Ai ai give Fracking The second act, a surprising twist for an industry that, despite the beginning of the 2010s, boom years, climate earthquakes, and fossil fuel dependence.
AI companies build massive data centers near major gas production sites, often generating power by tapping into fossil fuels. It’s a trend paid for by headlines about the intersection of AI and Healthcare (and solving climate change), but one that could solve – and raise difficult questions for – the communities that host these facilities.
Get the latest samples. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported The pool of AI coding AI AI is building a data center complex on more than 500 hectares in West Texas – about 300 miles West of Dallas – The size of the Dallas Footprint The facility will generate its own power by tapping natural gas from the most productive Permian basin, the most productive oil and gas fields, where hydraulic fracturing is not only common but the only play in the city.
The project, called horizon, will generate two gigawatts of computing power. The equivalent of Hoover Dam’s electrical capacity, except it doesn’t expand the Colorado River, is burning gas. The pool is developing facilities with Coreweave, a cloud computing company that has broken access to NVIDIA AI chips and that has given access to more than 40,000 people. The journal calls it “Wild West Energy,” which is what it sounds like.
But the swimming pool is far from itself. Nearly all the major AI players are pursuing the same strategy. Last month, Openai CEO Sam Altman opened the company’s flagship Religious Data Center in Abilene, Texas – about 200 miles from the Permian Basin – where, “We burn gas to run this data center. “
The complex requires about 900 megawatts of electricity in eight buildings and includes the same gasoline power plant using turbines using the same turbines used by the people of war, according to the related press. The company says the plant provides only backup power, with most electricity coming from the local grid. The grid, for the record, draws from a mix of natural gas and solar farms in West Texas.
But people living near the project are not happy. Arlene Mendler lives across the street from Stargate. He told the AP he wanted someone to ask for his opinion before he cleared a large tract of Mesquite Shrubland to make room for the one he built on top of it.
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“It’s completely changed the way we live,” Mendler told the AP. He moved to the area 33 years ago in search of “peace, calm, calm.” Now the construction is the soundtrack in the background, and the bright lights in the scene have seen her night view.
Then there is water. In the dry conditions of the West Texas region, locals are very nervous about how the data center will affect the water supply. The city’s reservoir was at half capacity during Altman’s visit, with residents on a twice-daily watering schedule. Oracle states that each of the eight buildings will require 12,000 gallons per year after the initial gallons of gallons filled in the closed-loop cooling system. But Shaolei Ren, a University of California, Riverside, Professor who studies the former environment of AI, told the AP that it was misleading. The system requires more electricity, which means that indirect water consumption in the power plant produces electricity.
Meta pursues a similar strategy. In Richland Parish, the poorest area, the company plans to build a $10 billion data center the size of 1,700 football fields that would require two gigawatts of its own. Simple Utility Company will use three billion natural gas power with 2.3 Gigawatts of capacity to feed the facility by burning gas through the nearby Haynesville shale. Louisiana residents, like the people of Abilene, not excited will be surrounded by bulldozers around the clock.
(Meta is also in Texas, although in other states of the country. This week the company announced A $1.5 million data center In El Paso, near the new Mexico border, with one gigawatt of capacity expected to come online in 2028. El Paso is not close to the Permian Basin, and Metu is completed with 100% clean and renewable energy. One point for meta.)
Even Elon Musk’s XAI, which produces memphis enough controversy This year, it has a fracking connection. Memphis Light, Gas and Water – which currently sells power to XAI, but will be able to own XAI’s substation is the building – Four Natural Gas and Company Corp. and Texas gas companies.
Texas Gas Transmission is a bidirectional pipeline carrying natural gas from Gulf Coast supply areas and several major hydraulically fractured shale formations through Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Trunkline gas company, another memphis supplier, also brings natural gas from remote sources.
If you’re wondering why AI companies are pursuing this path, they won’t tell you about electricity; The same goes for beating China.
That was Chris Lehane’s argument last week. Lehane, a veteran operative who joined Opsiai as Global Vice President in 2024, launched in a Onstage inInterview with techcrunch.
“We believe that in the not too distant future, at least in the US, and indeed throughout the world, we will have to produce in the neighborhood of a Gigawatt of energy a week,” said Lehane. He pointed to China’s massive energy refraction: 450 Gigawatts and 33 nuclear facilities built in the last year.
When TechCrunch questioned Stargate’s decision to build in economically challenged areas like Abilene, or Lordstown, Ohio, where a gas-fired plant is planned, Lehane returned to geopolitics. “If we (as a country) do it right, you have the opportunity to complete the industrialized countries, bring manufacturing back and also transition the energy system so that we carry out the modernization that needs to be done.”
The government trumpet is definitely in place. July 20 Executive Order AI data centers that are fast using environmental permits, and open financial land, and open financial land, and open financial land, and open financial land, and open financial land, and open projects using natural gas, but nuclear power – when clearly unable to renew from support.
Today, most AI users remain oblivious to the carbon footprint behind their new toys and amazing work tools. They focus more on capabilities like Sora’s hyperrealistic generation products that require more energy than a simple chatbot – rather than where the electricity is.
This company calculates this. They have natural gas as a pragmatic, immeasurable answer to AI’s exploding power demands. But the speed and scale of these fossil fuels more than make up for it.
If this is a bubble, it won’t be pretty. Sector Ai has become a round shot registration: Openai needs Microsoft needs Devidia needs Broadcom needs Central Operator Needs Plain Needs Openai. They all buy and sell each other with the dust of the bully. The financial times noted this week that if the foundation cracks, there will be expensive infrastructure nearby, both digital and burning gas.
Openai’s only ability to fulfill its obligations is “increasing concern for The wider economy“Wrote the outlet.
One important question absent from the conversation is whether all this new capacity is even necessary. A Duke University study found that utilities typically use 53% of their available capacity during the year. That shows significant room to accommodate new demands without building new power plants, as a review of technology mit technology reported earlier this yearSee rank-.
Duke researchers estimated that the data center reduced electricity consumption by half an hour for several hours during the annual peak peak demand period. It will absorb 65 Gigawatts of data centers projected to be 2029.
That flexibility will allow companies to roll out AI Data Centers faster. More importantly, it can provide a reprieve from the rush to build natural gas infrastructure, giving time to develop clean alternatives.
But again, it means that it will lose ground to autocratic regimes, parties and others in the industry, including citizens who are better able to configure more investments, including long after the contracts of technology companies run out.
Meta, for example, has guaranteed to cover the cost of abatement for new Louisiana generation for 15 years. Swimming pool tax with CoreweAve is open for 15 years. What happens to the customer during the contract remains an open question.
Things may change. A lot of private money is being poured into small modular reactors and solar installations in the hope that these cleaner energy alternatives will provide more energy for these data centers. Fusion startups like Heliel and Fusion Systems have grown in popularity big fund From people on the front lines of AI, including Nvidia and Altman.
This optimism is not limited to private investment circles. The excitement has spilled over to the public market, where some energy companies “non-profits that have gone public to go public Anticipation Market caps, based on the expectation that they will operate the data center.
In the meantime – which could still be decades – the biggest concern is those who will leave the bag, financially and environmentally, without ever asking about it.