Big Oil wants Big Tech to help power AI data centers

Exxon Mobil and Chevron Artificial intelligence is racing to power data centers as the two oil giants look to eventually turn to natural gas to meet their massive energy needs.

Exxon announced his plans Building a natural gas plant to power a data center this week. The oil major says he will use it later carbon capture and storage technology to reduce plant emissions by 90%.

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

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

Exxon has invested heavily in building a carbon capture network with more than 900 miles of pipelines along the Gulf Coast to transport CO2 from several industrial customers to permanent storage sites. According to Neft’s main estimates, decarbonizing AI data centers could account for 20% of the total addressable market for carbon capture and storage by 2050.

Chevron is also working on ways to strengthen its 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 major national gas producer with huge tracts of land that could be used for power generation equipment and data centers, the executive said.

Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta primarily wind and bought solar energy for data centers as they try to reduce the climate impact of their business. But you need strength artificial intelligence is growing a lot technology companies are looking for more reliable sources of electricity from renewable energy.

As a result, technology companies have shown increasing interest in nuclear power. Microsoft helps bring Three Mile Island nuclear reactor back online by receiving power from the plant. Amazon and Google section of the alphabet they are investing in new generation, small nuclear reactors. Meta recently called for companies to ship proposals to build new nuclear power plants.

But the fossil fuel industry and energy analysts have argued for months that the technology sector is the bottom line to receive natural gas because nuclear power plants take too long to build.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods took a look at nuclear power on Wednesday, arguing that his company is better positioned than any company in the United States to meet the energy needs of artificial intelligence in the near and near term.

“If you’re betting on nuclear power and something is going to happen, we’ve got a long way to go,” Woods told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. The small nuclear reactors is not expected to reach commercialization until the 2030s, when tech companies are investing.

Exxon has no plans to start a power generation business, CEO says. Woods said the company plans to use its experience leading large projects to help install power generation for data centers in the early stages of AI development.

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