Oil and gas firm Pilot Energy is deploying a containerized data center in Western Australia powered by flared gas.

The company is planning to deploy a 1MW data center at its Arrowsmith site in Western Australia, powered by excess natural gas.

The Dongara Data Centre will be powered using the existing gas-fired 4.4MW generators. The Starlink-equipped facility is set to go live in late March and is set to be extended to 4MW in the future.

First announced in October, the module is to use excess capacity from the nearby Cliff Head oil field, which is transitioning to be used for carbon storage. The project is in partnership with Kala Data.

Arrowsmith is a town in the Midwest region of Western Australia. Its local government area is the Shire of Irwin and is located 45 kilometers (27.9 miles) from the town of Dongara and 300km (186.4 miles) north of Perth.

The assembly of the first 1MW data center module and associated immersion thermal management systems has been completed in China and is awaiting shipment to the Port of Kwinana.

Initial engineering works for the installation of the data center modules and connection to the existing power generation facilities have been completed. Minor civil works are expected to commence in mid-February and take approximately two weeks to complete.

Pilot Energy’s managing director, Brad Lingo, said: “The Dongara Data Centre Project represents an important step towards generating revenue and maximizing the value of our existing infrastructure at Arrowsmith. The installation of an initial 1MW modular data center unit in early 2026, with expansion to 4MW by mid-2026, positions Pilot to deliver one of Western Australia’s first live data centers in the Mid West and potentially a top ten facility in the State by power capacity.”

Pilot said the 1MW site would be the first major live data center in the Midwest region and rank in the top ten in capacity across all of Western Australia. The full 4MW build-out would see the site rank as the seventh-highest capacity site in WA.

Lingo said Pilot and Kala are actively assessing the potential to scale their data center footprint to 30–35MW across Arrowsmith or the Three Springs Solar Project.

Pilot is an oil and gas exploration and production company based in Australia. It has recently begun to pursue diversification into low-carbon energy systems, including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

The company announced plans to develop a hybrid solar and battery storage project colocated with a 50MW data center project in Western Australia alongside SN Energy in January.

UAE-based Kala Data is a technology company specializing in the “monetization of energy assets through high-performance computing,” placing immersion-cooled containerized modules at gas flare sites.