Power & Sites · United States

Oracle renews attempts to secure natural gas pipeline approval for Project Jupiter data center - report

Credited to Data Center Dynamics · datacenterdynamics.com · 14h ago

Photograph · Data Center Dynamics

Seeks approval from FERC to expedite approval of the 17.8-mile pipeline

Oracle has revived attempts to secure approval for a natural gas pipeline extension needed to feed its 2.5GW Project Jupiter data center campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

According to Bloomberg, the cloud computing firm asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to expedite approval of the 17.8-mile (28.6km) Green Chile pipeline, which would transport about 400 million cubic feet of natural gas daily to on-site fuel cells that will power the facility. Bloom Energy is supplying the fuel cells and has signed several offtake deals with other data center firms.

In a letter to FERC, the company said that the development is projected to support nearly 5,800 peak construction jobs and generate up to $1.1 billion in annual economic output for the local county.

In July, Energy Transfer, a midstream gas firm, saw its application to build a new natural gas pipeline to feed the site rejected by state regulators. State officials cited large-scale water use, increased CO2 emissions, and a lack of state revenue generation as major factors in their decision.

Despite the rejection, Oracle said the project remained on schedule. However, in September, it was reported that the company had sent a force majeure notice to Blue Owl Capital in an effort to shield itself from potential increased costs should the facility fail to come online in 2028 as planned, which would allow the firm to delay the payments it would have to make, rather than forfeit its tenancy.

With the pipeline's operational timeline now set for February 2027, well past its August target, there is growing trepidation that the data center could also face significant delays.

In response to the renewed push for approval, environmental groups and the state's attorney general, Raúl Torrez, have sought to pressure FERC to broaden its environmental review, asking the agency to evaluate the combined footprint of the data center and the pipeline before granting approval.

As a workaround for its gas supply issues, recent reports revealed that the company has been trucking in compressed natural gas to its Salt Lake City and Texas data centers for the past year. According to the reports, the company is now considering the same model for the Project Jupiter data center.

Power & SitesUnited States

Investors dump data centre bonds as AI borrowers face ‘Darwin moment’

Credited to Financial Times$ · ft.com14h ago

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Power & Sites · United States

TSMC sends scouts to check whether America's datacenters can deliver

Credited to The Register · theregister.com · 14h ago

Photograph · The Register

Silicon giant budgets up to $64B for expansion while keeping an eye on construction progress and power supplies

TSMC is dispatching personnel to check out US datacenter construction and power availability as it plans billions of dollars in additional chipmaking capacity.

The Taiwanese chipmaking giant warned of pressure on consumer markets during its third-quarter earnings call, while maintaining that AI demand - at least for now - continues to outstrip supply.

"Looking ahead, we continue to observe consumer and price-sensitive end market segments are being challenged due to the impact of rising component prices and macroeconomic uncertainties. As such, we are being prudent in our business planning going into 2027," said chairman and CEO C.C. Wei.

Wei said AI demand remained strong, with CPUs for agentic workloads and networking chips adding to the need for silicon.

"Therefore, semiconductors will remain essential in the AI mega trend. The value of semiconductors in the global supply chain is set to continue to increase in our view," he stated.

TSMC expects capital expenditure of $60 billion to $64 billion this year. Spending across 2026-2028 is expected to exceed the total for 2023-2025 as it expands capacity for customers.

Those plans depend on more than customers ordering chips: the datacenters housing them also need power, networking, memory, and other infrastructure. TSMC is checking how those pieces are coming together before committing to expanding capacity further.

TSMC is planning roughly 20 leading-edge manufacturing and advanced-packaging facilities in Taiwan and overseas over the next several years, and Wei said the contract manufacturer is also focusing on capacity optimization across production nodes to generate more wafer output.

One analyst on the earnings call asked whether power shortages, datacenter construction delays, advanced-packaging constraints, or limited supplies of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) could hold back projected growth.

Wei said TSMC factors these constraints into its capacity planning.

"We put every possibility we can, talking about the cloud service providers, capex, datacenter build-out, financial, power supply, and also other component supply, all into our consideration.

"We make our own judgment, and then based on our assessment of the demand, we still think the demand is higher than the supply, and we are working very hard to narrow the gap."

However, he declined to directly answer a question about whether he expected tightness in the wafer supply to be greater next year than this year, saying "the demand is extremely robust and getting higher and higher."

Wei said preparations for A14, TSMC's next-generation process marketed as 1.4 nm, were underway. He expects it to become a bigger business than the current 2 nm generation. Risk production – an initial manufacturing phase ahead of commercial ramp-up – is scheduled for 2027, followed by volume production in 2028.

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2026, TSMC reported revenue of $46.72 billion, an increase of 41.2 percent on the same period a year ago.

Looking to the fourth quarter, the company expects another jump in revenue, to between $52.3 billion and $54.3 billion. At the midpoint, that would represent roughly 58 percent year-on-year growth. ®