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

Exxon mobile and Chevron is jumping into the race to power artificial intelligence data centers, as the two tech companies bet oil majors will eventually turn to natural gas to meet their overwhelming energy needs.

Exxon reveal plans this week to build a natural gas plant to power a data center. The main oil says it would be used then carbon capture and storage technology to reduce the plant's emissions by 90%.

“We are working with other major cap companies to quickly implement a solution that would provide both high reliability and low carbon power to meet the growing demand for computing power for artificial intelligence,” said Exxon Chief Financial Officer Kathryn Mikells. to Wall Street analysts on Wednesday without disclosing the names of the companies with which the oil major is working on the project.

The gas plant would not be dependent on the electric grid and would be independent of utilities, allowing for faster installation than traditional power generation projects, Mikells said. 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 pipeline to transport CO2 from several industrial customers to permanent storage sites. The oil major estimates that AI data centers could decarbonize 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 our company is well positioned to participate in,” Gustavson said. Chevron is a major national gas producer with power generation equipment and huge tracts of land that could be used for data centers, the executive said.

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

As a result, the tech companies have shown interest in nuclear power. Microsoft is helping to bring the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor back online by buying power from the plant. Amazon and Alphabetical Google Unit investing in next generation small nuclear reactors. Meta recently called on sending companies proposals for building new nuclear plants.

But the fossil fuel industry and energy analysts have argued for months that the tech sector will ultimately including natural gas because nuclear plants just 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 US to meet immediate and long-term AI power needs.

“If you're betting on nuclear and something comes down the road, we have a long road ahead of us,” Woods told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. small nuclear reactors that investing in tech companies is 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 experience managing large projects to help install power generation for data centers in the early stages of ramping up AI, Woods said.

Once the early ramp-up is complete, Exxon will focus on capturing and storing emissions associated with data centers, and supplying decarbonized natural gas to power plants. is running AI, Woods said.