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PMO Hive acts as the independent control tower for hyperscale delivery. We integrate cost, schedule, and risk governance across every tier of a programme — ensuring clarity, compliance, and control from day one.
understanding /pmo
When Oil Majors Build Data Centres, Who Manages the Programme?
4 min read · understanding /pmo
Chevron is building a 2.5 GW natural gas power plant in West Texas to supply electricity directly to a data centre operator. ExxonMobil is developing a 1.2 GW facility with NextEra Energy for a hyperscale campus in the Southeast. Both projects bypass the grid entirely, operating behind the meter with carbon capture integration and final investment decisions expected in 2026.
These are not side ventures. They represent a fundamental shift: oil and gas supermajors are becoming hyperscale infrastructure developers.
And that shift creates a programme delivery challenge that neither the energy industry nor the data centre industry has faced before.
The numbers driving this convergence are stark. US data centre energy consumption is expected to triple within three years. Grid interconnection queues stretch beyond 36 months. High-voltage transformer lead times exceed three years. Gartner projects that power shortages will constrain 40% of AI data centres by 2027.
The hyperscalers' response has been decisive: become your own utility. Chevron's partnership with GE Vernova and Engine No. 1 aims to deliver up to 4 GW through co-located gas turbine plants. Their first West Texas facility targets operations in 2027, with capacity to scale to 5 GW. ExxonMobil is pairing gas-fired generation with its existing carbon capture infrastructure along the US Gulf Coast, positioning itself as what CEO Darren Woods described as the near-term solution for low-carbon data centre power.
The scale is energy megaproject territory. Chevron already operates nearly 5 GW of behind-the-meter power globally — at Gorgon in Australia, at Tengiz in Kazakhstan. ExxonMobil's CCS network spans over 1,000 miles of pipeline. These are organisations that have spent decades building and operating the exact infrastructure that hyperscale now demands.
Five years ago, suggesting that Chevron and ExxonMobil would compete with each other to power AI data centres would have been dismissed. Today, both companies are in advanced negotiations with hyperscale operators, with Crusoe already purchasing 4.5 GW of gas turbine capacity through Chevron's venture.
What is driving this is not diversification for its own sake — it is structural alignment. The capabilities required to deliver a multi-gigawatt behind-the-meter power facility are almost identical to those required for LNG terminals and offshore platforms: fuel supply chain management, turbine procurement and commissioning, high-voltage electrical integration, environmental permitting, and the coordination of EPC contractors across complex interfaces.
This is territory that PMO Hive's leadership has navigated for decades. Clarke Shepherd and Norrie Martin built their careers across offshore gas development and critical national infrastructure — including the Cygnus gas field in the Southern UK North Sea, the UK's single largest producing gas field, a £1.4 billion development comprising bridge-linked platforms, subsea infrastructure, and a 51 km export pipeline to the Bacton terminal. That experience — managing multi-contractor interfaces on complex offshore programmes where a single commissioning delay cascades across an entire production system — is precisely what led them to recognise that hyperscale data centres had crossed the complexity threshold into energy megaproject territory. The technical vocabulary is different — rack capacity instead of barrels, GPU clusters instead of compressor trains — but the programme disciplines are the same: earned-value management, integrated master scheduling, independent commissioning assurance, and rigorous EPC oversight.
Here is the challenge that the headlines miss. Chevron and ExxonMobil have the capital, the gas, and the operational heritage. The hyperscalers have the demand and the willingness to sign long-term power purchase agreements. What sits between announcement and energisation is programme delivery.
A 2.5 GW behind-the-meter facility is not a single asset — it is a programme of interdependent workstreams: civil works, turbine installation, high-voltage switchgear, cooling systems, fuel gas conditioning, emissions monitoring, and the IT infrastructure that justifies the entire investment. Each interface carries schedule risk. Each contractor brings their own delivery culture. And unlike a traditional power plant, the client is not a utility with decades of commissioning experience — it is a technology company that measures success in rack deployment velocity.
This is where schedule slippage kills hyperscale. A two-month delay on turbine commissioning does not just push back a power milestone. It cascades into server deployment, network activation, and customer onboarding. In programmes valued in the billions, that cascade converts directly into stranded capital and contractual exposure.
The governance required to manage these interfaces — the independent programme controls that sit above every EPC contractor and hold the integrated schedule together — is not something that either oil majors or hyperscalers have traditionally procured. It is the discipline that energy megaprojects taught us, and it is precisely what this new class of hybrid energy-digital infrastructure demands.
/pmo "When an oil supermajor builds a power plant for a technology company, neither party's traditional PMO is designed for the interface. That gap between energy delivery culture and digital deployment velocity is where programmes fail — and where independent governance earns its value."
The US is the current battleground, but the implications extend directly to the Middle East. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE already operate some of the world's most advanced gas turbine infrastructure. Qatar's Facility E IWPP — a 2.4 GW project — is under EPC contract. Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN initiative targets 1.9 GW of data centre capacity by 2030.
The Gulf has every structural advantage: abundant gas, sovereign-backed capital, competitive electricity tariffs, and decades of turbine commissioning and operations experience. What the Chevron and ExxonMobil playbook demonstrates is that these advantages are not theoretical — they are being commercially validated at gigawatt scale.
The question for the Gulf is not whether it has the assets. It is whether the programme governance infrastructure can match the pace of investment. That is a question PMO Hive was built to answer.
PMO Hive exists at the intersection of energy megaproject heritage and hyperscale delivery. Our founding team's decades of experience across LNG terminals, offshore platforms, and critical infrastructure gave us the governance frameworks that these hybrid programmes demand. From our current work on the hyperscale campus in Finland to our advisory presence in Qatar, we provide the independent programme oversight that ensures capital-intensive, multi-contractor programmes deliver on schedule and on budget.
The tools are the same. The stakes have never been higher.
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