This is a story about growth and
renewal. Not long ago, all the talk was
about the looming end of fossil fuels.
But now it looks like much of that talk
was premature. One of those who was
steering his global energy company
through the ups and the downs is Mike
Worth, chairman and CEO of Chevron, who
says that what the industry needed all
along was balance.
>> Whenever you talk about energy, there
are really three things that matter. And
this is whether you're a company or a
country.
uh affordability because
energy that people can't afford doesn't
change lives. Reliability because
reliability enables an economy to be
built and then protecting the
environment. And in policy discussions
or in business strategy and if we focus
only on one of those, we suboptimize on
the other two. Well, I think there was a
genuine hope to transition to a
carbonfree economy very rapidly and I
think what that led people to miss was
the reasons why the energy system we
have today is in place. Whenever you
have balance, there are some trade-offs.
How do you minimize the damage to the
climate while pursuing the other goals?
>> The first thing you do is you focus on
efficiency. the best way to find new
energy is not to use energy wastefully
that we have today. And so efficiency in
uh industrial facilities, in
transportation, uh in manufacturing, all
really really essential. The second
thing that uh we're focused on is
investing in technologies that we think
hold the promise to reduce the carbon
intensity of uh energy use in the
future. So, uh, hydrogen is one example,
renewable fuels is a second, uh,
geothermal is a third. Earlier this
year, we started up our largest
renewable diesel facility. We're the
second largest producer of renewable
fuels in the United States. Later this
year, we will start up uh the largest
green hydrogen facility in the United
States using solar power to turn water
into hydrogen and that will have the
storage capacity equivalent to three
times all the grid installed batteries
in the entire United States. As we talk
right now, it looks like the demand for
for fossil fuels will continue as far as
the I can see. Do you think it peaks at
some point?
>> Demand last year was the highest that
it's ever been. Demand this year is up
versus last year. Demand next year will
be up again. Uh again, not because of
anything our industry is doing, but the
population on the planet continues to
grow. There will come a time when the
population on the planet plateaus when
development will have largely occurred
for most of the less developed part of
the world and efficiency will have
offset some of that growth. Different
models give you different assumptions on
when that will occur. Uh but the
important thing is once we reach that
point it's not like demand for oil will
then drop off a cliff. Uh the big
consumers of uh oil are airplanes,
ships, uh longhaul uh trucking. And so
even as we find these new technologies
becoming more competitive, we're going
to have existing consumers of energy
that will last for a long time to come.
This is going to be measured in decades.
>> The global demand for oil is something
over 100 million barrels a day. How long
do you think that can sustain?
>> Well, we're closer to 105 million
barrels a day today. uh will probably be
close to 110 million barrels a day by
the end of this decade. And then you
know some forecasts would have it
beginning to plateau. Some would have it
continuing to grow. OPEC has a growth
out through 2050. The IEA shows a
plateau beginning in 2030. Our view is
probably somewhere in between those two.
Uh but that's still an enormous amount
of demand in the world to be met.
Chevron specifically has positioned
itself recently to be in a position to
supply some of that with your Hess
acquisition. explain why that
strategically was so important to
Chevron and to you.
>> Well, we've got a strong growth profile
through the rest of this decade. Uh the
Peran basin just hit a million barrels a
day. Uh we've had global records uh the
last couple of quarters for production.
Hess brings with it a nice growth
profile that extends beyond uh the next
few years as we reach uh maturity on
some of our big projects that have been
starting up. Hess has some very talented
people in exploration who've been quite
involved in the identification and
appraisal of the resource in Guyana,
which is the largest new discovery in
the world over the last couple of
decades. So, we're going to bring their
their talent, their experience, their um
insights and blend it with ours. And as
we move forward, we've got acorage uh
around the world and we're going to have
some uh you know a stronger team uh as
we move forward to uh challenge some of
our conventional thinking, maybe help us
think about these opportunities
differently and I'm confident we'll get
better results.
>> Can you get along with Exxon as as a
venture partner down in Guyana?
>> We partner to share risk uh to share
costs and it's quite common particularly
on large scale uh developments. We put
our people together and we get the best
out of the people from organizations
that bring different experiences
together and we got great respect for
all the companies that that we work
with. I would fully expect that our team
will be uh good partners with Exxon and
vice versa in Guyana. Many of the people
that will be working on this project are
the Hes people who have now joined
Chevron. Chevron is much more than an
oil company. It's a gas company too.
Let's talk about natural gas. There was
a time that was thought of as sort of a
bridge energy getting to solar and
renewables. Is that still true?
>> I actually think it's becoming more true
once again or more recognized. Uh as you
bring uh wind and solar into an
electricity grid. Uh they have u great
strengths once a capital's been
invested. The marginal cost is very low.
Uh but they're not good at providing
base load capacity because they're
variable with the the wind and the
sunshine. You can't really turn the sun
up brighter or make the wind blow it. It
is what it is. And so you need other
sources of supply to provide level
loading for the grid. Natural gas is
ideal for that. It's much lower emitting
than coal.
>> Give us a sense of how you think Chevron
can help really contribute the power
that we need for those huge data
centers.
>> The demand is coming. In fact, it's it's
already here. And we're talking to the
biggest uh companies in the world that
are investing in uh building these these
models. The two constraints that they
have right now are are chips, the GPUs
that go into the data centers and
electricity. Uh the US is in a race with
China uh for leadership in AI and both
countries have uh strong technology
bases and strong energy resources. Uh
the challenge for us in the US is to
mobilize our energy to support the
growth in power demand. Uh we've got a
grid that is challenged in terms of
putting all that power through the grid.
So what we're looking at doing is
building a large-scale power generation
off the grid where we can go fast. We
can deliver large scale. We can take
advantage of the abundant uh lowcost gas
resource in this country. So we're in
deep discussions with several of the
biggest companies working on this. You
have announced already a deal with
Verernova and with engine number one.
Where is that project? When will it
first be online somewhere?
>> So, this is what I'm referring to. We've
got a site uh identified uh a primary
site. We've got some other sites that
we're working on as well. We've got
seven of GE Verova's largest turbines
coming with delivery beginning next
year. So, this will be over 4 gawatts of
of power generation. When you talk about
permitting, I do think about
governments. Uh, federal certainly with
the administration to say, but also
state. Uh, when you talk about balance,
how do you strike a balance between, let
me pick names, Gavin Newsome on the one
hand in California and Donald Trump in
Washington on the other, they don't seem
to see eye to eye on energy policy?
>> They probably don't see eye to eye on a
number of things. Um, energy policy
being one of them. And uh certainly
we've got a long history in California,
a large footprint in California, but the
policies of the state have been designed
to discourage investment in the
traditional energy system and encourage
investment into renewables and the next
generation. We talked earlier about
balance. Um my belief is California does
not have the balance right. California
is trying to convert the supply side too
fast and the demand side hasn't adjusted
yet. And that runs the risk of trading
shortages. Uh I think President Trump is
more of a a believer in all of the
above. Certainly been an advocate for
oil and gas and uh I think his policy
approach is uh more marketoriented and
likely to yield uh the kinds of results
that we're we're talking about in terms
of competitiveness.
>> Give us a sense how you became CEO. What
brought you to Chevron to begin with? I
had a degree in chemical engineering and
I got a summer job where I worked in
engineering and and really enjoyed it.
In the early 1980s in my early 20s, um I
decided to go to California. I landed
with Standard Oil of California, which
is what our company was known as at the
time. And I found myself working with
incredibly talented people on important
projects around the world that blended
engineering and technology with
economics and business. And then with
this geopolitical overlay that we're
talking about and uh 43 years later I'm
I'm still doing it.
>> Looking back on your career, was there a
formative moment that you look back on
and draw from as you deal with crises or
difficult situations? I'll tell you the
the one the most recent one that um I
learned a lot from is CO and we
I had some insights that this thing was
perhaps going to be worse than most
people thought and I was able to use
that to begin to mobilize a response at
our company before the rest of the world
really recognized what was going on. One
of the first things that I did is I
called my three immediate predecessors,
each of whom served as CEO for about a
decade and all of whom lived within a
stones throw of where I lived and they
had gone through wars. They had gone
through terrorist attacks, uh, financial
crisis and they all had experience on
dealing with an unexpected black swan
type of event and they were incredibly
generous with their reflections on what
they would have done differently, their
suggestions to me on what I should do in
response to it. And um it was nice to
not have to figure it out all myself.
>> You've been CEO for a while. What is
there left for you to accomplish?
>> Well, we've got immediate integration of
of an acquisition. We're going through a
large corporate restructuring which uh
is rewiring business processes and where
work gets done. Uh we've got a contract
to operate in Kazakhstan uh that runs
out in the next few years. Uh those
would be some things that are on my list
that that still need to be taken care