A Greenwich Green councillor has defended his career in the oil and gas industry saying “it’s not really an issue”.
Cllr Lakshan Saldin said his work over the last 10 years had been focused on the transition away from fossil fuels to more renewable energy sources. The Charlton Hornfair councillor joined the Green Party in January after resigning from the Labour Party last September.
The Greens have committed to stopping new oil and gas projects if they get into power in Westminster, choosing to “invest properly” in the UK’s transition to renewable energy to become a zero-carbon society “as soon as possible”.
An engineer by trade, Cllr Saldin has worked on international energy and energy transition projects for decades. He is currently the director of two consultancy businesses—Knova Ltd. and Agilis Services Ltd.—which cater to clients who work in the energy sector.
Although he has worked on numerous oil and gas projects in the past, Cllr Saldin said the last 10 years of his career had been spent working to reduce the harm of these fossil fuel projects or to help create renewable energy projects.
He said: “It’s not really an issue, to be honest. My background and history is in the oil and gas industry and it’s a sector in which I still work, but all of my work now is focused on precisely that transition away from hydrocarbons and towards net zero. It’s all around energy efficiency, demand reduction and low carbon technology.”
Cllr Saldin said that any work he does on oil and gas projects now is to incrementally increase their already lengthy lifecycles in order to prevent new fossil fuel operations from starting up. He also acknowledged that the UK was still heavily reliant on fossil fuels for its energy supply.
Cllr Saldin said: “Oil and gas, hydrocarbons, coal and other dirty sources as well, they currently make up 75 per cent of the UK’s energy mix. It’s not something we can just switch off overnight. So it’s all about minimisation and managing that transition away from it.”
Some of the projects Cllr Saldin has worked on are listed on the website of Hanscomb Intercontinental, an advisory firm he has worked for since 2021 that describes him as a “globally recognised oil & gas industry expert advisor with experience covering all aspects and phases of engineering development and project management”.
Projects listed under his recent assignments include being a project advisor to an offshore oil and gas development project in the Baltic sea, technical advisor to a private equity organisation on an international oil and gas portfolio acquisition, project sponsor to a Nigerian oil field tank farm project and a project and technical advisor to a Nigerian oil facility life extension project.
Cllr Saldin explained that many of these projects took place several years ago and that he had contacted Hanscomb to request the page be updated. He said that his work on the first Nigerian project was to avoid water discharging from the oil field tank farm into an “area of environmental sensitivity”.
The second Nigerian oil facility was 50 years old and had begun to leak oil into a nearby swamp. Cllr Saldin worked to stop the leak and turn waste gas from the project into a domestic gas supply used by nearby residents, preventing them from burning coal and wood to power their homes.
Cllr Saldin said he feels his work in the oil and gas industry aligned with his party politics as, like the Green Party, he is focused on the move towards renewable energy.
When discussing his change in political allegiance, he said he left the Labour Party by “mutual agreement” as he was not willing to support several national stances of the party. These included Labour’s stances on trans people, the removal of the two-child benefit cap, changes to personal independence payments and his vocal support of Palestine.
He said he was moved to join the Greens four months later because of the actions of Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, and the Government’s decision to extend the Indefinite Leave to Remain status route from five to 10 years. He described her policies as a “move towards Reform’s race baiting rhetoric”.
Cllr Saldin added: “Forget not being the party I joined, it wasn’t even the party that I had left in September anymore. That was the final push because the Greens are actually talking about my progressive values.”
He said the election of Zack Polanski as the Green Party Leader was also a factor in his joining. When it came to his role as a councillor in Greenwich, Cllr Saldin said he felt “really, really, really good” about how the Greens would do in the May elections.
He described the Labour-controlled council’s recent decision to limit public questioning at council meetings as “anti-democratic” and “completely out of order”. He said public questioning had increased over the past year because of certain council decisions such as the authority’s choice to remove staffed provision from three of its adventure play centres.
Cllr Saldin added: “The unpopularity of the decision has brought a whole load of traditionally non-political people to ask questions. We’re here to fight attempts to stop local democracy.”
