It’s been a blockbuster summer for Big Oil, Exxon Mobil and Chevron posted record profits thanks to surging energy prices. The new U.S. climate bill includes concessions to oil and gas companies.
There are other, quieter beneficiaries: Microsoft, Amazon.com and the other cloud-services companies that are increasingly responsible for the computing horsepower behind the oil giants’ efforts to find and extract more oil and natural gas.
Among other things, Microsoft is making it possible for Exxon to analyze reams of oil field data. Amazon is helping drillers run simulations to maximize how much oil they can pump from existing wells.