{"id":9169,"date":"2025-10-17T23:23:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T23:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/9169\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T23:23:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T23:23:06","slug":"your-ai-tools-run-on-fracked-gas-and-bulldozed-texas-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/9169\/","title":{"rendered":"Your AI tools run on fracked gas and bulldozed Texas land"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AI era is giving fracking<\/a> a second act, a surprising twist for an industry that, even during its early 2010s boom years, was blamed by climate advocates for poisoned water tables, man-made earthquakes, and the stubborn persistence of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

AI companies are building massive data centers near major gas-production sites, often generating their own power by tapping directly into fossil fuels. It\u2019s a trend that\u2019s been overshadowed by headlines about the intersection of AI and healthcare (and solving climate change), but it\u2019s one that could reshape \u2014 and raise difficult questions for \u2014 the communities that host these facilities.<\/p>\n

Take the latest example. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> that AI coding assistant startup Poolside is constructing a data center complex on more than 500 acres in West Texas \u2014 about 300 miles west of Dallas \u2014 a footprint two-thirds the size of Central Park. The facility will generate its own power by tapping natural gas from the Permian Basin, the nation\u2019s most productive oil and gas field, where hydraulic fracturing isn\u2019t just common but really the only game in town.<\/p>\n

The project, dubbed Horizon, will produce two gigawatts of computing power. That\u2019s equivalent to the Hoover Dam\u2019s entire electric capacity, except instead of harnessing the Colorado River, it\u2019s burning fracked gas. Poolside is developing the facility with CoreWeave, a cloud computing company that rents out access to Nvidia AI chips and that\u2019s supplying access to more than 40,000 of them. The Journal calls it an \u201cenergy Wild West,\u201d which seems apt.<\/p>\n

Yet Poolside is far from alone. Nearly all the major AI players are pursuing similar strategies. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman toured his company\u2019s flagship Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas \u2014 around 200 miles from the Permian Basin \u2014 where he was candid, saying, \u201cWe\u2019re burning gas to run this data center<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The complex requires about 900 megawatts of electricity across eight buildings and includes a new gas-fired power plant using turbines similar to those that power warships, according to the Associated Press. The companies say the plant provides only backup power, with most electricity coming from the local grid. That grid, for the record, draws from a mix of natural gas and the sprawling wind and solar farms in West Texas.<\/p>\n

But the people living near these projects aren\u2019t exactly comforted. Arlene Mendler lives across the street from Stargate. She told the AP she wishes someone had asked her opinion before bulldozers eliminated a huge tract of mesquite shrubland to make room for what\u2019s being built atop it.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has completely changed the way we were living,\u201d Mendler told the AP. She moved to the area 33 years ago seeking \u201cpeace, quiet, tranquility.\u201d Now construction is the soundtrack in the background, and bright lights on the scene have spoiled her nighttime views.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the water. In drought-prone West Texas, locals are particularly nervous about how new data centers will impact the water supply. The city\u2019s reservoirs were at roughly half-capacity during Altman\u2019s visit, with residents on a twice-weekly outdoor watering schedule. Oracle claims each of the eight buildings will need just 12,000 gallons per year after an initial million-gallon fill for closed-loop cooling systems. But Shaolei Ren, a University of California, Riverside professor who studies AI\u2019s environmental footprint, told the AP that\u2019s misleading. These systems require more electricity, which means more indirect water consumption at the power plants generating that electricity.<\/p>\n

Meta is pursuing a similar strategy. In Richland Parish, the poorest region of Louisiana, the company plans to build a $10 billion data center the size of 1,700 football fields that will require two gigawatts of power for computation alone. Utility company Entergy will spend $3.2 billion to build three large natural-gas power plants with 2.3 gigawatts of capacity to feed the facility by burning gas extracted through fracking in the nearby Haynesville Shale. Louisiana residents, like those in Abilene, aren\u2019t thrilled<\/a> to be encircled by bulldozers around the clock.<\/p>\n

(Meta is also building in Texas, though elsewhere in the state. This week the company announced a $1.5 billion data center<\/a> in El Paso, near the New Mexico border, with one gigawatt of capacity expected online in 2028. El Paso isn\u2019t near the Permian Basin, and Meta says the facility will be matched with 100% clean and renewable energy. One point for Meta.)<\/p>\n

Even Elon Musk\u2019s xAI, whose Memphis facility has generated considerable controversy<\/a> this year, has fracking connections. Memphis Light, Gas and Water \u2013 which currently sells power to xAI but will eventually own the substations xAI is building \u2013 purchases natural gas on the spot market and pipes it to Memphis via two companies: Texas Gas Transmission Corp. and Trunkline Gas Company.<\/p>\n

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, the other Memphis supplier, also carries natural gas from fracked sources.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering why AI companies are pursuing this path, they\u2019ll tell you it\u2019s not just about electricity; it\u2019s also about beating China.<\/p>\n

That was the argument Chris Lehane made last week. Lehane, a veteran political operative who joined OpenAI as vice president of global affairs in 2024, laid out the case during an on-stage interview<\/a> with TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that in the not-too-distant future, at least in the U.S., and really around the world, we are going to need to be generating in the neighborhood of a gigawatt of energy a week,\u201d Lehane said. He pointed to China\u2019s massive energy buildout: 450 gigawatts and 33 nuclear facilities constructed in the last year alone.<\/p>\n

When TechCrunch asked about Stargate\u2019s decision to build in economically challenged areas like Abilene, or Lordstown, Ohio, where more gas-powered plants are planned, Lehane returned to geopolitics. \u201cIf we [as a country] do this right, you have an opportunity to re-industrialize countries, bring manufacturing back and also transition our energy systems so that we do the modernization that needs to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is certainly on board. The July 2025 executive order<\/a> fast-tracks gas-powered AI data centers by streamlining environmental permits, offering financial incentives, and opening federal lands for projects using natural gas, coal, or nuclear power \u2014 while explicitly excluding renewables from support.<\/p>\n

For now, most AI users remain largely unaware of the carbon footprint behind their dazzling new toys and work tools. They\u2019re more focused on capabilities like Sora 2 \u2013 OpenAI\u2019s hyperrealistic video-generation product that requires exponentially more energy than a simple chatbot \u2013 than on where the electricity comes from.<\/p>\n

The companies are counting on this. They\u2019ve positioned natural gas as the pragmatic, inevitable answer to AI\u2019s exploding power demands. But the speed and scale of this fossil fuel buildout deserves more attention than it\u2019s getting. <\/p>\n

If this is a bubble, it won\u2019t be pretty. The AI sector has become a circular firing squad of dependencies: OpenAI needs Microsoft needs Nvidia needs Broadcom needs Oracle needs data center operators who need OpenAI. They\u2019re all buying from and selling to each other in a self-reinforcing loop. The Financial Times noted this week if the foundation cracks, there\u2019ll be a lot of expensive infrastructure left standing around, both the digital and the gas-burning kind. <\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s ability alone to meet its obligations is \u201cincreasingly a concern for the wider economy<\/a>,\u201d the outlet wrote.<\/p>\n

One key question that\u2019s been largely absent from the conversation is whether all this new capacity is even necessary. A Duke University study found that utilities typically use only 53% of their available capacity throughout the year. That suggests significant room to accommodate new demand without constructing new power plants, as MIT Technology Review reported earlier this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Duke researchers estimate that if data centers reduced electricity consumption by roughly half for just a few hours during annual peak demand periods, utilities could handle an additional 76 gigawatts of new load. That would effectively absorb the 65 gigawatts data centers are projected to need by 2029.<\/p>\n

That kind of flexibility would allow companies to launch AI data centers faster. More importantly, it could provide a reprieve from the rush to build natural gas infrastructure, giving utilities time to develop cleaner alternatives.<\/p>\n

But again, that would mean losing ground to an autocratic regime, per Lehane and many others in the industry, so instead, the natural gas building spree appears likely to saddle regions with more fossil-fuel plants and leave residents with soaring electricity bills to finance today\u2019s investments, including long after the tech companies\u2019 contracts expire.<\/p>\n

Meta, for instance, has guaranteed it will cover Entergy\u2019s costs for the new Louisiana generation for 15 years. Poolside\u2019s lease with CoreWeave runs for 15 years. What happens to customers when those contracts end remains an open question.<\/p>\n

Things may eventually change. A lot of private money is being funneled into small modular reactors and solar installations with the expectation that these cleaner energy alternatives will become more central energy sources for these data centers. Fusion startups like Helion and Commonwealth Fusion Systems have similarly raised substantial funding<\/a> from those the front lines of AI, including Nvidia and Altman. <\/p>\n

This optimism isn\u2019t confined to private investment circles. The excitement has spilled over into public markets, where several \u201cnon-revenue-generating\u201d energy companies that have managed to go public have truly anticipatory,<\/a> market caps, based on the expectation that they will one day fuel these data centers.<\/p>\n

In the meantime \u2014 which could still be decades \u2014 the most pressing concern is that the people who\u2019ll be left holding the bag, financially and environmentally, never asked for any of this in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The AI era is giving fracking a second act, a surprising twist for an industry that, even during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5421,458,8620,8621,8622,8623,27,29,28,8624],"class_list":{"0":"post-9169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-data-center","9":"tag-fossil-fuels","10":"tag-fracking","11":"tag-openai","12":"tag-poolside-ai","13":"tag-stargate","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-texas-headlines","16":"tag-texas-news","17":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}