Data centres are fleeing suburbs for oil fields
Texas Pacific Land, LandBridge and EagleRock are pitching remote Permian Basin acreage to AI developers as an escape route from a backlash that has already killed a $1.5 billion project in San Marcos, the first Texas city to effectively zone out data centres entirely. Only 29% of Texans support a data centre in their community, versus 56% opposed, according to the June UT/Texas Politics Project poll, and rural support drops to 22%. Governor Greg Abbott has frozen new grid-connected approvals pending an audit, which is forcing developers to hunt for sites where nobody's watching and the gas is already flowing. The Permian offers exactly that: cheap land, abundant natural gas for on-site power, and a population sparse enough to avoid the noise and water fights playing out in East Texas. California Resources Corporation is running the same playbook at its Elk Hills oil field, a 600,000 square-foot campus that suggests this siting model travels well beyond Texas.
Sources
- Data-Center Backlash Leads to a New Land Rush in the Texas Oil Patch — The Wall Street Journal
- Texas data center project audit — Texastribune
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