Bett, eu particularmente acredito que estão utilizando uma forma "reduzida" para "operating cost pool", que faria todo o sentido considerando oo contexto.

Cost pool definition
December 21, 2020
What is a Cost Pool?
A cost pool is a grouping of individual costs, typically by department or service center. Cost allocations are then made from the cost pool. For example, the cost of the maintenance department is accumulated in a cost pool and then allocated to those departments using its services.

Cost pools are commonly used for the allocation of factory overhead to units of production, as required by several accounting frameworks. They are also used in activity-based costing to allocate costs to activities. A business that wants to allocate costs at a highly-refined level may choose to do so using a number of cost pools.

https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/2017/5/4/cost-pool#...