Big Oil wants to help Big Tech power artificial intelligence data centers

Exxon Mobil and Chevron are jumping into the race to power artificial intelligence data centers, as the two oil majors are betting that technology companies will eventually turn to natural gas to meet their tremendous energy needs.

Exxon plans revealed this week to build a natural gas plant to power a data center. Most of the oil says that after use carbon capture and storage technology to reduce plant emissions by 90%.

“We are working with other major manufacturers to quickly deploy a solution that provides both high reliability and low carbon intensity power to meet the growing demand for computing power for artificial intelligence,” Kathryn Mikells, Chief Financial Officer of Exxon, told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. without disclosing the names of the companies, most of the oil works with the project.

The gas plant will not rely on the electric grid and would be independent of the utility, which allows for a faster installation than traditional power generation projects, said Mikells. Exxon has not disclosed a client or timeline for the project.

Exxon has invested heavily in building a carbon capture network along the Gulf Coast with more than 900 miles of pipelines to transport CO2 from several industrial customers to permanent storage sites. Oil major estimates that decarbonizing AI data centers could represent up to 20% of their total addressable market for carbon capture and storage by 2050.

Chevron is also working on ways to power data centers, Jeff Gustavson, president of the oil company’s new energy business, said at the Reuters NEXT conference on Wednesday.

“This is something that our company is very well positioned to participate in,” Gustavson said. Chevron is a large national gas producer with power generation equipment and very large land that could be used for data centers, the executive said.

Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta they mainly bought wind and solar energy for their data centers as they seek to mitigate their businesses’ impact on the climate. But power is needed artificial intelligence is growing so big that technology companies are looking for sources of electricity that are more reliable than renewable energy.

Technology companies have shown a growing interest in nuclear power as a result. Microsoft helps bring the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor back online by getting power from the plant. Amazon and Google units of the alphabet invest in the next generation nuclear reactors, small. Meta recently asked companies to submit proposals to build new nuclear power plants.

But the fossil fuel industry and energy analysts have argued for months that the tech sector will eventually to embrace natural gas because nuclear power plants take too long to build.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods took a swipe at nuclear power on Wednesday and said his company is better positioned than any in the U.S. to meet AI’s immediate energy needs. and nearby

“If you’re betting on nuclear and something that’s coming down the road, there’s a long road ahead of us,” Woods told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. U small nuclear reactors that the technology companies are investing in are not expected to reach commercialization until the 2030s.

Exxon is not looking to start a power generation business, the CEO said. The company plans to use its expertise leading large projects to help install power generation for data centers in the early stages of the AI ​​ramp, Woods said.

Once the initial ramp is done, Exxon will focus on capturing and storing emissions associated with data centers, and providing decarbonized natural gas to power plants that run AI, Woods said.