Chevron expands India Hub to boost AI and digital capabilities

Chevron India opened a 312,000 square foot facility for its Engineering and Innovation Excellence Center in Bengaluru on Thursday, a year and a half after launching this unit. The unit was launched to consolidate its technical work and enhance its digital and AI capabilities.

India is playing a growing role in energy transition, as technology plays a central role in cost reduction and competition.

The U.S. oil giant also targets cost savings of up to $3 billion by 2026, and streamlines its global operations.

Akshay Sahni is the country head of Chevron India. He said that they were decentralized until recently. The center now aims to be efficient.

"We use AI in order to improve the performance and efficiency of our machines." We use AI to improve how we drill for oil & gas... It's more than just reducing headcount."

The timing of this project and its focus, which comes months after Chevron announced that it would be cutting 15% to 20% from its global workforce, highlights a growing dependence on India's digital and engineering talent as U.S. oil and gas firms centralize their work and move high-skilled jobs to cheaper hubs.

Sahni stated that India's STEM and IT talent played a major role in his decision. "There are not too many places around the world where you can hire across disciplines...mechanical, civil, petroleum, geology, electrical," he said.

The center plans to invest approximately $1 billion in infrastructure, technology and people over the next several years.

This includes digital twins and high-performance computing to model geology in real time.

The Houston-based company does not plan to open additional ENGINE hubs in India.

Sahni stated, "For the time being our main focus is to expand our Bengaluru centre... upgrading our people with technology and implementing more meaningful workflows." (Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

(source: Reuters)