey from Net Zero ambition to wider focus on sustainability. Probably the biggest benefit of our approach is setting tangible aims in which we believe we can make the biggest difference for bp, our stakeholders, and society. We continue to work on strengthening that link between safe and reliable operations and making a positive impact on society and the planet.
Yes, there are challenges, but we are making tangible progress in the energy transition.