Nowadays, businesses need to be careful about their relationships with other industries – especially the oil industry. Guilt by association is instant for anyone who does business with corporate world devotees. And now Big Tech is in the spotlight.
Microsoft, Amazon and their peers have been working with the oil industry for years – ever since the oil industry realized that entering the digital age might not be such a bad idea.
Big Tech software is essential to facilitating oil and gas exploration and production, making the industry critical to Big Oil’s recent financial success with oil prices.
Bloomberg recently mentioned in one Text On Big Oil and Big Tech, how Big Tech has been making transition commitments, but in the meantime, has been helping Big Oil boost production, has drawn criticism.
According to the article, he argues that Big Tech’s ongoing work with the oil industry is actually helping to bring about a transition to low-carbon energy. Some critics, however, are not convinced. The report quotes a former Microsoft engineer as saying, “If you do something efficiently, it will do more.”
This seems to be a problem for those who argue for the existence of oil in the ground.
Of course efficiency improves results. But judging by the balance of oil market forecasts, Big Oil has not been in a state of global production growth recently. Big Oil, like Big Tech, is promoting its acquisitions in wind and solar space, promoting its emissions reduction efforts and, in the case of Shell, urgently selling assets under court orders. Buyer It mandated a 45 percent reduction by 2030 from 2019 levels.
The critic quoted above by Bloomberg has resigned from Microsoft for working with oil giants. Labor activism is a well-documented phenomenon in the Big Tech sphere: workers from Amazon and Google, for example, staged protests and pressured management to cut ties with Big Oil over the pre-pandemic climate.
At a 2019 meeting, some Microsoft employees protested the company’s continued business relationship with Big Oil, calling it unethical. According to a USA Today report about that meeting, CEO Satya Nadella argued with Big Oil that these companies are investing heavily in sustainable product research and development.
“There is no fossil fuel CEO sitting there and saying, ‘You know, I’m not denying climate change,'” Nadella said, according to a transcript provided by Microsoft employees at the meeting. “If anything, everyone is saying, ‘Sure, the rule is, let’s have pricing mechanisms that will get us into the future.'”
Critics insist that Big Tech’s ties to Big Oil contribute to higher emissions. But the truth of the matter is that it’s the increased efficiency that saves energy – because it saves effort.
A big part of what Big Tech is doing to Big Oil is crunching the vast amounts of data generated during exploration activities. This data analysis helps the oil company to choose the best drilling site, which reduces the risk of the well drying up. The fewer holes you need to drill, the less energy you use. That won’t be enough for critics who want to end all oil production, but that’s not happening anytime soon.
That’s not all. Technology is helping make the oil industry safer. Smart tech for oil field workers and site supervisors and drone deployment for pipeline monitoring are just two ways technology can be good not only for the oil industry, but for the environment.
Those who focus only on carbon emissions are not happy. Big Tech’s cloud computing services are boosting Big Oil’s output. This bodes ill for Big Tech’s own emissions reduction targets. But blaming it all on big oil is taking it too far.
For example, Amazon reported Emissions for 2021 show an 18 percent annual increase due to increased trade during the pandemic. In the year Compared to 2019, when the company first reported emissions, the footprint was 40 percent higher. This had nothing to do with Big Oil. It was linked to the need for more planes and trucks to deliver products to customers during the pandemic, which kept millions at home for months.
In the year By 2019, Big Oil’s investments in cloud computing are estimated at $20 billion. Even though Google is out of this market after winning a pressure game played by its employees on the company’s management, the world needs more oil than it does now. The world is desperate for cheap energy, and Big Tech is helping Big Oil provide it.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
More top reads from Oilprice.com:
