AI Presents Complicated Puzzle for Already Stretched Energy Industry

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma – The midstream sector’s incentive to support the development of artificial intelligence cuts to the essence of its money-making formula of volume times rate, said ONEOK CEO Pierce Norton.

“When we hear AI, we hear volume,” he said. However, the nation needs to solve the problem of developing AI, he added, while keeping all other energy-related industries growing.

The ONEOK leader was one of the first panel speakers at the “Powering AI: Global Leadership Summit” hosted by the Oklahoma State University Hamm Institute for American Energy on April 23-24. The event brought together some of the most prominent names in the energy and tech industries to discuss the challenges of meeting the demands of rapidly developing AI.

The institute’s namesake and Continental Resources founder Harold Hamm opened the seminar on April 24 with an admonishment for the U.S. leadership in the AI sector.

“We’re not talking about keeping up, we’re talking about leading,” Hamm said.

The development of AI is so intertwined with the energy industry that Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at leading AI research firm Anthropic, said the U.S.’ role in AI will be determined by its energy development.

“Whoever builds up the right power infrastructure gets to control the future of AI,” Clark said at the event. “It’s that basic.” 

Norton touched on numerous incentives for the industry to build up the supplies and delivery method to supply natural gas to either AI data center campuses or the utilities supporting them.

However, the midstream industry is being pulled in so many different directions that it’s difficult for any one sector—AI, LNG, chemicals—to attract the level of focus that it needs.

“It’s such a big ecosystem that you just can’t focus on one thing—AI or whatever—because it's just that there are so many uses for it, and you have to understand the supply and demand of everything,” Norton said.

The U.S. needs to develop a sustainable system that takes into account the varying needs of petrochemical demand and that won’t be affected by the ongoing political changes of each election.

“These molecules are not red or blue, they’re red, white and blue,” he said. “They’re under the ownership of the American people, and that’s what we need to focus on—the sustainability, long term, of the regulatory system.”