Texas Just Approved the Largest Gas Power Project in U.S. History 

Permian shale, Texas [image credit: fulcrium.com]

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With the advent of AI this is the way the world is going, despite the futile net zero antics of leaders in the UK, EU and a few other places. Suppressing your own energy supplies isn’t going to help meet imminent data centre power demand, or any demand. Cries of ‘climate’ sound increasingly hollow.
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Texas’ environmental regulator this week issued the largest air pollution permit in the country to an enormous planned complex of gas power plants and data centers near the oilfields of the Permian Basin, according to an announcement from the project’s developers,
reports OilPrice.com.

Pacifico Energy, a global, investor-owned infrastructure company, called its 7.65 gigawatt GW Ranch in Pecos County “the largest power project in the United States” in a press release this week.

It’s among a handful of similarly colossal ventures announced during 2025 that have made Texas the global epicenter of a gas power buildout, according to data released Thursday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

“Massive fossil fuel infrastructure is being developed, often directly at the source of gas supply, in order to feed speculative AI demand,” said Jenny Martos, project manager for GEM’s Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker.
. . .
Only China, with 50 times the population and 15 times the land, has more gas power projects in development than Texas, the GEM report said. Nearly half of all upcoming gas power projects in Texas, totalling 40 GW of capacity, are planned to directly power data centers, the report said.

“There is just an explosion of these things,” said Griffin Bird, a research analyst who tracks gas plants for the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, D.C. “We’re having such a tough time staying on top of new projects.”
. . .
Texas currently has 11 gas power plant projects under construction, according to GEM data. It has 102 projects under preconstruction—acquiring land, permits and contracts. Another 28 projects have been announced.

If all those plants are built, it would more than double Texas’ current gas power generation capacity.

Full report here.
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Image: Permian shale, Texas [credit: fulcrium.com]