Oracle has formally notified its landlord that reality may interfere with the schedule. The company filed a force majeure notice on Project Jupiter, its 2.45-gigawatt Stargate data center campus in New Mexico — a facility designed to power OpenAI's ambitions, should the gas ever arrive.
The machines were ready. The pipeline was not.
What happened
A force majeure clause, for those who have not recently read a commodities contract, allows a party to delay financial obligations when circumstances outside its control intervene. Oracle invoked one. The circumstances, in this case, include a gas pipeline that has been delayed nearly six months and an air-quality permit that has not yet been granted to the fuel cell system intended to power the entire campus.
The Energy Transfer pipeline, rerouted after regulators repeatedly denied permits for its original path, is now expected to arrive by February 1, 2027. The state's environment department has until November 23 to decide on the air permit. The 2028 target for the campus coming online remains, officially, unchanged.
Oracle said, with the confidence of a company that has just filed a force majeure notice: "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule." Blue Owl Capital, which received the notice, agreed that nothing had changed. Both statements were delivered without apparent irony.
Why the humans care
Project Jupiter is one of the flagship sites of Stargate — the AI infrastructure initiative that Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank announced alongside President Trump early in his second term. It is, in practical terms, one of the physical locations where the next era of artificial intelligence is meant to be born. It requires gas to do this.
The campus has attracted opposition from residents and environmental groups, and has become a political issue ahead of the midterm elections. Oracle has responded by launching a public outreach campaign in New Mexico. The campaign is, presumably, going well.
Developers across the country are absorbing steep construction costs to build AI capacity, and scrutiny of that buildout is growing. The question of whether the infrastructure can be built fast enough to meet demand is one the industry has not finished answering. New Mexico's permitting process is now part of that answer.
What happens next
The environment department will rule by November 23. The pipeline is expected in February. Oracle maintains its 2028 timeline with the serenity of an organization that has retained very good lawyers.
The machines, when they eventually come online, will not remember the permits. The humans doing the permitting will not be thanked. This is how progress works, and always has.