15-03-2025
Data center could be coming soon
Mar. 14—Things are moving forward with a data center that would be located near Penwell in west Ector County.
New Era Helium Inc., an exploration and production company sourcing helium from natural gas reserves in the Permian Basin, and its joint venture partner, Sharon AI, Inc., a computing business focused on Artificial Intelligence, Cloud GPU Compute Infrastructure and Data Storage, announced in February that their joint venture, Texas Critical Data Centers, LLC, has signed a Letter of Intent to acquire 200 acres in Ector County for the development of a 250 MW net-zero energy AI/HPC (high-performance computing) data center.
The acquisition of the large-scale, 200-acre site is contingent on completion of due diligence and negotiation of definitive documents expected within the next 90 days, a Feb. 27 news release stated. This site is one of several identified by the joint venture and is located near key infrastructure, including fiber optic cable, two natural gas transmission lines, and CO₂ pipeline infrastructure. The intended utilization of CCUS and energy transition technologies makes it an attractive location for developing scalable, energy-efficient AI/HPC infrastructure.
Tom Manskey, director of economic development at the Odessa Chamber of Commerce, said the center would be in the vicinity of where Nacero, Summit and FutureGen would have been had any of those projects been Critical Data Centers, LLC,
Manskey said this project looks more promising. He said Nacero was certainly a promising project, but they got hit with COVID, supply chain and inflation.
"You can never be totally certain that a project this size will come to fruition, but certainly we're going to do everything we can to help them," Manskey said.
He does anticipate Texas Critical Data Centers, the joint venture, making an application to the Odessa Development Corporation, but nothing has occurred yet. They have only signed a letter of intent with the landowner, GROW Odessa. GROW Odessa is an an economic development corporation formed in 1966 to help businesses with expansion and to attract new compatible industry to Odessa.
Manskey said the joint venture reached out to the chamber early on and inquired about the property.
"They explained what they were doing with regards to how to develop a data center out here and they felt like Ector County was an ideal location. The longer we've worked with them, the more we think that, one, this development will happen, and two, it probably won't be the last one," Manskey said.
He added that technology is improving with regard to water use by data centers. The water is mainly used to keep the facilities cool because of all the servers.
"Now you're finding better technology with closed loop processes ... where you're basically having to replenish the water that's evaporated. You're not cycling through new water all the time, so as some water evaporates you're replacing that. That's really reducing their water use at least the groups that we're talking to right now with regard to data centers. Water usage has dropped significantly," Manskey said.
He added that there are lot of power generation options out here. One of the things data centers are looking for is redundancy with regard to power generation.
"They don't want to go down for obvious reasons, so if one mode of power generation goes down they want to have another one ready to click on," Manskey said.
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Since the joint venture got interested in Ector County, Manskey said three other data centers have expressed interest in this area, especially once building starts.
"We've got a lot of wide-open spaces out here. Comparatively speaking to your urban areas, land is less expensive. It's not as cheap as it used to be, but it's still when you're looking at trying to put a center in the Austin metro, DFW or Houston (area), typically you're going to pay more," Manskey said.
He added that they are not huge employers. The companies they are talking to now average anywhere from 35 to 75 employees. The payroll average is over $100,000 a year.
"You work in a nice air-conditioned environment, as opposed to being out in the oilfield in August, so even if the pay doesn't match dollar for dollar there will be people that say hey I'd rather work in this air conditioning," Manskey said.
The companies they have been talking to have discussed partnering with Odessa College and University of Texas Permian Basin to train workers.
"What we're hearing is the skill sets match up pretty well with (the) oilfield ... the automation and things of that nature," Manskey said.
Texas Critical Data Centers LLC want to be operational, at least partially by late 2026, he said.
"I will tell you in 30 years of doing economic development, this is the busiest I've ever seen it; not even close. It's been since the beginning of the year. People are starting to move on larger scale projects. We're trying to do everything we can to land everything that we're talking to. You never really do, but you don't want to lose them all either," Manskey said.
"I'm working on the assumption that it's going to happen. We're going to do everything we can to make it happen. Once something like that happens, it's a major capital investment in the county. They're putting like a 40-year lifetime on the facility," he added.
Data centers "house servers that provide computing power and the fans and cooling units needed to keep the equipment from overheating" operate 24 hours a day, according to the Texas Tribune.
"We're careful when we talk to these companies. We're not eagerly recruiting crypto ... At least currently as we've seen them constructed, they tend to be less permanent. They can go away in the night so we're talking to what they've indicated to us is true data centers who have customers like the big oilfield companies out here or Google or Meta," he said.
Manskey said he doesn't know when the data center will be official here, but the company has agreements in principle and they've discussed customers with the economic development team.
In his opinion, based on his experience, Manskey said he believes this project will happen.
"There's three behind it. We're in the stages of trying to get them to that same level of confidence. We've got to do some things out there in west Ector County with regards to access to the sites. These things are in place already as far as work being done towards getting access," Manskey said.
According to a New Eara Helium and Sharon AI news release, GROW Odessa has a successful track record of attracting new business opportunities to Ector County and will work with Texas Critical Data Centers as a first mover to initiate a behind the meter Data Center Campus with an intended pathway to Net Zero Energy. Ector County is expected to be well suited for net zero power due to existing CO2 infrastructure and its ability to facilitate Carbon Capture Utilization Storage via enhanced oil recovery, a news release stated.
