Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

Scoop: Trump to Permit Largest-Ever Gas Project in Just 7 Months

heatmap.news · 8h · first reportShare

The Trump administration aims to complete its environmental review of what would be the biggest fossil fuel power project in the country in just a few months, Heatmap has learned. This news follows Monday’s announcement from OpenAI that it intends to lease a new 10-gigawatt data center under development in Pike County, Ohio, financed by a mixture of money from a SoftBank subsidiary and the chip company Nvidia. This AI hyperscale facility — known as the PORTS-Pike project — is expected to draw power from the largest gas power facility ever built in the United States, a 9.2-gigawatt facility sited on federal lands that would be built and owned by the Energy Department. According to OpenAI, the data center campus will be built and started up in phases, with the first 800 megawatts starting construction this year and operational in 2028. That first phase will rely mostly on existing power infrastructure operated by AEP Ohio. How things progress from there will depend at least in part on th