Microsoft and Chevron Lock $7 Billion Project Kilby Pecos Campus, Vantage Breaks Ground on $25 Billion Frontier Stargate Site, and Stonepeak Closes $2.5 Billion Louisiana LNG Bonds

This week the hyperscale wave that has been building all year stepped fully into execution on Texas soil. Microsoft and Chevron signed a 20 year power purchase agreement for 2.67 GW of dedicated, behind the meter natural gas generation to power a 2 GW Microsoft AI campus in Pecos, Texas, with peak construction employment expected to exceed 6,000 jobs. Vantage Data Centers broke ground on the $25 billion Frontier campus in Shackelford County, the first physical step on a 1.4 GW Oracle and OpenAI Stargate site that will employ more than 5,000 people across construction and operations. Stonepeak closed $2.5 billion in private bonds tied to its 40 percent stake in the Woodside Louisiana LNG project at Lake Charles, where Train 1 is already 22 percent through foundation phase. OpenAI and SoftBank committed another $1 billion to SB Energy to fund the 1.2 GW Milam County Stargate site. Oracle is closing in on a $38 billion debt package to fund Vantage developments in Texas and Wisconsin. The AGC reported Texas added 18,700 construction jobs over the trailing twelve months, the largest absolute gain of any state. And Dodge confirmed total US construction starts are up 13 percent year to date with manufacturing starts up 32 percent. The Gulf Coast and Texas industrial heartland are now executing the largest synchronous industrial buildout in modern American history.

Microsoft and Chevron Sign $7 Billion, 2.67 GW Behind the Meter Power Deal for Pecos AI Campus

Microsoft and Chevron announced on June 22 a 20 year power purchase agreement for Project Kilby, a 2.67 GW behind the meter natural gas plant in Pecos, Reeves County, West Texas, that will deliver dedicated electricity to a new Microsoft AI data center campus. Chevron is developing the power plant through its Energy Forge One subsidiary, in partnership with investment firm Engine No. 1 and turbine supplier GE Vernova. Caterpillar's Solar Turbines subsidiary will provide supplemental generation capacity. The plant will be fed by Permian Basin gas. First power is targeted for 2028, ramping to the full 2.67 GW over time. Chevron expects to take a formal final investment decision on the plant by the end of 2026, with the project cost reported at approximately $7 billion. Engine No. 1 holds an option to acquire a 50 percent stake and fund half the capital.

On the data center side, Microsoft confirmed the Pecos campus will eventually scale to approximately 2 GW of cloud and AI capacity over a five to seven year buildout, representing a multibillion dollar investment. Peak construction employment is expected to exceed 6,000 jobs. Permanent operations will create several hundred roles. Microsoft has separately contracted 4.7 GW of Texas renewable electricity to offset the campus footprint, and the facility will use closed loop cooling to sharply limit water consumption. The Pecos campus is one of the largest single additions to Microsoft's global data center fleet ever announced.

Strategically, Project Kilby is the most important signal of the cycle. A major oil and gas operator is now the developer of a multibillion dollar power plant explicitly built to serve a single hyperscale AI customer behind the meter, fully bypassing the ERCOT interconnection queue. This is the operating template the entire industry has been moving toward for two years. Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, and the rest of the integrated supermajors all have power generation, gas supply, land position, and capital. The behind the meter pairing of upstream gas and hyperscale AI load is now the dominant new build configuration for the next wave of Gulf Coast and Permian data center capacity.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Project Kilby converts approximately $7 billion of power island scope and a multibillion dollar data center capex line into a procurement cycle that runs for the next five to seven years. The power plant alone drives demand for combustion turbine generator packages, HRSGs if combined cycle is selected, transformer skids, switchgear lineups, high voltage substation steel, gas conditioning and metering trains, fuel gas filtration, water treatment, and the structural and piping balance of plant for a 2.67 GW gas plant. The data center campus then layers on top of that with electrical rooms, cooling plants, cable tray modules, structural steel for the halls, and the closed loop cooling skids that AI workloads require. Behind the meter projects accelerate the schedule because they bypass utility interconnection wait times, which transfers the binding constraint directly to fabricator and craft availability. PSV Industries' shop based modular execution model is built for exactly this scope of work, on exactly this kind of compressed schedule.

Vantage Breaks Ground on $25 Billion, 1.4 GW Frontier Stargate Campus in Shackelford County

Vantage Data Centers confirmed this week that it has held the formal groundbreaking ceremony for the Frontier campus in Shackelford County, Texas, as part of the Oracle and OpenAI Stargate expansion. Frontier is the largest single campus in Vantage's global portfolio. The site spans 1,200 acres, will host 10 single story data centers totaling approximately 3.7 million square feet, and is engineered to deliver 1.4 GW of IT capacity. Ultra high density racks at the campus are designed to support more than 250 kW per rack using a mix of air and liquid cooling. Total capital investment is over $25 billion. Frontier is expected to employ more than 5,000 people across construction and ongoing operations. The first building is scheduled to deliver in the second half of 2026, with full buildout targeted by the end of 2028. Each building includes three meet me rooms.

Frontier sits within a broader Oracle and OpenAI Stargate footprint that now totals 5.5 GW of planned capacity across Abilene, Shackelford County, Doña Ana County in New Mexico, and Port Washington in Wisconsin, plus capacity expansion at the existing Abilene site. OpenAI confirmed this week that the full Stargate program now represents nearly 7 GW of planned capacity and more than $400 billion of investment over three years. Oracle is reportedly close to receiving a $38 billion debt package, split into a $23.25 billion offering for the Texas Vantage campus and a $14.75 billion offering for the Wisconsin Vantage campus, with JPMorgan Chase and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group leading the deal. Oracle has previously committed to spending approximately $40 billion on NVIDIA chips for the OpenAI Stargate workload at Abilene.

Shackelford County is 125 miles west of Fort Worth, near Abilene, where Crusoe is also developing a separate 1.2 GW Stargate campus for the same Oracle and OpenAI program. The convergence of two gigawatt scale data center developments within 50 miles of each other is now creating a regional industrial buildout in West Central Texas that mirrors what Corpus Christi and Cameron Parish look like for LNG. The same regional fabrication and craft economy is going to be expected to feed it.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Frontier converts $25 billion of committed capital into roughly 3.7 million square feet of data center buildings, 1.4 GW of power infrastructure, and the supporting balance of plant for what will be one of the densest AI campuses in the country. The shop based fabrication scope is enormous and concentrated. Critical procurement includes pre engineered electrical buildings, switchgear and transformer skids, liquid cooling distribution units, cold plates and manifolds, custom cable tray runs, structural steel for the data hall envelopes and the meet me room build outs, and the gas conditioning and substation steel for behind the meter or grid tied generation. With 10 buildings delivered in roughly 30 months and 5,000 construction roles, the craft mobilization curve will define schedule risk. Fabricators and contractors with credentialed welders, fitters, electricians, ironworkers, and a workforce platform that can scale ahead of need are the ones who get the awards. PSV's vertically integrated execution model is built precisely for this scale and tempo of work.

Stonepeak Closes $2.5 Billion Private Bond Tied to Louisiana LNG, Train 1 at 22 Percent Foundation Complete

Stonepeak closed approximately $2.5 billion in private bonds this week tied to its investment in the Woodside Louisiana LNG project at Lake Charles in Calcasieu Parish. Stonepeak acquired a 40 percent stake in Louisiana LNG from Woodside in 2025 after the project reached final investment decision, and has committed billions toward early stage construction. Woodside retained the remaining 60 percent and continues to operate the facility. Construction has been underway since the September 2025 groundbreaking. As of early 2026 reporting, the foundation phase reached approximately 22 percent completion with Train 1 slightly ahead of schedule. First LNG production is targeted for 2029, with full foundation capacity online around 2031. The US Department of Energy has granted export authorization extensions to support the project schedule.

Louisiana LNG is the third major Gulf Coast US LNG project to reach FID in 2026, joining Venture Global's CP2 Phase 2 in March, Caturus' Commonwealth LNG in May with formal financial close on June 13, and Delfin Midstream's first floating LNG vessel in early June with the Samsung Heavy $2.9 billion main contract signing. The combined post 2025 sanctioned capacity now exceeds 40 MTPA. By the time the Train 1 foundation phase at Louisiana LNG is complete, total Gulf Coast LNG export potential will be on a path toward 33 Bcf per day, roughly double the current installed base. The capital pipeline behind US LNG is no longer speculative. It is contracted, sanctioned, financed, and pouring concrete.

Separately, Vitol confirmed this week a 20 year, 1 MMtpa LNG supply agreement with International Resources Holding, with the LNG to be supplied from the Delfin LNG project on the US Gulf Coast on a free on board basis. Vitol is both an equity investor in Delfin FLNG 1 and a confirmed offtaker. Long term offtake commitments at this scale are what unlocks the next round of FIDs on Delfin FLNG 2 and FLNG 3, both of which Delfin has stated it aims to take to FID over the coming year.

What this means for fabrication and construction: The Stonepeak bond confirms that institutional credit is now actively financing the next wave of Gulf Coast LNG construction at investment grade terms. Louisiana LNG alone keeps continuous shop based and field based scope flowing across foundation civil work, structural steel, modularized pipe rack assemblies, vessel and tank fabrication, compressor packages, LNG storage construction, marine loading infrastructure, and the full balance of plant for three liquefaction trains totaling 16.5 MTPA. Combined with Commonwealth LNG, Delfin FLNG 1, CP2 Phase 2, Port Arthur Phase 2, and Rio Grande LNG Phase 2, the Gulf Coast LNG backlog is structurally booked through the end of the decade. Fabrication shops with capacity, credentialed labor, and the ability to execute lump sum turnkey scope on owner schedules are the operating partners every EPC firm in this space is hunting for. PSV Industries operates inside this geographic and execution footprint by design.

OpenAI and SoftBank Commit $1 Billion to SB Energy for Milam County, Oracle Closes In on $38 Billion Debt

OpenAI and SoftBank Group jointly announced a $1 billion equity investment in SB Energy this week to expand renewable energy and storage infrastructure under the Stargate program. SB Energy will build and operate the powered infrastructure for OpenAI's 1.2 GW Milam County, Texas data center campus, providing the majority of the electricity through dedicated solar and battery energy storage. OpenAI and SoftBank each committed $500 million. The investment is the latest in a series of moves under what OpenAI calls its pledge to pay its own way for Stargate power, building dedicated generation and storage at each campus rather than relying entirely on utility interconnections. OpenAI confirmed that the full Stargate program now spans nearly 7 GW of planned capacity and over $400 billion of investment over the next three years.

On the financing side, Oracle is reportedly close to receiving a $38 billion debt package to fund its Stargate related data center developments. The package is split into $23.25 billion for the Texas Vantage Frontier campus and $14.75 billion for the Wisconsin Vantage Lighthouse campus in Port Washington. JPMorgan Chase and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are leading the deal. Both campuses are being delivered by Vantage Data Centers for Oracle's lease back to OpenAI. The Wisconsin Stargate site will host close to 1 GW across four buildings on a powered land site provided by Cloverleaf Infrastructure, with WEC Energy Group indicating local deployment will eventually scale to nearly 2 GW.

Galaxy Digital separately advanced Project Merlin, a $400 million AI data center plan in McGregor, Texas, with city council approval this week. Prometheus Hyperscale also detailed its Dallas data center plans this week, deploying 250 MW of natural gas behind the meter generation across Texas and Wyoming sites colocated with battery storage. The TexasTribune reported the state now has 335 existing data centers and at least 248 more in the works.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Three financing and capex events landed this week against a single program, Stargate, that now exceeds $400 billion of committed capital. The fabrication backlog generated by Stargate alone covers electrical buildings, switchgear lineups, transformer skids, modular cooling plants, raised floor systems, structural steel for data hall buildings, and meet me room infrastructure across at least five gigawatt class campuses simultaneously. Stack the SB Energy solar and storage scope on top of that, and the addressable shop scope expands to include inverter pad construction, BESS container foundations, balance of plant skids, and high voltage substation steel. The combination of contracted hyperscale build out, behind the meter generation, and the parallel LNG and petrochemical work moving forward at the same time is the precise execution environment that the vertically integrated PSV operating model was built to serve.

Construction Employment, Texas Leads the Nation, Dodge Reports Starts Up 13 Percent Year to Date

The Associated General Contractors of America confirmed this week that Texas led the nation in construction job growth from May 2025 to May 2026, adding 18,700 construction positions, a 2.1 percent year over year gain. Texas also led on a monthly basis with 3,600 jobs added between April and May 2026. North Carolina added 13,600 jobs over the year, Wisconsin added 9,000, Minnesota 8,500, and Illinois 8,100. Wisconsin posted the largest percentage gain at 6.2 percent. Idaho led the monthly percentage gains at 2.6 percent. Twenty three states and the District of Columbia added construction jobs in May, with the national total reaching a seasonally adjusted 8,337,000 construction workers. Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees in construction climbed to $38.97 in May, up 5.0 percent over the trailing 12 months and 20.6 percent higher than the average for all private sector production employees.

Dodge Construction Network separately reported that total US construction starts rose 13 percent year to date in January through May 2026 compared to the same months in 2025, after soaring 34 percent on a seasonally adjusted annual rate from April to May. Nonresidential starts rose 12 percent year to date with commercial and industrial construction up 33 percent. Manufacturing starts jumped 32 percent year to date. Nonbuilding starts surged 33 percent year to date, including 125.9 percent year to date growth in electric power and utilities and 12.1 percent growth in highways and bridges. Sarah Martin, Dodge's director of economic research, specifically called out megaproject activity in healthcare, manufacturing, utilities, and data centers as the drivers of the gains.

The mid year outlook from Construction Exec reinforced the same message. Hiring is accelerating. Backlog is growing. Lack of layoffs in recent months indicates contractors are increasingly unable to fill open positions. Labor shortages are reemerging as the binding constraint on industry growth. Texas, the Gulf Coast, and the broader US South are absorbing the largest concentration of new industrial capital in the country, and they are doing so while every leading economic indicator for craft availability points the same direction. The work is not slowing down. The workforce is not catching up. The contractors built to scale workforce on owner timelines are the ones who will execute.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Texas, Louisiana, and the broader Gulf Coast are absorbing the largest industrial construction backlog in modern American history while the qualified craft labor pool grows slower than the work. The 5.0 percent annual craft wage gain is now a structural cost line, not a cyclical bump. Owners and EPC firms are converging on a single conclusion. The contractors with workforce platforms already operating at scale, with credentialed welders, fitters, electricians, and ironworkers already mobilized into the Gulf Coast industrial corridor, are the only ones who can credibly commit to the schedules these megaprojects need. PSV Industries operates that workforce platform directly inside the three Gulf Coast worksites where LNG, petrochemical, and data center work is converging. The wage data, the starts data, and the backlog data all point to the same operating answer.

The Bottom Line

Three weeks ago we were tracking financial closes on the LNG side. Two weeks ago we were tracking the Hut 8 Beacon Point lease in Nueces County. This week the same playbook played out at scale on the Texas data center side. Microsoft and Chevron locked in a 20 year, 2.67 GW behind the meter power agreement at Pecos. Vantage broke ground on the $25 billion, 1.4 GW Frontier Stargate campus in Shackelford County. Stonepeak closed $2.5 billion in private bonds tied to the Woodside Louisiana LNG project. OpenAI and SoftBank put $1 billion into SB Energy for the Milam County Stargate site. Oracle is closing in on a $38 billion debt package. The AGC confirmed Texas leads the nation in construction job growth. Dodge confirmed total starts are up 13 percent year to date with manufacturing up 32 percent. Every piece of the buildout is now sanctioned, financed, and mobilizing.

The story of 2026 is not a forecast anymore. It is a delivery problem. The capital is committed, the EPC contracts are signed, the financing is closed, and the schedules are running. The owners and EPC firms winning on this cycle are the ones who built their fabrication capacity, their craft platform, and their long lead procurement strategy into the capital plan from day one. The ones treating workforce as a procurement line item are watching their schedules slip. PSV Industries is a vertically integrated joint venture built to execute scope of work across structural steel fabrication, modular skid assembly, process modules, field installation, and turnaround services on the same Gulf Coast geography where this buildout is happening. The convergence of LNG, AI data centers, and behind the meter gas fired generation across Texas and Louisiana is the precise execution environment our platform was designed to serve. The work is here. The capital is here. The constraint is execution. PSV is built to deliver it.