Oracle has revived attempts to secure approval for a natural gas pipeline extension needed to feed its 2.5GW Project Jupiter data center campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

According to Bloomberg, the cloud computing firm asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to expedite approval of the 17.8-mile (28.6km) Green Chile pipeline, which would transport about 400 million cubic feet of natural gas daily to on-site fuel cells that will power the facility. Bloom Energy is supplying the fuel cells and has signed several offtake deals with other data center firms.

In a letter to FERC, the company said that the development is projected to support nearly 5,800 peak construction jobs and generate up to $1.1 billion in annual economic output for the local county.

In July, Energy Transfer, a midstream gas firm, saw its application to build a new natural gas pipeline to feed the site rejected by state regulators. State officials cited large-scale water use, increased CO2 emissions, and a lack of state revenue generation as major factors in their decision.

Despite the rejection, Oracle said the project remained on schedule. However, in September, it was reported that the company had sent a force majeure notice to Blue Owl Capital in an effort to shield itself from potential increased costs should the facility fail to come online in 2028 as planned, which would allow the firm to delay the payments it would have to make, rather than forfeit its tenancy.

With the pipeline's operational timeline now set for February 2027, well past its August target, there is growing trepidation that the data center could also face significant delays.

In response to the renewed push for approval, environmental groups and the state's attorney general, Raúl Torrez, have sought to pressure FERC to broaden its environmental review, asking the agency to evaluate the combined footprint of the data center and the pipeline before granting approval.

As a workaround for its gas supply issues, recent reports revealed that the company has been trucking in compressed natural gas to its Salt Lake City and Texas data centers for the past year. According to the reports, the company is now considering the same model for the Project Jupiter data center.