Houston-based Chevron selected the Permian Basin in west Texas as home of its first natural gas power project to support growing demands by AI data centers. Chevron said Wednesday it hopes to bring the power plant online by 2027. The company, one of the biggest producers in the Permian Basin, did not reveal the data center’s location and end user.
Houston Chronicle reported, “Chevron’s choice of west Texas for the site of its first power project is part of a growing trend of power centers being located farther from major cities and closer to fuel sources such as the oil- and gas-rich Permian Basin.”
U.S. Department of Energy said data centers are expected to triple their energy usage by 2028 to account for 12 percent of the nation’s electricity consumption. Some of the nation’s largest oil and gas companies plan to power data center development. For example, in December Exxon announced plans for a natural gas-powered plant.
Eimear Bonner, Chevron CFO, said the company’s power plant is expected to produce 2.5 gigawatts of off-grid power – enough energy to power more than one million homes – with the potential to double the output. Bloomberg said it’s “the beginning of a new line of business for the oil giant to capitalize on the boom in artificial intelligence.”
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