The Green Chile pipeline that would fuel Oracle’s Project Jupiter data centre in New Mexico has been pushed from 15 August to 1 February 2027, according to a filing by Energy Transfer’s Transwestern unit. The state land commissioner has twice refused the route, citing water use and emissions.
The pipeline that would fuel Oracle’s largest planned data centre has slipped by nearly six months. Energy Transfer’s Transwestern unit told federal regulators on Friday that the Green Chile Project now has an in-service date of 1 February 2027, against a previous target of 15 August.
What it feeds is not a normal building. Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County is planned at 2.5 gigawatts, powered by Bloom Energy fuel cells, with Oracle as the tenant hosting AI infrastructure for OpenAI.
The numbers around it are large in every direction. Developers Stack and BorderPlex Digital Assets have talked of investing up to $165bn across 1,400 acres and four buildings, at a company already borrowing heavily to build data centres. The pipeline would carry up to 400 million cubic feet of gas a day, roughly 0.4% of everything produced in the lower 48 states.
Standing in the way is one elected official. New Mexico land commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard has refused the route twice, first in March and again on 15 July, because it crosses state trust land.
Her reasoning was not procedural. The project would benefit investors and developers but bring “no significant benefits for state lands,” she wrote, calling the burden on New Mexico’s water and natural resources “extreme.”
She was blunter still on emissions, describing approval as “literally doubling down on dangerous emissions” at a moment when the state should be slowing climate change rather than accelerating it.
Oracle has made its own urgency clear. It told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May that “time is of the essence” and that delay would jeopardise “the broader objectives of Project Jupiter.”
The fuel cells were already the compromise. Bloom’s solid oxide units replaced planned gas turbines and diesel generators, and Oracle has since expanded that order to 2.8GW, but they still burn gas, which is the pattern across an industry running on fossil fuel while promising otherwise.
Investors read it as a setback. Oracle shares fell about 4% on Friday, while Energy Transfer rose 1.4%.
The lesson is about land rather than capital. Money and chips can be bought at speed, but a 17-mile right of way cannot, and 500 US towns have already blocked data centres of their own.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.