The New Mexico State Land Office has denied a request by a Texas energy company to build a segment of a 17-mile pipeline to fuel the Project Jupiter data center in Southern New Mexico.
The $60-million project, dubbed the “Green Chile Project,” would pipe 400,000 dekatherms of gas from El Paso daily to the private power plants fueling the proposed Project Jupiter, according to documents filed with the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.SUBSCRIBE
While most of the pipeline would pass through federal and private lands, the Dallas-based company Energy Transfer, which owns the Transwestern Pipeline Company, applied to the State Land Office for access to a parcel of state lands in Doña Ana County.
The Feb. 14 application requested a 5-year lease for 0.63 miles of state trust lands and said the company would install the pipeline, several buildings and a backup generator.
The State Land Office sent a letter on March 20 denying Energy Transfer’s application and barred construction. New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard “determined approving the applications would not be in the best interest of the state’s trust,” Assistant Commissioner of Communications Joey Keefe said in a statement to Source NM.
“Applicants will need to find a route that does not include state trust lands,” Keefe added.
Officials for Energy Transfer told Source NM in a statement Tuesday that the pipeline remains in the “planning stages,” and said the final route will be determined by the FERC, which oversees cross-state pipelines.
“We are currently performing civil, environmental, and cultural surveys to determine the safest route with the least environmental impact. The final proposed route will not be determined until this work has been completed,” Energy Transfer Vice President of Corporate Communications Vicki Granado said in a statement.
It’s unclear how the denial will impact the timeline for construction of the pipeline, which Energy Transfer had reported to the FERC would start in April shortly after the closure of an April 15 public comment period, in order to complete the pipeline by August.
Kacey Hovden, a staff attorney for the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, which is representing local opposition to Project Jupiter in several ongoing lawsuits, celebrated the state’s denial.
“It’s really exciting to see the State Land Office taking the impacts of Project Jupiter seriously,” Hovden said. “From the very beginning, Project Jupiter has been pushed forward as this huge benefit to the state of New Mexico, its residents and our environment. And as we learn more and more each day about Project Jupiter, it’s not looking like that at all.”
Hovden noted that New Mexico environment officials’ decision on air-quality permits for the private power plants that the pipeline is supposed to fuel was pushed back to July, calling the pipeline a “cart-before-the-horse” situation.
