The AI period is giving fracking a second act, a stunning twist for an trade that, even throughout its early 2010s growth years, was blamed by local weather advocates for poisoned water tables, man-made earthquakes, and the cussed persistence of fossil fuels.
AI corporations are constructing huge knowledge facilities close to main gas-production websites, typically producing their very own energy by tapping immediately into fossil fuels. It’s a pattern that’s been overshadowed by headlines in regards to the intersection of AI and healthcare (and fixing local weather change), nevertheless it’s one that might reshape — and lift troublesome questions for — the communities that host these services.
Take the newest instance. This week, the Wall Avenue Journal reported that AI coding assistant startup Poolside is setting up a knowledge middle advanced on greater than 500 acres in West Texas — about 300 miles west of Dallas — a footprint two-thirds the scale of Central Park. The ability will generate its personal energy by tapping pure gasoline from the Permian Basin, the nation’s best oil and gasoline subject, the place hydraulic fracturing isn’t simply frequent however actually the one recreation on the town.
The challenge, dubbed Horizon, will produce two gigawatts of computing energy. That’s equal to the Hoover Dam’s complete electrical capability, besides as an alternative of harnessing the Colorado River, it’s burning fracked gasoline. Poolside is growing the ability with CoreWeave, a cloud computing firm that rents out entry to Nvidia AI chips and that’s supplying entry to greater than 40,000 of them. The Journal calls it an “vitality Wild West,” which appears apt.
But Poolside is way from alone. Practically all the most important AI gamers are pursuing comparable methods. Final month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman toured his firm’s flagship Stargate knowledge middle in Abilene, Texas — round 200 miles from the Permian Basin — the place he was candid, saying, “We’re burning gasoline to run this knowledge middle.”
The advanced requires about 900 megawatts of electrical energy throughout eight buildings and features a new gas-fired energy plant utilizing generators comparable to people who energy warships, in response to the Related Press. The businesses say the plant gives solely backup energy, with most electrical energy coming from the native grid. That grid, for the document, attracts from a mixture of pure gasoline and the sprawling wind and photo voltaic farms in West Texas.
However the individuals dwelling close to these initiatives aren’t precisely comforted. Arlene Mendler lives throughout the road from Stargate. She advised the AP she needs somebody had requested her opinion earlier than bulldozers eradicated an enormous tract of mesquite shrubland to make room for what’s being constructed atop it.
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“It has fully modified the way in which we have been dwelling,” Mendler advised the AP. She moved to the world 33 years in the past searching for “peace, quiet, tranquility.” Now development is the soundtrack within the background, and vivid lights on the scene have spoiled her nighttime views.
Then there’s the water. In drought-prone West Texas, locals are notably nervous about how new knowledge facilities will impression the water provide. Town’s reservoirs have been at roughly half capability throughout Altman’s go to, with residents on a twice-weekly outside watering schedule. Oracle claims every of the eight buildings will want simply 12,000 gallons per yr after an preliminary million-gallon fill for closed-loop cooling programs. However Shaolei Ren, a College of California, Riverside, professor who research AI’s environmental footprint, advised the AP that’s deceptive. These programs require extra electrical energy, which suggests extra oblique water consumption on the energy vegetation producing that electrical energy.
Meta is pursuing an analogous technique. In Richland Parish, the poorest area of Louisiana, the corporate plans to construct a $10 billion knowledge middle the scale of 1,700 soccer fields that can require two gigawatts of energy for computation alone. Utility firm Entergy will spend $3.2 billion to construct three massive natural-gas energy vegetation with 2.3 gigawatts of capability to feed the ability by burning gasoline extracted by way of fracking within the close by Haynesville Shale. Louisiana residents, like these in Abilene, aren’t thrilled to be encircled by bulldozers across the clock.
(Meta can be constructing in Texas, although elsewhere within the state. This week the corporate introduced a $1.5 billion knowledge middle in El Paso, close to the New Mexico border, with one gigawatt of capability anticipated on-line in 2028. El Paso isn’t close to the Permian Basin, and Meta says the ability will probably be matched with 100% clear and renewable vitality. One level for Meta.)
Even Elon Musk’s xAI, whose Memphis facility has generated appreciable controversy this yr, has fracking connections. Memphis Gentle, Gasoline and Water — which presently sells energy to xAI however will ultimately personal the substations xAI is constructing — purchases pure gasoline on the spot market and pipes it to Memphis through two corporations: Texas Gasoline Transmission Corp. and Trunkline Gasoline Firm.
Texas Gasoline Transmission is a bidirectional pipeline carrying pure gasoline from Gulf Coast provide areas and a number of other main hydraulically fractured shale formations by way of Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Trunkline Gasoline Firm, the opposite Memphis provider, additionally carries pure gasoline from fracked sources.
If you happen to’re questioning why AI corporations are pursuing this path, they’ll inform you it’s not nearly electrical energy; it’s additionally about beating China.
That was the argument Chris Lehane made final week. Lehane, a veteran political operative who joined OpenAI as vice chairman of world affairs in 2024, laid out the case throughout an onstage interview with iinfoai.
“We consider that within the not-too-distant future, at the least within the U.S., and actually all over the world, we’re going to should be producing within the neighborhood of a gigawatt of vitality per week,” Lehane stated. He pointed to China’s huge vitality buildout: 450 gigawatts and 33 nuclear services constructed within the final yr alone.
When iinfoai requested about Stargate’s determination to construct in economically challenged areas like Abilene, or Lordstown, Ohio, the place extra gas-powered vegetation are deliberate, Lehane returned to geopolitics. “If we [as a country] do that proper, you might have a chance to re-industrialize international locations, convey manufacturing again and likewise transition our vitality programs in order that we do the modernization that should happen.”
The Trump administration is actually on board. The July 2025 government order fast-tracks gas-powered AI knowledge facilities by streamlining environmental permits, providing monetary incentives, and opening federal lands for initiatives utilizing pure gasoline, coal, or nuclear energy — whereas explicitly excluding renewables from assist.
For now, most AI customers stay largely unaware of the carbon footprint behind their dazzling new toys and work instruments. They’re extra centered on capabilities like Sora 2 — OpenAI’s hyperrealistic video-generation product that requires exponentially extra vitality than a easy chatbot — than on the place the electrical energy comes from.
The businesses are relying on this. They’ve positioned pure gasoline because the pragmatic, inevitable reply to AI’s exploding energy calls for. However the pace and scale of this fossil gasoline buildout deserves extra consideration than it’s getting.
If it is a bubble, it gained’t be fairly. The AI sector has turn out to be a round firing squad of dependencies: OpenAI wants Microsoft wants Nvidia wants Broadcom wants Oracle wants knowledge middle operators who want OpenAI. They’re all shopping for from and promoting to one another in a self-reinforcing loop. The Monetary Occasions famous this week if the inspiration cracks, there’ll be numerous costly infrastructure left standing round, each the digital and the gas-burning sort.
OpenAI’s capability alone to satisfy its obligations is “more and more a priority for the broader economic system,” the outlet wrote.
One key query that’s been largely absent from the dialog is whether or not all this new capability is even vital. A Duke College examine discovered that utilities usually use solely 53% of their out there capability all year long. That implies vital room to accommodate new demand with out setting up new energy vegetation, as MIT Know-how Evaluate reported earlier this yr.
The Duke researchers estimate that if knowledge facilities lowered electrical energy consumption by roughly half for only a few hours throughout annual peak demand durations, utilities might deal with an extra 76 gigawatts of recent load. That may successfully take in the 65 gigawatts knowledge facilities are projected to wish by 2029.
That sort of flexibility would permit corporations to launch AI knowledge facilities sooner. Extra importantly, it might present a reprieve from the frenzy to construct pure gasoline infrastructure, giving utilities time to develop cleaner options.
However once more, that might imply dropping floor to an autocratic regime, per Lehane and plenty of others within the trade, so as an alternative, the pure gasoline constructing spree seems more likely to saddle areas with extra fossil-fuel vegetation and depart residents with hovering electrical energy payments to finance as we speak’s investments, together with lengthy after the tech corporations’ contracts expire.
Meta, as an example, has assured it should cowl Entergy’s prices for the brand new Louisiana technology for 15 years. Poolside’s lease with CoreWeave runs for 15 years. What occurs to clients when these contracts finish stays an open query.
Issues might ultimately change. Loads of non-public cash is being funneled into small modular reactors and photo voltaic installations with the expectation that these cleaner vitality options will turn out to be extra central vitality sources for these knowledge facilities. Fusion startups like Helion and Commonwealth Fusion Programs have equally raised substantial funding from these on the entrance traces of AI, together with Nvidia and Altman.
This optimism isn’t confined to personal funding circles. The joy has spilled over into public markets, the place a number of “non-revenue-generating” vitality corporations which have managed to go public have really anticipatory market caps, based mostly on the expectation that they are going to sooner or later gasoline these knowledge facilities.
Within the meantime — which might nonetheless be a long time — essentially the most urgent concern is that the individuals who’ll be left holding the bag, financially and environmentally, by no means requested for any of this within the first place.
