US natural gas and oil services company Liberty Energy has entered into a power reservation and preliminary Energy Services Agreement (ESA) with an undisclosed ‘leading data center developer’ for a 330MW data center expansion in Texas.

Revealed during the company’s Q4 results, the project is expected to be delivered in two phases, with the first phase coming online in Q4 2027 and the second in Q2 2028.

According to the company, the agreement defines the economic terms of the expected ESA as well as the construction schedule, cost recovery, and termination payment provisions in the event the final agreement is not executed.

The deal closely follows an agreement with Vantage Data Centers to deliver up to 1GW of power capacity over the next five years, including a reserved 400MW of generation capacity scheduled for 2027.

As part of the deal, Liberty will provide co-located generation connected through dedicated distribution systems within Vantage campuses, with the option to interconnect with the grid in the future.

According to Liberty CEO Ron Gusek, both deals reflect a growing trend within the data center sector where behind-the-meter power is becoming a go-to option.

“We [have] seen a continued trend in what we saw over the middle months of last year, which was this idea that rather than co-located behind-the-meter power being a bridge idea, [there has been] a transition towards co-located behind-the-meter power representing the best solution for long-term power provision at a data center site.

“What you’ve seen then as a result of that is some real urgency to lock up power to have surety of that supply, and you’ve seen that in these two most recent agreements we’ve announced, first with Vantage and then with this subsequent data center fabricator that they wanted to be able to guarantee to their end use customer,” he added.

Liberty Energy was formerly led by Chris Wright, who later became President Trump's Energy Secretary. The company has signed several other deals focused on the data center market. Most notably, in January of last year, the firm signed an MoU with DC Grid to deliver off-grid gas generation to the data center sector.