Oracle turns to trucked gas to keep AI data centres on schedule
Oracle is trucking compressed natural gas to AI data centres that cannot yet connect to a pipeline, reportedly keeping a site outside Salt Lake City running for more than a year and powering early work at an OpenAI campus in Shackelford County, Texas. The company is weighing the same approach for Project Jupiter in New Mexico — a planned 2.45 GW site using Bloom Energy solid-oxide fuel cells — after state land officials twice refused rights-of-way for Energy Transfer's pipeline, and Oracle has sent the developer a force majeure notice. East Daley Analytics told Bloomberg that delivered trucked gas costs about four times hub prices once labour, equipment and fuel are counted, while SemiAnalysis estimates each large trailer would supply roughly 40 minutes of power for a 100 MW load.
The bottleneck for AI data centres is shifting from chips to power and grid connections, pushing operators toward costlier stopgap fuelling.