在该国最繁忙的油田，水力压裂每天消耗的电力几乎相当于四个西雅图的电力，而且他们还要求更多。

响尾蛇能源公司是西德克萨斯州和新墨西哥州二叠纪盆地的主要生产商，越来越依赖电网为其原油开采提供动力。但随着钻井公司的石油产量在过去 10 年里增长了近 50 倍，电网一直难以满足这一新需求，促使 Diamondback 建立自己的电网，以减少天然气发电机的使用。

该公司负责竣工的副总裁亨特·兰德斯(Hunter Landers)表示，“电网必须赶上工业和当前正在发生的事情”。

由于钻井公司面临投资者和公众要求减少温室气体排放的压力，他们放弃了污染严重的柴油发电机，并以极快的速度接入电网。越来越多地采购风能和太阳能发电，使公司能够减少碳足迹。石油和天然气高管表示，除了让公司变得更加环保之外，公用事业规模的电力还意味着节省燃料成本和提高运营效率。

但这一趋势使得德克萨斯州、新墨西哥州和北达科他州的电力销售量猛增。与其他尝试电气化的企业一样，钻井公司也遇到了瓶颈，发现电网的容量有限。许多迫不及待地希望基础设施迎头赶上的运营商已经自行建造了基础设施。

尽管随着更多行业实现电气化，美国大部分地区都需要对电网基础设施或新一代发电进行投资，但消费者尚未感受到太大影响。投资成本巨大，消费者最终将承担其中的一部分。

事关重大：国际能源署在 5 月份的一份报告中表示，到 2030 年，使用电力代替柴油或天然气为设备提供动力可以将全球石油和天然气生产的 7 亿吨碳排放量减少一半。

“从一个角度来看，我们还处于早期阶段，”雪佛龙中大陆业务部门副总裁莱德·布斯(Ryder Booth)在谈到二叠纪不断加大的电气化努力时表示。

在这里阅读完整的故事。

In the country’s busiest oil field, hydraulic fracturing is devouring nearly as much electricity as four Seattles every day—and they are clamoring for more.

Diamondback Energy, a major producer in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, has increasingly relied on the electric grid to power its crude harvesting. But as the driller’s oil production has grown nearly 50 times in the past 10 years, the grid has struggled to handle this new demand, prompting Diamondback to set up its own power network to cut its use of natural-gas-fired generators.

“The grid has to catch up with the industrials and what’s going on here,” said Hunter Landers, the company’s vice president of completions.

As drillers have faced investor and public pressure to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, they have ditched polluting diesel-power generators and plugged into the grid at breakneck speed. Sourcing electricity increasingly generated by wind and solar power allows the companies to cut their carbon footprint. On top of making companies greener, utility-scale power means savings on fuel costs and more efficient operations, oil and gas executives say.

But the trend is sending electricity sales soaring in Texas, New Mexico, and North Dakota. Like other kinds of businesses trying to electrify, drillers have hit a bottleneck, finding there is only so much capacity on the grid. Many operators who can’t wait for infrastructure to catch up have built it themselves.

Consumers haven’t felt much of an impact yet, though investments in grid infrastructure or new generation will be needed across much of the US as more industries electrify. The cost of the investments is huge, and consumers will eventually bear some of that.

Much is at stake: The International Energy Agency said in a May report that using electricity to power equipment instead of diesel or natural gas could halve the 700 million metric tons of carbon emissions from global oil and gas production by 2030.

“From one perspective, we’re early innings,” Ryder Booth, vice president of Chevron’s midcontinent business unit, said of the Permian’s increasing electrification efforts.

Read the full story here.