BENGALURU, India (Reuters) -Chevron India on Thursday opened a 312,000-square-foot facility for its Engineering and Innovation Excellence Center (ENGINE) in Bengaluru, a year after launching the unit to consolidate technical work and deepen its digital and artificial intelligence capabilities.

The expansion underscores India's growing role in the energy transition as technology becomes central to cost reduction and competitiveness.

It also comes as the U.S. oil major targets up to $3 billion in cost cuts by 2026 and streamlines global operations.

"We were a very decentralized organization until recently," Akshay Sahni, country head for Chevron ( CVX ) in India, told Reuters, adding the center aims at efficiency.

"We use AI to improve the performance of our machines. We use AI to improve the way we drill for oil and gas ... It's not so much about headcount reduction."

But the timing and focus of the project, coming months after Chevron ( CVX ) announced plans to cut 15% to 20% of its global workforce, highlight a growing reliance on India's engineering and digital talent base as U.S. energy firms centralize and shift high-skill work to lower-cost hubs.

Sahni said India's depth of STEM and IT talent was a key factor in the decision. "There are not too many places around the world where you can hire across disciplines...mechanical, civil, petroleum, geology, electrical," he said.

The center has hired more than 1,000 professionals since 2024 and plans to invest about $1 billion over several years in people, technology and infrastructure.

It includes high-performance computing for real-time geological modeling and digital twins of Chevron's ( CVX ) processing plants.

For now, the Houston, Texas-based company is not planning additional ENGINE hubs outside India.

"For now our focus is primarily to grow our Bengaluru center... upskilling our people as technology evolves and getting more of the workflows that are meaningful," Sahni said.