bp Trinidad and To­ba­go has of­fi­cial­ly wel­comed David Camp­bell as its new pres­i­dent.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease yes­ter­day from the com­pa­ny, Camp­bell, whose ap­point­ment was an­nounced in Au­gust, of­fi­cial­ly took up du­ties on Oc­to­ber.

He suc­ceeds Claire Fitz­patrick who has moved on to an­oth­er role with­in bp.

Ear­li­er this month Camp­bell was part of the team head­ed by bp CEO Bernard Looney who met with Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Stu­art Young. Fol­low­ing this meet­ing bpTT and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NGC) an­nounced they had reached agree­ment for the re­new­al of their gas sales con­tract. It was nev­er pub­licly an­nounced how much gas the agree­ment was for but mul­ti­ple sources with knowl­edge of the ne­go­ti­a­tion con­firm it was for a tranche of 508 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day (mm­cf/d).

Camp­bell is al­so as­sum­ing lead­er­ship of the coun­try’s largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er at a time when its pro­duc­tion has al­most halved in the last three years fol­low­ing a failed in­fill drilling pro­gramme and the fail­ure of projects like the Cas­sia C to start up on time.

bpTT’s new pres­i­dent has as­sumed reign of the com­pa­ny days af­ter the an­nounced fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion on Cypre de­vel­op­ment which will move for­ward with first gas ex­pect­ed in 2025.

The re­lease said Camp­bell spent the past weeks vis­it­ing bpTT’s on­shore and off­shore op­er­at­ing sites, tour­ing the At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty and meet­ing with staff and var­i­ous ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers.

Camp­bell said: “I’m ex­cit­ed about head­ing a busi­ness which is very im­por­tant to Trinidad and To­ba­go and bp. Over the past few weeks, I’ve tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn more about the Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness, the tal­ent­ed and com­mit­ted peo­ple who work here, and I’ve had the plea­sure to ex­pe­ri­ence the warmth and hos­pi­tal­i­ty of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. My fo­cus will be on the ef­fi­cient de­vel­op­ment of our gas re­sources for the ben­e­fit of the coun­try and com­pa­ny and sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties for the broad­er de­vel­op­ment of the en­er­gy sec­tor, in­clud­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for clean en­er­gy. It is an ex­cit­ing time to be join­ing the Trinidad busi­ness. We have just an­nounced two ma­jor achieve­ments with the sign­ing of the NGC gas sales con­tract and the sanc­tion de­ci­sion on Cypre and over the next quar­ter I am look­ing for­ward ea­ger­ly to first gas from our Cas­sia C project, the com­mence­ment of drilling on our small pools pro­gram and ad­vanc­ing the Light­sourcebp/bp/Shell so­lar project.”

Camp­bell joins bpTT hav­ing spent the last 8 years in the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent bp Rus­sia. He has been with bp for 38 years in dif­fer­ent com­mer­cial, op­er­a­tional and tech­ni­cal lead­er­ship roles.