Gordon Birrell’s 30-year-plus career has taken in three continents and a range of roles on and offshore, in the field and in corporate offices.

Now, two years into a stint as BP’s chief operating officer for production, transformation and carbon, Birrell may be facing his biggest challenge yet, as the oil and gas industry adapts within a fast-evolving energy business.

Operators are under pressure to find new reserves in more difficult and often remote locations. They need to keep costs in check without sacrificing safety standards.

And BP and other supermajors have set out ambitious goals to reduce their carbon dioxide and methane emissions, in line with the Paris agreement's climate change objectives.

Birrell’s current job touches on all these issues. He took the London-based post after five years in Azerbaijan, where he headed BP’s upstream operations in the region.

“I am responsible for safety in upstream, production and drilling globally, some supply chain management and offshore engineering,” he says.

Low-carbon agenda

He is also charged with the company’s upstream “modernisation and transformation programme and low-carbon agenda,” he adds.

“As part of the energy transition, we need to modernise. We need to modernise to thrive.”

That entails greater uptake of digital technologies, formulating “more agile ways of working”, and changing what Birrell calls the “culture or mindset of upstream”, placing more emphasis on collaboration.

He cites as examples JIP 33, the ongoing project to create standardised specifications for procurement, and BP’s Plant Operations Advisor, a cloud-based analytics system developed with GE-controlled Baker Hughes that the company has rolled out on assets in Angola and the Gulf of Mexico and is expanding to global installations this year and next.

“Basically, it’s IoT (internet of things) for oil and gas production facilities,” Birrell says. “We get thousands and thousands of bits of information coming from wells and facilities operations. Plant Operations Advisor brings it together on the desk in step one.

“Step two is taking all that data and adding (artificial intelligence) so that we can become more predictive. So, if something is happening that could be unsafe or could result in a shutdown, we can anticipate it and intervene before it happens. There’s huge potential in that.”

The digital oilfield is a long way from the farm in Fife, Scotland, just north of Edinburgh, where Birrell, 56, had what he describes as “a very pleasant upbringing”.

The family home was on a hill overlooking a construction yard in the seaside town of Methil.

“At that time, it was constantly building jackets, and many of the folks I went to school with, their parents worked in the construction yard. So that was my first exposure to the oil and gas industry,” he says.

One day he headed out on his bicycle along the Firth of Forth to watch a team from Burmah Oil, later acquired by BP, drill an onshore exploration well.

“I always had the view that I wanted to work in something that had big equipment,” Birrell recalls. “And oil and gas, with helicopters and boats, seemed to be about as big as it gets.”

He studied electrical engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and joined Schlumberger upon graduation, where he trained to be a wireline engineer. The stint was a short one.

“I wanted to work in the North Sea and I wasn’t on a track for that,” he says.

He landed a job with BP in Aberdeen and spent the better part of a decade “bouncing around various roles in the North Sea” on legacy assets, since divested, such as Magnus, Forties and Sullom Voe.

Birrell had his first assignment in Azerbaijan in 1999, around the time that BP, newly merged with Amoco, was appraising the giant Shah Deniz field.

Posts in Canada, Alaska, London and Houston followed before he returned to Azerbaijan in 2012.

He was called back to London around the time BP was intensifying its energy transition push.

The company has pledged to reduce annual CO₂ emissions by 3.5 million tonnes by 2025 compared with 2015 levels, with 3 million tonnes to come from the upstream business.

“We are well over halfway to meeting our 2025 target,” he says.

“Within our existing production and drilling portfolio we’ve got lots and lots of little projects running that, when you add them all up, they become material to reduce our carbon portfolio. Improved energy efficiency and reduced flaring are the two big ones we have worked on and have had results from.”

The company has also made strides in reducing methane emissions and is supporting carbon capture, utilisation and storage research and development through the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative.

Leisure pursuits

While he misses Azerbaijan, Birrell says he is happy to be back in London, closer to his three adult sons and where he can indulge in some leisure pursuits.

“I run marathons, play golf —very badly. I’m a tremendously enthusiastic skier, and I have an allotment. I’m living life in the fast lane, growing organic vegetables in my allotment in London.”

He has no regrets about the decision he made when he was a youngster in Fife.

“I’m more excited about the industry than I ever have been. I still get motivated by what we do,” Birrell says.

“We can be a very positive part of the energy transition through lowering our carbon footprint and by investing in new forms of energy.

“I also think we can create this balance between fuels that are kinder to the planet at the same time as making sure that people who don’t have access to low-cost energy start to get access, to improve the quality of their lives,” he says.

“I’m still excited and motivated by the industry that I joined more than 30 years ago. I still like big equipment, but it’s technology now that is really making the difference.”

Weekly

BP's Birrell facing his biggest challenge in 30 years