Chevron signed a 20-year power delivery agreement with Microsoft. And 94% of folks think that’s not the last such O&G deal this year.
I ran a poll last week following the big Chevron-Microsoft announcement.
The question was which oil & gas producer would follow Chevron’s lead and get into the power delivery game by the end of 2026.
I made sure to separate power delivery from selling gas to a power company that then generates and delivers electricity to the end user (a data center in the Chevron-Microsoft example).
I expect tons of gas producers will want to sell their gas to power companies that are feeding the data center and AI boom.
But it’s a totally different game to both produce the gas and then to generate and deliver the power yourself, as Chevron is doing (through a wholly owned subsidiary).
So the poll asked, who’s next?
The most interesting result to me was the fact that 94% of respondents think we’re going to get another similar announcement by the end of this year.
The majority of votes (51%) were cast for ExxonMobil, which is far from surprising.
It’s a massive company with a global footprint, an ironclad balance sheet, and a wealth of internal experience and acumen.
If Chevron can pull something like this off, ExxonMobil certainly can too.
Nearly a quarter of votes (23%) were in favor of large independents like ConocoPhillips, Diamondback, Occidental, etc.
What these companies lack in size and domain breadth relative to ExxonMobil, they gain in sheer number.
There are a lot of these independents out there that can plausibly get involved in power generation, either by themselves or through partnerships.
Just over a fifth of votes (21%) were for another major, where we’d have Shell, bp, and TotalEnergies as prime candidates.
And again, just 6% of folks think we won’t get another announcement this year.
Not only am I curious about who goes next here, but I’m curious about the broader posture across the industry.
Do oil & gas producers see power generation as a plausible growth area with important advantages relative to exploration & production?
Or is the industry going to decide that power generation is a bridge too far, and it’s worth concentrating on what upstream players have historically done best?
If and when the next announcement comes will give us some important additional information on this front.
