Google plans to suspend the development of A.I. Tools for Oil and Gas companies.

Google has pledged to avoid developing specialized artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help oil and gas companies extract fossil fuels from around the world. A Greenpeace report on 19th May highlighted how AI and warehouse servers are used by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to help Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil locate and retrieve oil and gas deposits from the earth.

A spokesman for Google confirmed that the company "will not ... Build custom AI / ML algorithms to facilitate upstream oil and gas sector extraction. Google Cloud took about $65 million from oil and gas companies in 2019, the spokesperson said, adding that it accounts for less than 1% of total revenues from Google Cloud. Given the relatively small slice of the oil and gas market in Google Cloud, it wasn't an enormous stretch for the firm to vow not to compete on AI / ML.

In all, the oil and gas sector is expected to spend $1.3 billion on cloud computing in 2020. "Google Cloud is just a small percentage of the gross spending," the Google spokesperson said. Greenpeace has applauded the decision taken by Google.   "While Google still has legacy contracts with oil and gas companies that they hope will end, Greenpeace welcome Google's decision to avoid developing custom solutions for upstream oil and gas production," said Elizabeth Jardim, senior Greenpeace US corporate campaigner.

Greenpeace hope that Microsoft and Amazon will follow promptly with commitments to end AI partnerships with oil and gas companies as these contracts contradict their stated climate goals and speed up the climate crisis. Google has a reputation as one of the world's greenest major tech firms. Unlike other tech giants, since 2007 it has become carbon neutral, using techniques such as purchasing renewable energy to balance the use of non-renewable resources. Amazon promised to be carbon-neutral by 2040, while Microsoft promised to be carbon-negative by 2030.

Despite the commitment of the biggest cloud companies to tackle climate change, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all have connections to some of the world's dirtiest oil companies for the explicit purpose of getting more oil and gas out of the ground and onto the market faster and cheaper. Microsoft responded to the report in a blog post saying it was encouraged by the growing number of commitments made by the energy sector to transition to cleaner energy and reduce carbon emissions.

"Microsoft agree that the world is facing an urgent carbon problem, and we must all do more and move faster towards a net zero carbon future.

"The fact is that the world's energy is actually coming from fossil fuels and, as living conditions around the globe increase, the planet will need much more oil. That makes realizing a future with zero carbon one of the most complex transitions in human history.

Meanwhile, Amazon has contracts primarily in the mid- and downstream phases of oil production, the study said, adding that Amazon is focused on oil and gas companies pipelines, distribution, and storage. "The Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud is the world's largest, the virtual home to millions of websites, and oil and gas firms are now using it to get oil to market more efficiently," Greenpeace stated.