David Campbell at the SPETT mature fields symposium

 It’s great to see so many students here, so many sponsors also, supporting this event. 

But let me share some perspectives on the theme of the conference, you know, mature basins, and, I think the upcoming discussions will delve into this in more detail, including the paper Mr. Bally and and Katie later on this afternoon.

Let me start with our global experience. So in bpTT and indeed globally, we bring decades of experience to bear in terms of operating some of the world's most mature and technically complex basins. From the harsh environments of the North Sea, where I certainly started my career back in the early eighties and Alaska to the vast onshore fields of Russia and Rumaila in Iraq, we've constantly demonstrated how mature assets can be revitalized and made more competitive.

I remember in Iraq when we won the auction in 2009, we weren't able to actually earn any money in those fields until we got the production up to 1.4 million barrels a day, and it was about half of that when we first started. But with a combination of well work and other drilling other areas, we brought that production up to where it is currently, and it is about 1.4 million barrels a day, a mainstay of that economy.

Just as our fields here are a mainstay of the Trinidad and Tobago economy, so mature basins are a core strength of the company. They're not new territory to us, and they're a core part of our portfolio. We've learned that with the right approach, mature basins, can continue to deliver at material value.

I was mentioning earlier one of the world's largest oil fields – it's over almost 2,000 square kilometers, so it's a massive field. BP's works in partnership with the national and international stakeholders, our Chinese partners of the local trading organization to significantly increase production, as I've just mentioned and remember that that field was discovered in 1953 and I don't think there's ever been a field of the size of Rumaila has ever been shut in.

So there's always more to go on if you start with something as material as Rumaila or Forties in the North Sea or PVE in Alaska. There's always more we can do with technology. An extra percent of recovery in one of those fields is the equivalent of all the production from some of the smaller fields that we're familiar with here and in the North Sea.
We also extended field life through innovation and collaboration. I mean, I remember myself when I first started in Forties, they were just installing gas lift in wells there for the first time. So these are wells that are seven-inch completions, oil completions million barrels a day from four platforms.

But gradually as that production declined, we added more and more technology to keep that production going. I mean, personally, I've had the privilege of working in many of those areas. For instance, I mentioned Forties where we applied, you know, lean working techniques. We eventually sold that field in 2003 to Apache.

Uh, it was coming to the end of its life as far as bp were concerned, but Apache is still operating in that field very profitably now, more than 20 years later, again, using new, new technologies and lots I, I learned there. I also worked in the Laure field, which is the largest field in Russia, and there again, we added new techniques in terms of base management, water injection, different ways of balancing the, the reservoir there.

And field again continues for many, many years getting its recovery rate up towards the 60% we were used to in the North Sea. I've already mentioned Rumaila, and then of course here in Cassia, we've just introduced a couple of years ago compression. I think Woodside have already got compression in the in the basin as well.

But this was, I think, the biggest platform offshore Trinidad. It doesn't have any wells on it. It's a platform just with compression reducing the back pressure that the wells flow against, and that's been instrumental in giving Verlier the production that she wants. 

So across our mature basin portfolio in Trinidad, we've been using technology to introduce, to unlock the potential of mature fields, seismic reprocessing. So that's been absolutely pivotal. We shot a very large, uh, ocean bottom survey about 10 years ago. Keith, you probably remember this. I think we're still living off the, the benefit of that now.

And it's not only introducing a new technology such as acquisition, it's also in the reprocessing that can be done again and again and again as technology moves forward. And we're still finding new pockets of gas on the basis of that ocean bottom seismic survey.

These tools are helping us identify new drilling opportunities and optimize existing wells, turning complexity - and there is a lot of complexity, as many of you will know, some of the most complex geology in the world, I think is what we're blessed with here - into more opportunities.

And I think, also something that we need a mindset shift. And I think we definitely need that mindset shift at bpTT. I mean, we've been used to being the big producer producing half of the country's production, over 2 million standard feet a day back in the day.

I keep hearing about that nostalgia and what we need to do now is educate people that we can actually still make very good returns from much smaller pockets of gas if we can use technology. Not only to access and see and develop smaller pockets, but also do it cost effectively. But that does require a certain humility.

So one of the things, again, thank you for mentioning it Verlier, is that we've been partnering with different companies. One of the reasons I've done that is I want to try and make sure that we don't sit on any reserves. So it's really important that in the next whatever decade or so, that we have fairly assured demand, I think for the product we sell, that we get as many wells drilled, fuels developed, production online as we possibly can. So where another company has a drilling rig available with some white space, we'll partner with them to share that activity. 

So we want to make absolutely sure that every piece of hardware and infrastructure is being used. And we're also looking at things like agile working. So every week we have either cost or production standup meetings. Anyone is welcome to these meetings. By standup, I mean they can't take too long. We just talk about opportunities and vulnerabilities all the time, and it means that everybody is up to speed with what's going on.

It also promotes faster decision making and that, I think, is one of the things we really need to push here. We don't have time to sit on studying what are much smaller pockets of gas in many cases. We need to keep moving and I think that's something we've learned from the technology industry where decisions are made quicker. I always feel if I get, you know, 60% of my decisions right, I'm doing very well, but better that than agonizing over decisions for too long and not making any decision. We’ve also coined this phrase recently: minimum viable bureaucracy.

Now we have a lot of bureaucracy in bp. I'm sure that exists in many of your companies as well, but it's an impediment to fast decision making. It's something that I think many of you young people joining industry would be very intolerant of, and you should be intolerant of it, and I want to try and push that as well.

So I'm very intolerant of decisions that take too long. People that are on holiday and then can't sign off on it, that that isn't any good anymore. We need to be able to make those decisions quickly. 
This slide will show our footprint in Trinidad and, and Tobago. And you see, it's a big footprint.

There are 12 offshore platforms, two onshore facilities, a number of pipelines. In some cases we use other companies’ pipelines but we also have our own. So this is like bp in microcosm, this business. It has everything. We have onshore, we have offshore, we have pipelines. We also have an ownership stake the first industrial scale solar farm in the Caribbean. So that makes it a really interesting, you know, we can test ideas in bpTT that are actually good for the entire company like to learn from. And a large part of what we're doing is unlocking the potential of this mature province.

So I won't be talking so much about cross border or deepwater today, because I guess that would be the subject for a different symposium. But the Columbus Basin we've been working in, as you heard, the first well was delivered in the  mid-1950s, a very long time. So, you know, almost 70 years, and then 60 years of production in this, in this basin.

Now we need to invest to rejuvenate this acreage and we're doing that now. So as a mature province, we've done well to secure capital in the recent past. Since 2019, so only the last six years. We brought on new production from Angelin and added Cassia compression that I just mentioned. One of our largest projects Cypre, came on production this year and is continuing to drill now. Mento is one of those joint ventures I mentioned with, EOG, where we're using the rig that EOG have contracted to develop. Mento has come on, and both Mento and Cypre came on a month early.

So our projects organization is working better than it had been in the past. We've also executed a seven well infill program. These are single wells in existing fields where we can tie the production back to an existing platform, making the most of infrastructure that's already there, and that's really important.

Now, those wells would not be economic if it wasn't for the fact that we could tie them very quickly back to existing infrastructure. So the fact that we have this legacy of infrastructure that you can see on the screen is a huge advantage to us, and we do that right across the world.

 We’ve also acquired new acreage. 

The ministry talking earlier about bringing new license bid rounds out. We've participated in the last deep water and shallow water bid round. We're still negotiating on, on previous bid rounds as well, and we've continued to explore. And just as Mr. I think Lalla told you yesterday, it's important to explore.

We've drilled two successful exploration wells already this year. And those must be, I think for bpTT, the first exploration wells we've drilled in a very long time: These were Frangipani and Beryl which was drilled by EOG in acreage shared with bp.

So Trinidad is playing a big role right across our company. And this is, I think, really important as well for all of you to understand that for an international company such as bp Trinidad is a significant part of our business.

And that's something I want our staff to understand as well. So out of the 10 major projects we're expected to start up by 2027, four are from Trinidad and Tobago with Cypre and Mento online and Coconut and Ginger coming up shortly.

One way to get more done is to partner with others, to use their capital, use their infrastructure, use their expertise, use their rigs, but also you share risk and you can get more simultaneous activity being done.

So here in Trinidad, for instance, as well as of course with the government, we are working with a number of operators and that's central to unlocking the value in these mature fields. So for instance, we've divested assets to Perenco. I'm sure some of you will ask, why did you do that? Well, frankly, it's because we can take the money that we made from that divestment and put it into things that we are better suited to do, for instance taking larger risk on things like deep water exploration. I am very confident Perenco will do an excellent job of producing those assets in Trinidad for probably longer than a company with the overhead structure of BP would've been able to do so. I think you should see it as a very normal part of any field's maturity or any basin's maturity. 

We've also partnered, as I mentioned, with EOG, so we love EOGs view of the subsurface.We're very excited about that. They've made a good job of doing that. We learn from them just as I'm sure they learn from us as well. We've partnered with Shell, you know, a worldwide global leader in deep water just as we are ourselves. 

And with Woodside, of course, on Calypso, which is the first major discovery made in the deep water in Trinidad and Tobago waters. 
So what more is needed then? Well, I think there is a role for Government and policy. As operators, we need to continue to work closely with the government to ensure that the fiscal environment is aligned to the economic realities of a mature basin. And we'll have similar requests on deep water because that again, is a different cost structure, a different risk profile.

License extensions are important as well because – as I’ve said -  we've been operating in this basin for 60 years. So license extensions do play a role. They're essential to make projects viable. And we take a very long term view of projects, of course, as well. So we need that certainty in order to be able to invest.

To unlock the full potential of the existing infrastructure, and I want to use every piece of that existing infrastructure as much as possible. 

The other thing to remember - and it's not a warning, it's a reality - is that investment is mobile. So Trinidad must remain globally competitive and without that competitiveness, capital will flow elsewhere.

One of my jobs is to win investment from bp to Trinidad. But I do that against those in Azerbaijan and those in the North Sea and those in the US Gulf. Of course, what the company will do is align its capital investments where the best returns are and where their confidence is in many other things from safety through government, through the technical prowess of the, of the local teams.
So that means, very simply, as I said at the Energy Conference. The formula is quite simple, that is profit is equal to price times volume minus cost. So, getting costs competitive is very, very important and that means building a track record for delivering projects on time and delivering the production promises.

And of course, our reliability of production is also important. 

The other thing I would say - again, we mentioned this at the Energy conference back in January - is that urgency,  is actually really important. We don't have forever. I don't think anybody knows how quickly the transition will move. It will happen and it should happen, but I'm pretty confident that for the next decade or so, Trinidad will be competitive or can be competitive and that many of you joining the industry now will find really interesting jobs, but you'll probably be in jobs when you're my age that don't even exist right now, and I think that's great.

But mature basins don't wait. They do decline and in gas areas, they decline much faster, better part of 20% a year if we do nothing else with them, and there are very few things we can do with them. The most important thing other than compression is to drill more wells and bring new reserves online.

And that mindset shift is therefore needed from managing decline to enabling opportunity. So managing decline is not enough. Pace, therefore is really important. And given the smaller reservoirs we're working with, fields last for less time. So many of the small pools I mentioned earlier might only last for 12 to 18 months.

So we don't need to have a 20-year mentality in mind. You know, we can have different sort of completions, different sorts of tie backs because they will only last for a short period of time. That requires real pragmatism by everyone, including regulators, and it can be achieved by applying standardized solutions.

So again, we don't need to be too proud about having, you know, a bp way for everything. I think if we can get to a, a minimum viable, safe design, share it with others, get costs down, that's actually not a bad thing to do. And I mentioned earlier, I mentioned, again, minimal viable bureaucracy inside our own company, but also across the industry

So in closing, at bpTT, we're committed to Trinidad and Tobago. We have been for the last 60 years and, and we’re focused on unlocking its energy future. And I think over the last couple of years you'll have seen real progress in that.

With continued collaboration and a shared sense of urgency, mature basins like ours can continue to deliver value for decades to come, long into your careers. 

Thank you for your attention.