Oracle Invokes Force Majeure on 2.45GW Stargate Data Center

Oracle has sent a force majeure notice to Blue Owl Capital's Stack Infrastructure unit, the developer of Project Jupiter, a large artificial-intelligence data center under construction in New Mexico, Bloomberg reported on 24 September 2026. The notice is a contractual shield: it is meant to limit Oracle's payment obligations if the site fails to come online by its 2028 start date.

Project Jupiter is one of the marquee pieces of Stargate, the $165 billion AI infrastructure programme Oracle set out alongside OpenAI and SoftBank. The New Mexico campus is designed for 2.45 gigawatts of capacity — enough electricity for roughly 1.8 million homes at any one time — and is meant to run on Bloom Energy fuel cells, which generate power electrochemically and use little water but need a steady supply of natural gas.

That gas is the problem. The 17-mile "Green Chile" pipeline operated by Energy Transfer LP, which would feed the campus, has been repeatedly denied right-of-way permits by the New Mexico State Land Office, according to Bloomberg and Investing.com. Service that was scheduled to start in September 2026 has been pushed to 1 February 2027. The permitting process is still running; no decision permanently closing the route has been reported.

Oracle says the schedule is intact. “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule. We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward,” the company said in a statement quoted by Bloomberg. Oracle has not said it is leaving the project.

Investors reacted anyway. In intraday trading at 12:13 p.m. ET on 24 September, Nasdaq data showed Oracle at $137.56, down 4.84%; Blue Owl Capital at $9.18, down 4.38%; and Bloom Energy at $257.89, down 6.29%. Investing.com had earlier reported falls of about 4%, 4% and 6% for the three. US markets were still trading at that point, so these are snapshots, not closing prices.

Why it matters: the constraint biting one of the largest AI buildouts in the world is not chips or capital, but a right-of-way permit for a 17-mile pipe. The $18 billion bank loan financing the construction is already quoted below 90 cents on the dollar, Bloomberg reported — a sign lenders are pricing in the risk of delay.

What is still unknown: how Stack Infrastructure and Blue Owl respond to the notice, whether the State Land Office grants the crossing before February, and what a force majeure declaration would mean for the other Stargate sites. Oracle, Blue Owl and Energy Transfer have not published a joint timetable.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.