Palantir and Trafigura to Track Carbon Emissions for Oil Industry
Palantir Technologies Inc and Trafigura have set sights on a new market, their chief executives told Reuters: tracking, calculating and reporting carbon emissions across the oil and gas sector. The companies are building a platform for oil majors and other commodities firms to vet the environmental impact of their supply chains, applying Trafigura’s data to Palantir’s operating system, known as Foundry.
The effort represents a particularly lucrative long-term opportunity at a time when Palantir’s revenue outlook has fallen short of expectations, with shares trading down 57% this year. This project marks the first time Palantir will go to market with a partner on carbon emissions tracking. Leveraging Trafigura’s expertise in global commodity supply chains, Palantir’s Foundry operating system will be configured to provide consortium partners with an accurate calculation of carbon intensity across supply chains, beginning with crude oil and refined products, and concentrates and refined metals.
In a joint interview at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Palantir’s Chief Executive Alex Karp said, “This is going to be one of the biggest things we’ve ever done.” Jeremy Weir, Trafigura’s CEO, said the market is “massive. In terms of size, I think it touches everybody.”
The idea grew out of a pilot last year when Trafigura’s global head of carbon trading approached Palantir with a desire to better assess indirect carbon footprints, known as “Scope Three” emissions. The announcement builds on the work already done over the past year, with the initial pilot already having built scenarios across ten million carbon pathways using actualized commodity shipments by integrating Trafigura data and metrics supplemented by third-party data.
“Our customers are increasingly asking us for visibility into the lifecycle emissions of the commodities we move as they prepare for regulated Scope 3 emissions reporting and more generally for Net Zero,” said Weir. “The complexity involved in commodity supply chains requires robust cooperation across the industry and a technological solution that can enable meaningful decisions and change. We are delighted to jointly deliver a solution to market with Palantir, whose technology can manage the complexity and data security required to provide additional services to our customers and the market.”
Customers can subscribe to the new platform and take part in what Palantir and Trafigura are calling a consortium. They did not disclose financial terms. Concerns about energy security fuelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not dampened interest in sustainability, said Weir. “We’ve got a severe bump in the road, but we still have to decarbonize,” he said. For Palantir, the war, which Moscow has called a “special operation,” has meanwhile created potential for other products it developed, such as secure data transfer across allies. “You’ll have to use your imagination to figure out how those things may be in use, but we play a crucial role in the security of the West,” Karp said.