Delay comes as company plans more than 500 miles of gas pipeline to serve data centers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona.
A pipeline intended to transport natural gas to the Project Jupiter data center under construction in southern New Mexico won’t come online until early next year at the soonest, according to new federal regulatory filings.
The pipeline, referred to as the “Green Chile Project” in federal documents submitted by the Dallas-based company Energy Transfer, was initially proposed as a $60 million project that would carry gas from El Paso to Project Jupiter, the Oracle and OpenAI data center planned for Doña Ana County.
New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard recently shot down the developer’s second request to build on state trust land, contending that doing so would impose “extreme” burdens on New Mexico’s finite natural resources.
In filings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission late last week, Energy Transfer wrote that the pipeline’s anticipated “in-service date” has moved from this month to February of 2027.
The delay comes as Energy Transfer, which owns the Transwestern Pipeline Company, seeks approval to build a more than 500-mile pipeline from the Permian Basin to Phoenix, in large part to support data centers.
Energy Transfer first announced the project, which is dubbed the Desert Southwest Pipeline Expansion Project, in August of 2025. At the time, Energy Transfer referred to it as an extension of its Transwestern Pipeline.
Plans show that it would stretch from Waha, Texas, to Phoenix, Arizona, and cross through southern New Mexico in between.
FERC filings from earlier this year show a planned lateral line — meaning it branches off of the main pipeline to serve a specific facility — called the “Red Chile Lateral” is associated with the Desert Southwest Pipeline Expansion Project and will sit just 50 feet from the Green Chile Project.
Energy Transfer did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Oracle wrote in a statement to Source NM that “Project Jupiter remains on schedule, and we continue to work closely with our partners to move the project forward.”
On Friday, the environmentalist organization the Sierra Club announced it had sent thousands of comments opposing the pipeline expansion to Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, who voiced support for it earlier this year.
“The Desert Southwest Pipeline is a serious threat to communities in the Southwest,” Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter Director Sandy Bahr wrote in a statement. “This massive pipeline threatens our water resources, our fragile desert ecosystems and increases our reliance on fossil fuels at a time when we need to be transitioning away to renewables. Even worse, the pipeline would allow tech companies to move forward with their data center buildout, which our communities continue to fight to stop.”
Bahr added that federal regulators have “a big task ahead” in conducting an environmental review of the proposed pipeline.
“We call on the commissioners to take their time and get this one right, for the health and wellbeing of all our Southwest communities,” she wrote.
