Chevron and ExxonMobil are considering entering the electricity business, with the US oil majors working on deals to use natural gas and carbon capture to power the technology industry's AI data centers, executives with the companies said separately on 11 December.
Chevron has been in talks for more than a year about supplying natural gas-fired power, coupled with carbon capture technologies, to data centers, Jeff Gustavson, president of Chevron New Energies, said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York.
Gustavson's comments follow a similar announcement by Exxon Mobil, which said it was working to provide data centers with low-carbon electricity by coupling carbon capture with natural-gas-fired power plants by the end of the decade.
"We are working on this as well," Gustavson said, adding that Chevron's experience supplying natural gas around the world, and operating natural gas fired power equipment, positions the company well to meet booming electricity demand from data centers.
"It fits many of our capabilities—natural gas, construction, operations, and being able to provide customers with a low-carbon pathway on power through CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage), geothermal, and maybe some other technologies," Gustavson said.