Technology plays an important role in helping Chevron deliver the energy that fuels human progress and economic growth around the world.
What differentiates Chevron is our ability to combine technologies—our own proprietary technologies and those we develop with our partners—in unique, productive ways. Our technical and cultural strengths enable us to identify and develop assets safely, efficiently and reliably, with a focus on long-term growth.
The technologies we deploy help us find and commercialize new oil and gas fields in highly complex environments at lower costs and recover more resources from existing fields. They enable us to integrate data and information so that we can manage our global assets efficiently. And they help us advance emerging energy with the goal of developing scalable and economical new resources while reducing our environmental footprint.
Chevron has three technology companies that support our businesses in this effort: Energy Technology, Information Technology and Technology Ventures. The work that these companies do is integrated across Chevron, ensuring a strong bond between the technologies we use and our business strategy.
- Chevron Energy Technology Company develops and manages technology to help find and produce new oil and gas reserves, enhance recovery in existing fields, and optimize productivity of downstream assets. It is the first company of its kind in the oil and gas industry.
- Chevron Information Technology Company supports our entire business by integrating information technologies to connect people, ideas and data. Applications we develop include "intelligent" oil and gas fields, automation and visualization technologies, and technical networks.
- Chevron Technology Ventures identifies, acquires and tests emerging technologies and helps integrate them into our core businesses. It has invested more than $200 million in emerging technology companies and integrated more than 100 new technologies into Chevron's operations since 2000.
Chevron also has a business, Chevron Energy Solutions, that engineers and installs energy efficiency and renewable power projects for government, education and business customers in the United States. Since 2000, the company has developed hundreds of facility improvements that are reducing customers' energy costs by an average of nearly 30 percent.
Some 2010 Highlights
- We deployed next-generation interpretation and earth-modeling software systems that can help track the movement of oil through rock reservoirs to help Chevron manage reservoir assets more efficiently.
- We launched INTERSECT, a next-generation reservoir simulator designed to help Chevron produce more oil and gas from fields in Venezuela, Indonesia and the Partitioned Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
- We piloted an autonomous underwater vehicle operation in the shallow water of the Gulf of Mexico. These vehicles could improve monitoring of deepwater subsea systems and be used for intervention planning and in response to major incidents such as hurricanes.
- We implemented interactive 3-D models to train operators of the Tahiti Field in the Gulf of Mexico and the Agbami floating production, storage and offloading vessel in Nigeria. This training technique accelerates new facility commissioning, reduces downtime and improves safety.
- We completed a 1-megawatt concentrating photovoltaic solar facility at Chevron Mining's molybdenum mine in Questa, New Mexico.
- We constructed and commissioned a next-generation 740-kilowatt photovoltaic installation on the site of a former refinery in Bakersfield, California. Seven solar panel technologies are being tested to establish the viability of these technologies at other Chevron sites.
To learn more, see the latest issues of Next*™, Chevron's technology magazine.
Updated: March 2011