The 338-megawatt Sage Draw wind farm in West Texas has reached commercial operation even as the covid-19 crisis was escalating. Under the terms of a previous agreement, 250 MW of wind power from the facility will be supplied to ExxonMobil.

Sage Draw has more than 120 wind turbines across Garza and Lynn Counties, global renewable energy company Ørsted announced this week. In late 2018, ExxonMobil signed 12-year corporate power purchase agreements with Ørsted for 500 MW of wind and solar power to produce oil in the Permian Basin, Bloomberg reported.

At the time, ExxonMobil’s enormous renewable power procurement was unprecedented for an oil company. One of the agreements was for 250 MW from Sage Draw and the other was for 250 MW from Ørsted’s 460-MW Permian Solar project, John Parnell noted in Forbes.

Located in Andrews County, Texas, the Permian Energy Center is currently under construction and expected to become operational by mid-2021. Ørsted described it as having 1.3 million solar panels.

“The irony of Exxon’s 500 MW renewable energy procurement being used directly to extract Texan oil reserves will not be lost on its critics,” Parnell wrote in November 2018.

Ørsted said that their team worked with Sage Draw project partners at Blattner Energy and GE Renewable Energy, and finance partners GE Energy Financial Services and BHE Renewables.