Partnerships can help balance the need to reduce emissions, secure energy supplies and ensure affordable prices, says IPIECA chief executive officer Brian Sullivan
Energy has entered the age of the trilemma: the world must cut emissions, keep supplies secure and ensure energy remains affordable, doing so in a way that delivers for all people and cares for nature. Alongside decarbonisation now sit the resilience of supply chains, infrastructure and the ecosystems energy systems depend on. Recent events have exposed just how many of these variables governments, companies and communities must manage at once. No single actor, however capable, can manage that complexity alone, which is why collaboration across the industry and beyond should be treated as core business rather than a talking point.
Consider energy security itself. Recent disruptions have made the risk concrete and underscored how interconnected the global energy system has become. Meeting energy demand in one region increasingly depends on decisions made in another. Maintaining secure and affordable supplies therefore requires producers, consumers, governments and industry to work across borders, strengthening the systems that connect resources with the markets that need them. That level of coordination – across infrastructure planning, common standards, long-term investment and more – is difficult for any single company or government to deliver alone.
The same logic applies to decarbonisation, where collaboration remains a powerful engine of progress. One example of that collaborative model can be seen on the ground in Brazil, Azerbaijan and Angola, where TotalEnergies is working with Petrobras, SOCAR and Sonangol to use drone-mounted sensors to find and measure methane emissions at oil and gas facilities. Extending beyond one company’s operated assets allows national oil companies to build measurement capacity and apply the findings within their own facilities. Ipieca – the global oil and gas association for advancing environmental and social performance across the energy transition – has developed shared guidance for deploying methane-detection technologies, along with the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP), the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) and the Energy Institute.
Then there is the human dimension. The transition is not just a technical or financial undertaking. It plays out in specific places, affecting specific communities, sometimes with limited infrastructure or institutional capacity to begin with. Energy projects increasingly succeed or fail based on whether they have genuine social licence: whether local governments and communities were engaged early, whether trade-offs were made transparently, whether grievances have somewhere real to go. A project built without genuine engagement is a house built without foundations, it may stand for a while, but it will not hold.
Organisations like IPIECA have a distinct role to play here. The organisation does not lobby; it convenes, bringing together national and international oil and gas companies with the United Nations, development institutions and civil society to translate global frameworks into guidance that works on the ground. A testament to the power of partnership is the global end of leaded petrol through the work of UN Environment Programme (UNEP)-led global Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles (PCFV), of which Ipieca is a founding member. Working together, governments, civil society and industry ended the use of leaded petrol with massive health, environment, climate and socio-economic benefits for the 117 countries where we have eliminated its use.
Progress at this scale depends on keeping channels open across the energy system, particularly when geopolitical tensions threaten to pull them apart. If collaboration is to remain more than an aspiration, it requires forums capable of bringing together actors with diverse perspectives. ADIPEC, the global energy event held in the United Arab Emirates this November, will be one of the places where governments, operators, investors and technology leaders examine what addressing the energy trilemma means in practice. The real test is whether that cooperation holds when conditions deteriorate.
Climate, nature and social commitments retain their importance as operating conditions become more difficult. Instability increases the value of shared standards, comparable data and pooled expertise. It also increases the risk of fragmented decisions driven by short-term pressure. Consistent cooperation provides a route through that uncertainty.
The industry will ultimately be judged by what it delivers. Credibility will rest on measurable progress, transparent reporting and the ability to apply successful approaches beyond individual companies or markets. There is a genuine appetite to work through difficult trade-offs collectively, and the examples are already visible.
As global energy strategies continue to evolve, the quality of that collaboration will shape how much secure, affordable and lower-emissions capacity can be delivered, and how quickly.
Brian Sullivan is the CEO of IPIECA
Source: Upstream
