Social media firm Meta may be eyeing a large-scale natural gas-powered data center in Canada.

Meta and energy infrastructure firms Pembina Pipeline and Kineticor are reportedly nearing a deal for a data center near Edmonton, Canada, according to The Logic.

Unnamed sources told the publication Pembina and Kineticor would be responsible for providing natural gas-fired electricity to the project, and that data center firm Beacon AI would be involved in some capacity. All three companies are based in Canada.

Details about the data center’s size, capacity, and development timeline were not reported.

The facility would be located northeast of Edmonton in the Alberta Industrial Heartland, an industrial zone approximately 140,000 acres large that is home to companies engaged in various energy projects.

Meta, Pembina, Kineticor, Beacon AI, and official authorities have not officially confirmed these reports. DCD has reached out for comment.

Pembina and Kineticor are two such companies. In March, the pair formed a joint venture to develop a 1.8GW natural gas power plant in the Heartland estimated to be operational by 2029. At the time, the duo also stated that they were in “active discussions with data center customers to commercially underpin the project.”

Investment firm Nadia Partners quietly launched Beacon AI Centers (also known as Beacon Data Centers) in March 2023. Targeting 2027 launch dates, the company's gigawatt-scale portfolio includes data centers near Chestermere, High River, Acheson, Sturgeon County, Langdon, and Beaumont, Alberta.

Alberta is Canada's biggest natural gas producer. The province’s abundance of energy has turned it into one of the country’s data center hotspots, attracting a variety of projects including businessman Kevin O’Leary’s proposed ‘Wonder Valley’ campus, which is supposed to offer 5.5GW of power at completion.

This growth has generated concerns about spiking energy demand.

In late 2023, Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith previously stated in that data centers seeking to set up shop in Alberta must partner with a generating company to "bring your own electricity, bring your own generation,” and in June of this year, the province’s grid operator, the Alberta Electric System Operator, launched an interim plan to enable the connection of up to 1.2GW of large load projects between now and 2028.