{"slug": "a-gas-rich-outback-station-could-host-a-28bn-off-grid-ai-data-centre", "title": "A gas-rich outback station could host a $28bn off-grid AI data centre", "summary": "Energy North has proposed a $28bn off-grid AI data centre at Murranji Station in Australia's Northern Territory, running on gas, solar, and batteries, with 1GW of initial computing capacity. The project, called Project Ares, aims to bypass grid constraints and use local gas from the Beetaloo basin, but faces environmental approvals and criticism for relying on fossil fuels.", "body_md": "On a cattle station deep in the Northern Territory outback, roughly 683km south of Darwin, a Singapore-headquartered developer wants to build one of the largest data centres in the southern hemisphere.\n\nThe plan leans on a resource the region has in abundance and the electricity grid does not reach out to supply: gas.\n\nEnergy North lodged the proposal, called Project Ares, with Australia’s federal environment department in June, and it is now open for public comment.\n\nThe off-grid campus would sit at Murranji Station in the gas-rich Barkly region, near the Beetaloo basin, and run on a mix of [gas-fired power](https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-data-centres-gas-plants-clean-energy-fight), solar, and batteries. It arrives as Australian regulators tighten the [energy rules](https://thenextweb.com/news/australia-ai-policy-copyright-energy) around AI infrastructure.\n\nThe numbers are large and, in one important place, unsettled. Energy North expects to invest about AU$11.9 billion in the first phase alone, according to Data Center Dynamics.\n\nBloomberg, which reported the region’s appetite for the scheme, put the full project at around $28 billion, a figure that has not surfaced in any other outlet and whose currency and build-out stage the report does not spell out.\n\nThe first phase would deliver 1 gigawatt of computing capacity, built in two 500MW stages, with the campus designed to scale beyond 5GW over time.\n\nPowering it would fall to roughly 1,038MW of gas-fired generation, described as hydrogen-ready, alongside 3GW of solar and 16GWh of battery storage.\n\nThe data centre halls would occupy about 90 hectares; the site as a whole runs to some 19,150 hectares, with the solar farm alone sprawling across as much as 7,000.\n\nBuilding behind the meter, entirely off-grid, sidesteps a problem that is starting to bite closer to the coast.\n\nGrid operators have warned that data-centre capacity around western Sydney is close to exhausted, pushing developers inland toward cheap land and, increasingly, dedicated power of their own.\n\n[Microsoft’s A$25 billion](https://thenextweb.com/news/microsoft-a25-billion-australia-ai-investment) commitment and a run of hyperscale plans have made Australia one of the busier markets in the region, and the Territory, with more sun and space than customers, is now fielding a share of them.\n\nProject Ares has been awarded Commonwealth Major Project Status, which streamlines federal coordination but stops well short of approval.\n\nThe Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority is assessing the referral, and the project still needs a decision under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act before it can break ground.\n\nEnergy North is owned by Raggiana Global and led by Scott Criddle, a former chief executive of the engineering contractor Decmil.\n\nThe company describes itself as an independent Australian green-energy developer, and frames the gas component as a bridge, generation for reliability that is meant to give way to renewables as the site matures.\n\n[Nvidia-backed data centres](https://thenextweb.com/news/firmus-asx-ipo-blackstone-ai-data-center-australia) elsewhere in the country are making similar promises about cleaning up over time.\n\nThe gas itself has a ready source. The Beetaloo basin beneath the Barkly has long been pitched by Canberra as the centrepiece of a gas-led recovery, and a data centre that consumes its own supply on site turns a stranded resource into a customer.\n\nThat logic is part of what makes the remote Territory, thinly populated and short on grid, suddenly attractive to hyperscale developers.\n\nIt also sharpens the tension in the pitch, since a campus sold on eventually running clean would begin life burning gas at close to a gigawatt.\n\nA final investment decision is targeted for 12 to 18 months after approvals land, with the first phase built in a similar window after that.\n\nProject Ares is one of roughly a dozen data-centre proposals now lodged across the Territory, alongside Energy North’s own Project Sol, a green hydrogen and ammonia venture at an earlier stage.\n\nWhether the outback can host that much computing, on power that is meant to clean up as it goes, is the question the next 18 months will begin to answer.\n\n## Get the TNW newsletter\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-gas-rich-outback-station-could-host-a-28bn-off-grid-ai-data-centre", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/australia-28bn-data-centre-project", "published_at": "2026-07-22 09:27:51+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-22 09:58:59.546168+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-infrastructure", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Energy North", "Project Ares", "Murranji Station", "Beetaloo basin", "Scott Criddle", "Raggiana Global", "Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority", "Commonwealth Major Project Status"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-gas-rich-outback-station-could-host-a-28bn-off-grid-ai-data-centre", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-gas-rich-outback-station-could-host-a-28bn-off-grid-ai-data-centre.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-gas-rich-outback-station-could-host-a-28bn-off-grid-ai-data-centre.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-gas-rich-outback-station-could-host-a-28bn-off-grid-ai-data-centre.jsonld"}}