Data centers are driving a surge in the construction of power generation facilities involving fracked gas.
By Derek Seidman ,
January 3, 2026
Aerial view of a data center being constructed.Gerville / Getty Images
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“The demand for power and for AI is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
These words were uttered during an October earnings call, not by a wide-eyed tech executive, but by Jeff Miller, the CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s biggest oilfield services corporations.
Like droves of other companies tied to the fracked gas industry, Halliburton is pivoting toward servicing the data center boom with new loads of methane-emitting, gas-fired power generation to feed the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble being stoked by Silicon Valley billionaires and allied corporate elites.
Halliburton is merely one of many fossil fuel companies that are striking deals to power the insatiable electricity needs of data centers. More specifically, the natural gas industry — frackers, gasfield services, pipeline companies, power suppliers — are positioning themselves as bold saviors ready to step in and meet AI’s bottomless energy demands.
In doing this, fracked gas companies are fully backed by the Trump administration, with its ideological dedication to fossil fuels and its cozy relationship with billionaire oil and gas donors. For its part, Big Tech is going along, largely sidelining its purported commitments to renewable energy.
Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today!
“The demand for power and for AI is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
These words were uttered during an October earnings call, not by a wide-eyed tech executive, but by Jeff Miller, the CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s biggest oilfield services corporations.
Like droves of other companies tied to the fracked gas industry, Halliburton is pivoting toward servicing the data center boom with new loads of methane-emitting, gas-fired power generation to feed the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble being stoked by Silicon Valley billionaires and allied corporate elites.
Halliburton is merely one of many fossil fuel companies that are striking deals to power the insatiable electricity needs of data centers. More specifically, the natural gas industry — frackers, gasfield services, pipeline companies, power suppliers — are positioning themselves as bold saviors ready to step in and meet AI’s bottomless energy demands.
In doing this, fracked gas companies are fully backed by the Trump administration, with its ideological dedication to fossil fuels and its cozy relationship with billionaire oil and gas donors. For its part, Big Tech is going along, largely sidelining its purported commitments to renewable energy.
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As the global climate emergency intensifies, none of this bodes well. Despite being sold as a “clean” fossil fuel, fracked gas emits loads of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and local communities — often rural, low-income, and predominantly Black — bear the brunt of the combined nexus of data center behemoths and fossil fuel power generation being constructed in their backyards.
“The natural gas industry is directly aligning with the data center industry.”
“The natural gas industry is directly aligning with the data center industry,” Tyson Slocum, the director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, told Truthout. “From a climate perspective, and from a local environmental perspective, data centers represent a significant impediment to action on climate change.”
“Icing on the Cake”
Natural gas currently provides over 40 percent of the electricity for data centers, making gas-fired power stations their largest power source, according to the International Energy Agency.
The massive demand for electricity from data centers is driving a surge in the construction of power generation infrastructure fueled by natural gas.
One McKinsey analyst recently noted that over 100 gigawatts (GW) of new gas-fired projects are being planned. “To put that number in perspective,” he said, “over the last five years, the U.S. added only about 35 GW of gas,” meaning this is “almost triple what it was.”
Utilities announced a slew of new gas-fired power projects in 2025 — a factor that helps explain private equity’s rush to acquire utilities. Utility powering of data centers is expected to skyrocket by 22 percent this year.
Industry leaders are swooning. “It’s been 40 or 50 years, or so, since we’ve seen demand grow the way it’s growing and is expected to grow,” said one executive of energy giant NRG.
“AI is obviously a big part,” he added.
The core driver of the fracked gas industry over the past decade has been the booming production of liquified natural gas (LNG) for export, which has vastly accelerated since the Obama administration. Today, the U.S. leads the world in natural gas production and exports.
While LNG exports are unrivaled as “the demand driver and the profit center for the domestic natural gas industry,” says Slocum, data centers “provide a significant additional profit cushion.”
“Data centers are far and away the largest variable that is increasing electricity demand,” he said. “They’re sort of the icing on the cake.”
“Help Nourish That Appetite”
With 3 million miles of gas pipelines tightly networked across the country, Slocum says the fracked gas industry has positioned itself as the prime supplier for powering data centers.
This is seen through a flurry of data center deals struck by corporations across the fracked gas supply chain — independent drillers, oil and gas majors, pipeline companies, and oilfield services companies.
EQT, a top U.S. natural producer based in Western Pennsylvania, the heart of the vast Marcellus Shale formation, struck a deal to supply two huge data center hubs in Appalachia — the Shippingport and Homer City projects — with a combined 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of gas supplies.
“Just to put this in perspective, that’s enough natural gas to power two of New York City,” gloated EQT CEO Toby Rice, who also added that Homer City and Shippingport are “just the first steps of multiple steps in multiple projects.”
EQT is hardly alone. Fracking giants like EOG and Antero Resources are striking deals to position themselves to supply data centers. Comstock Resources, owned by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, is partnering with utility giant NextEra to “keep the lights on at a plethora of data centers” in Texas, says Natural Gas Intelligence.
Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil and gas company, is getting in the game. “AI data centers require massive amounts of energy to function,” the company gushed in a February press release.
But have no fear, they promised. “Chevron is tapping into natural gas to help nourish that appetite,” the oil giant declared, announcing a new deal to build gas-fired power plants for data centers.
“Unleashing American Energy”
While the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence are pulling the fracking industry toward data centers, the Trump administration’s policies are also playing a critical role.
“National policy under Trump is prioritizing fossil fuels for data center development” and “particularly natural gas,” Slocum told Truthout.
“It’s explicit in Trump’s July executive order on artificial intelligence, where he defines the criteria that data centers need to meet to qualify for expedited approval, and it lists every energy source except wind and solar,” Slocum added.
That July 2025 executive order, titled “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure,” clearly emphasizes the role of fossil fuels in powering data centers. It defines “Covered Components” — the “materials, products, and infrastructure that are required to build Data Center Projects” — using language that foregrounds “energy infrastructure” like “natural gas pipelines or laterals” and “natural gas turbines” and “coal power equipment” with no mention of words like “wind” or “solar.”
As Slocum has written, “a data center proposed to be powered by wind and solar will not qualify for expedited treatment, whereas a fossil fuel powered facility would,” adding that fossil fuel-powered data centers could also qualify for direct federal subsidies.
This codification of national policy around fossil fuels as the core supplier of data centers aligns with Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “Drill Baby Drill” and his adamantly pro-fossil fuel January 2025 executive order on “Unleashing American Energy.”
Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has gone to war against renewable energy, freezing permits around solar and wind projects and denigrating windmills.
Trump and the Fossil Fuel CEOs
Trump’s ideological commitment to feeding data centers with fossil fuel-powered electricity is wedded to his cozy relationship with the fracking billionaires who helped bankroll his 2024 reelection.
Trump saw oil and gas barons as a key constituency during his 2024 reelection campaign, and industry billionaires like Harold Hamm and Kelcy Warren showered Trump with millions in donations.
As Truthout has previously noted, Trump filled out his cabinet with fossil fuel executives and boosters, including Chris Wright, the fracking-liquid-guzzling former CEO of Liberty Energy, who Trump made energy secretary.
Since then, the fossil fuel industry has benefited handsomely from Trump’s policies of environmental deregulation and tax subsidies — and a bonanza of new business tied to data centers.
Warren is the co-founder and executive chairman of pipeline giant Energy Transfer and a longtime Trump ally. Energy Transfer is awash in new business supplying data centers from Texas to Arizona and is partnering with AI giants like Oracle.
Hamm is the founder and former CEO of fracking giant Continental Resources, and is a major Trump donor who is also backing Trump’s White House ballroom. He may be Trump’s biggest fossil fuel industry ally.
“Together,” writes The New York Times, Trump and Hamm “have remade federal policy to benefit oil and gas companies, including Mr. Hamm’s Continental, and put off the transition to greener alternatives like solar power and batteries.”
The Hamm Institute for American Energy, a research and policy hub funded by Hamm, who also serves on its board, has supported natural gas for powering AI and hosted an April event on “powering AI” that featured key Trump cabinet members leading the administration’s energy policies.
Liberty Energy — again, formerly led by Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright — is also striking deals to power data centers in Pennsylvania.
“The only thing that’ll prevent us from leading in AI is the failure to build this electric generating capacity that needs to happen,” Wright recently raved to the Council on Foreign Relations, adding that he was “using emergency powers to stop [the] closure of coal plants” and “expediting the permitting of building of new plants.”
Big Tech’s Conformity
For its part, Big Tech has quickly backtracked on its net zero commitments as it embraces gas-fired power generation for data centers.
For example, Entergy, a power generation behemoth that relies mostly on fossil fuels, is currently constructing three massive gas-fired plants to power a $10 billion Meta data center in Louisiana.
Less than a decade ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg waxed about addressing the climate crisis. Fast forward to today, and headlines like “Meta goes all in on gas to power a mega data center” are being published, while Zuckerberg and Meta are being lambasted by lawmakers, energy analysts, and community groups.
This fits a larger pattern, which Truthout has reported on, of Silicon Valley CEOs backtracking on purported climate aims and criticism of Trump to remain the president’s good graces and profit off his policies.
“Trump demands conformity, and Big Tech is providing that conformity by turning its back on its traditional commitments to increase and rely upon renewable energy,” said Slocum.
Of course, all this will exacerbate the climate crisis. The production, transport, and burning of natural gas releases huge amounts of methane, which is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere.
Under Trump, data centers are also giving new life to dying and dirty coal plants.
Under Trump, data centers are also giving new life to dying and dirty coal plants, and many data centers are backed up by super-polluting diesel generators that some fear could come to be used more frequently.
As journalist Adam Mahoney has reported, in states like South Carolina and Texas, Black households disproportionately bear the brunt of the data center boom and AI’s growing fossil fuel emissions trail, especially with on-site power generation.
Many communities are resisting both data centers and their dirty emissions — from Memphis, Tennessee, to Bessemer, Alabama, to Santa Teresa, Arizona.
To be sure, Big Tech firms are also partnering on some projects with renewable energy sources to service data centers. While U.S. data centers are overwhelmingly powered by fossil fuel sources, the International Energy Agency notes that the proportion of solar, wind, and other renewables involved will increase going into the 2030s and beyond.
But this raises another question: Do we really want the renewable energy transition to be dominated by — and wasted on meeting — the profit-centered priorities of Big Tech and Wall Street firms and their fixation with the unproven, supposed wonders of AI
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher and historian living in Buffalo, New York. He is a regular contributor for Truthout and a contributing writer for LittleSis.
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