Oracle Asks Regulators to Expedite Gas Pipeline for Data Center

(Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp. is renewing its request that federal regulators approve a natural gas pipeline needed to power its massive data center project in New Mexico as quickly as possible.

"Time remains of the essence," Josh Pitcock, senior vice president of government affairs at Oracle, said in a letter Tuesday to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Further delay to FERC's pending approval of the pipeline project to be operated by a subsidiary of Energy Transfer LP "threatens to delay Project Jupiter's operations and the resulting jobs, economic activity, and community benefits."

FERC's Sept. 4 environmental assessment of the 17.8-mile gas pipeline, which has already been delayed following opposition from local regulators, elicited pushback during the comment period from advocacy groups. The state's attorney general said the assessment should account for the impact of both the data center and the pipeline. FERC must either revise the initial assessment or issue a full environmental impact statement, New Mexico's Attorney General Raúl Torrez said earlier this month.

The Green Chile pipeline, which will transport about 400 million cubic feet per day of natural gas to fuel cells procured by Bloom Energy to power Project Jupiter, has already been delayed to February 2027. That's well past an earlier targeted in-service date of Aug. 15. The delay, prompted by New Mexico state officials who rejected the pipeline's original route through state lands, caused Energy Transfer to reroute the pipeline across federal lands.

The delays have prompted Oracle to consider transporting gas to Bloom's power generation infrastructure by truck, a novel strategy it has used in other, smaller projects in Utah and Texas, Bloomberg has reported. But that stopgap is likely only capable of helping Project Jupiter complete initial commissioning work, rather than ramping up to its full power requirements.