By Data Center Infrastructure News & Events · Thursday, October 8, 2026 · 5 min read

Oracle's Force Majeure on Project Jupiter Exposes the Permitting Chain New Mexico Counties Are Now Rewriting

Original illustration created for Data Center Infrastructure News & Events.

Oracle's Force Majeure on Project Jupiter Exposes the Permitting Chain New Mexico Counties Are Now Rewriting

Oracle issued a force majeure notice to Blue Owl Capital on September 24, 2026, over its Project Jupiter campus in Doña Ana County, preserving the company's right to defer rent for up to three years if the site misses its 2028 start date. The project's $18 billion in loans were quoted at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar following the news, Enverus Intelligence Research reported on October 7 — a mark that rests on Enverus's own reporting alone, with no dealer run or disclosure from Blue Owl confirming it independently. A three-year rent deferral option shifts carrying cost onto Blue Owl's balance sheet rather than Oracle's, which is consistent with lenders marking the paper down rather than holding it flat.

The notice did not stop work. Construction continued with more than 3,600 workers on-site, Engineering News-Record reported September 29, even as Oracle moved to shield itself contractually from the delay its own power plan had created.

A microgrid waiting on a permit, a pipeline waiting on land

Project Jupiter's power supply runs through two pieces of infrastructure, and both are stuck in state review. The microgrid is awaiting Air Quality Permit No. 10883. The Green Chile natural gas pipeline meant to fuel it has had its in-service date pushed from August 2026 to February 2027 after the New Mexico State Land Office blocked its route across state trust land, according to Enverus's October 7 report; that account has not been independently confirmed against the State Land Office's own right-of-way docket.

Oracle Vice President Michael Egbert told Engineering News-Record that force majeure notices are "commonplace in developments of this scale" and are used to "preserve contractual rights among project partners." That framing treats the notice as routine contract hygiene. The permitting record behind it is not routine.

On August 23, 2026, the New Mexico Supreme Court stayed both the administrative proceeding for Air Quality Permit No. 10883 and an emergency authorization for a new water well tied to the project, Organ Mountain News reported August 24 — the only outlet to carry the stay. New Energy Economy and the Center for Biological Diversity had requested it, arguing the expedited review schedule did not allow adequate public scrutiny.

The interconnection queue behind the headline project

Project Jupiter is not an isolated draw on New Mexico's grid. Public Service Company of New Mexico reported in its 2026 Integrated Resource Plan, filed September 1, that 87% of its 4,197 MW of pending large-load interconnection requests come from data centers. PNM is proposing a new large-load tariff specifically to keep the infrastructure cost of those requests off residential ratepayers.

A pipeline blocked by the State Land Office and an air permit paused by the state Supreme Court are two specific failures inside a system already carrying more large-load requests than PNM's own filing says it has been built to clear quickly.

Counties are rewriting the approval sequence before the next campus applies

Three New Mexico jurisdictions have already changed their rules in response to the pattern Jupiter made visible, each at a different point in the approval chain.

Santa Fe County commissioners voted unanimously on July 2, 2026, to adopt Ordinance 2026-06, an 18-month moratorium on data center development. The ordinance lowered the county's regulatory review threshold from 100 megawatts to one megawatt, pulling small facilities into the same review that previously applied only to campus-scale projects. Commissioner Lisa Cacari Stone said the move was "about protection" of water and land resources before projects arrive.

Bernalillo County took a different approach in February, conditioning financial support rather than halting review outright. Administrative Resolution AR 2026-22, passed February 10, 2026, requires any data center project seeking industrial revenue bonds to secure 100% renewable energy through individualized contracts, hit a 90% in-state construction workforce, and offset all water consumption through conservation or in-stream flow improvements.

Gallup took the narrowest and least resolved path. The city council deferred a decision on a reclaimed water option for Teraplex Data Centers, a proposed 330-acre facility, Source New Mexico reported April 29, 2026. Teraplex co-founder Greg Thompson pointed to Project Jupiter as a comparable, but residents and Navajo Nation members raised concerns the facility would draw down the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project. No agreement has been reached.

At the state level, Representatives Micaela Lara Cadena and Angelica Rubio announced plans on July 2, 2026, to introduce a statewide moratorium bill in the 2027 legislative session, aimed at pausing new large-scale developments until New Mexico builds a framework for evaluating water use, energy demand and ratepayer impacts, according to Organ Mountain News.

What the next county proposal will have to answer first

Bernalillo County's resolution suggests one way counties are trying to front-load that risk: tie the public subsidy to renewable supply and water offset commitments before bonds are issued, rather than discovering the gap after groundbreaking. Santa Fe's ordinance suggests another: widen the threshold for review so smaller projects cannot bypass the scrutiny a campus eventually got anyway, after the fact, from the state's highest court.

Links Verified at Time of Publish.