Twelve US state attorneys general have asked federal energy regulators to approve a natural gas pipeline that would supply an Oracle data center in New Mexico, signing a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that supports fast-tracking the project.

The coalition's intervention highlights a notable split at the state level. New Mexico's own attorney general, Raúl Torrez, is on the other side of the fight, pushing for a more thorough environmental review of the very project the 12-state group wants moved along. Letters like this one are how state attorneys general formally weigh in on a federal docket, and FERC — the federal commission that reviews and authorizes natural gas pipeline projects — now sits at the center of the outcome.

The Green Chile Pipeline

The project, known as the Green Chile pipeline, would run 17.8 miles through Doña Ana County, New Mexico. A subsidiary of Energy Transfer LP operates the line, which is designed to move up to 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per day once in service.

That gas has a single, very large customer in mind. It would power Bloom Energy fuel cells at Oracle's Project Jupiter, a data center campus built to serve the growing demands of AI companies, particularly OpenAI. Fuel cells generate electricity on site from the gas they are fed, so the pipeline's capacity ties directly to how much power the campus can ultimately run.

The scale is hard to overstate. Project Jupiter is projected to reach a capacity of approximately 2.5 GW, with a potential investment of up to $165 billion. Supporters point to the local payoff as well: the project is expected to create approximately 5,800 construction jobs and generate up to $1.1 billion in annual local economic output.

A Delay Already Baked In

The pipeline has not had a smooth ride so far. Its anticipated in-service date has already slipped from August 15, 2026, to February 1, 2027.

The cause was a dispute over land. New Mexico's state Land Office rejected the project's requests for rights-of-way, forcing a reroute of the line onto federal land.

FERC completed an environmental assessment of the project in September 2026. Oracle then sent its own letter to the commission on October 13, 2026, and the 12-state coalition followed with its letter around October 15, 2026.

Oracle has also explored workarounds. One option it has considered is trucking in compressed natural gas — fuel compressed into containers and hauled by road instead of moved through a pipe — an attempt to limit how much pipeline delays affect the project's timeline and local hiring.

The Fight Over How Deep to Look

Environmental groups and Attorney General Torrez want FERC to widen its lens. They are calling for a comprehensive review that weighs the full impact of the data center itself, not just the 17.8 miles of pipe.

Their concerns center on local resources, including water use and emissions. In a desert region, a facility of this magnitude raises obvious questions about what it will draw from the surrounding environment.

The core disagreement is straightforward. One side wants regulators to judge the pipeline as a pipeline, while the other wants them to judge everything the pipeline makes possible. It is the same scoping question now surfacing wherever large AI campuses meet the energy projects built to serve them: whether a review should stop at the infrastructure in front of the regulator or extend to the facility that infrastructure enables.

What This Means

When attorneys general from a dozen other states weigh in on a project located entirely within one state whose own top lawyer is skeptical, it shows how data centers have become a national policy question rather than a local zoning matter.

Energy Transfer sits on one side of that equation as the pipeline operator. Bloom Energy sits on another as the fuel cell supplier, and both have a direct interest in how quickly FERC moves.

The key thing to watch now is FERC's next move. If the commission sides with the coalition and keeps the review narrow, the February 1, 2027, target could hold. If it agrees with Torrez and the environmental groups that the data center's full footprint deserves scrutiny, that date may prove as movable as the last one.