Oracle, the campus’s main tenant, has sent a force-majeure notice to STACK Infrastructure, the Blue Owl Capital unit developing a New Mexico data-center campus for OpenAI. Oracle says Project Jupiter remains on schedule, and Blue Owl says the notice does not change its financial commitments.
The notice concerns a contract for the campus in Doña Ana County. Force-majeure clauses address events outside a party’s control that affect its ability to perform. Sending a notice can preserve a party’s contractual rights; it does not by itself establish a delay, cancel the project or suspend payments.
A person familiar with the arrangement told Reuters that Oracle invoked the clause because of delays in securing power and that the broader program was running a year late. The same person said Blue Owl has about $3 billion of equity invested and receives a lower return during construction than after completion. Oracle disputes the schedule claim. “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule,” company vice president Michael Egbert said.
Blue Owl said it, STACK and Oracle remain aligned. “This notice does not change the financial commitments to this multiyear project,” the firm said.
Power is a major part of the development plan. Oracle and BorderPlex Digital Assets said in April that the campus would use Bloom Energy fuel cells, with up to 2.45 gigawatts of installed generation capacity planned. The figure is for the proposed power system, not a measure of operating data-center capacity. The fuel cells would replace an earlier plan using gas turbines and diesel generators.
Oracle has said it will bear the campus’s energy costs. It also plans a closed-loop cooling system designed to limit daily water use.
A Data Center Watch tally counted 45 US data-center proposals worth nearly $68 billion delayed or blocked by local opposition in the second quarter. The research group listed permits, electricity, water and infrastructure costs among the points of contention. The $68 billion is the stated value of affected proposals.
In July, New Mexico’s state land commissioner reaffirmed an earlier denial of a request to route a portion of the gas pipeline intended to serve Project Jupiter across state trust land. The rejected route covered about 0.6 miles of a proposed 17-mile pipeline, according to the State Land Office. The commissioner cited expected greenhouse-gas emissions and pressure on water supplies in denying the route. Energy Transfer had sought two rights-of-way and a business lease for that stretch of state land.
Sources: Reuters, Axios, Oracle
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By the Control Plane Editorial Team