OpenAI Stargate New Mexico In review
Part of Stargate.
Key facts
- Operator
- Oracle
- Owner
- Oracle
- Tenant
- OpenAI
- Location
- Santa Teresa, New Mexico
- Stage today
- In review
Source
read 2026-08-14
What to do next
Next step: An application is in the record. Ask the planning office for the next hearing date and request formal notice.
What has happened so far (8 events)
- 2025-02-25announcement
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a partnership with BorderPlex Digital Assets to build a $5 billion digital infrastructure campus in Santa Teresa, expected to create 1,000 jobs — the first announcement of the site that would become Project Jupiter. · source - 2025-09-19vote
Dona Ana County Board of County Commissioners voted 4-1 to approve an ordinance authorizing issuance of up to $165 billion in Industrial Revenue Bonds for Project Jupiter, including an initial $50 billion investment within five years, a 30-year property-tax abatement offset by PILOT payments, $50 million for water/wastewater infrastructure, and a $6.9 million community investment fund. · source - 2025-09-23announcement
TechCrunch reported OpenAI is building five new Stargate data centers with Oracle and SoftBank, bringing Stargate's planned capacity to 7 gigawatts; Dona Ana County, New Mexico was named as one of three new sites being developed with Oracle. · source - 2025-09-25coverage
El Paso Matters reported OpenAI and Oracle had confirmed their partnership on the $165 billion Project Jupiter data center in Santa Teresa as part of the Stargate initiative, with $50 billion planned over five years, 2,500 construction jobs, and 750 permanent jobs. · source - 2026-03-01public-comment
Food and Water Watch reported that community members submitted over 7,000 comments to the New Mexico Environment Department regarding Project Jupiter's initial proposed gas plant (March 2026). · source - 2026-05-07permit
The Bureau of Land Management used emergency permitting authority to fast-track a construction review of the Green Chile natural gas pipeline, shortening the federal environmental review from about a year to 14 days; the ~18-mile, $60 million pipeline would carry 400 million cubic feet of gas per day to serve Project Jupiter. · source - 2026-07-01hearing
The New Mexico Environment Department announced it would hold a public hearing on the air permit application for Project Jupiter's microgrid in response to community opposition (July 2026). · source - 2026-07-28protest
A Dona Ana County Commission meeting on Project Jupiter escalated into a physical confrontation: Commission Chair Manny Sanchez capped public comment at 30 speakers despite roughly 60 signed up; a Security Concepts guard pushed a woman to the ground, and she and two others were arrested. The guard was referred for potential felony assault charges, which prosecutors later declined to file. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (1 filed · 11 places to look)
Permits already on file (1)
Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.
- 2026-05-07
The Bureau of Land Management used emergency permitting authority to fast-track a construction review of the Green Chile natural gas pipeline, shortening the federal environmental review from about a year to 14 days; the ~18-mile, $60 million pipeline would carry 400 million cubic feet of gas per day to serve Project Jupiter. · source
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- New Mexico Environment Dept. — Air Quality BureauThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Search New Mexico Environment Dept. — Air Quality Bureau for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Santa Teresa planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Santa Teresa property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- Southwest Power Pool (Plains) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- New Mexico Public Regulation Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 32.350, -106.760 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- New Mexico briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in New Mexico
- Green Data Socorro campus (New Mexico Tech land) — Socorro (Socorro County), 118 mi Withdrawn
- Meta Los Lunas — Los Lunas, 169 mi
- OpenAI Stargate Doña Ana County — Doña Ana County Under construction
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “OpenAI Stargate New Mexico”, aigridwatch.com/projects/openai-stargate-new-mexico, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).