It certainly has to do with their data centers. It is not unusual for a company to take over handling one of their dependencies to reduce risk and cost. If they do it as good or better than others already established in that market, then the smarter companies will turn around and convert that into a revenue generating business which on the surface does not appear connected with their original core business.

Amazon did exactly that with cloud storage and EC2. The difference is that unlike the energy industry which is regulated they did not need to get the gov't's permission.

Similarly, its just a matter of time before Apple starts selling on the open market the processor chip they developed exclusively for the IPad.