American midstream and industrial infrastructure kept pushing capital into hard scope this week. MPLX raised its 2026 growth capital outlook by $500 million to $2.9 billion, accelerating construction of two 150,000 barrel per day Gulf Coast fractionators near Marathon Petroleum's Galveston Bay refinery, advancing a 400,000 barrel per day LPG export terminal joint venture at the Port of Texas City, and commissioning the 2.5 Bcf per day Blackcomb Pipeline from the Permian to Agua Dulce Texas in the fourth quarter. Harmon Creek III, a new 300 MMcf per day processing plant and 40,000 barrel per day de-ethanizer in the Marcellus, is beginning operations this month. Meta committed over $9 billion for its first Canadian data center in Sturgeon County Alberta, a 1 gigawatt AI campus supporting approximately 3,000 peak construction workers and more than 300 permanent employees once operational. Saronic selected the Port of Brownsville Texas for its $3 billion Port Alpha shipyard on 835 initial acres with potential expansion to 4,400 acres, construction beginning in 2026 and operations targeted for 2028. Data center announcements continued at pace: OpenAI unveiled Project Camellia in Effingham County Georgia, Iron Mountain broke ground on the 48 megawatt RCH-1 facility in Richmond Virginia, Google was revealed as the operator behind Wyoming's 2.7 gigawatt Project Tembo in Cheyenne, Core Scientific doubled its leased AI capacity to roughly 1.1 gigawatts through a 15 year infrastructure agreement with AMD, Galaxy Digital acquired 500 acres in McGregor Texas for its 74 megawatt Project Merlin AI campus, and CyrusOne is pursuing a $500 million 460,000 square foot data center in Medina County Texas. ConstructConnect's August data center report showed June construction starts of $22.3 billion, the second highest on record, across 23 projects with 116 year to date starts. Shell's CEO indicated LNG Canada Phase 2 FID is likely before the end of 2026. Baker Hughes secured a major equipment and services award for Cheniere's Sabine Pass LNG expansion. AG and P Industrial groundbreaking on an 85 hectare modular fabrication yard in Batangas Philippines targets 80,000 metric tons per year of throughput serving LNG, oil and gas, refining, chemicals, and digital infrastructure clients. And the workforce picture reset again: BLS reported construction employment at a record 8.337 million in May 2026, while ABC continues to project the industry needs 349,000 net new workers in 2026 and 456,000 in 2027, with 92 percent of construction firms reporting difficulty hiring and NBER research showing ICE enforcement drove a 7.5 percent decline in undocumented construction employment in affected areas.
MPLX Raises 2026 Growth Capital to $2.9 Billion With Gulf Coast Fractionators, LPG Export, Blackcomb Pipeline, and Harmon Creek III
MPLX, the Marathon Petroleum sponsored midstream partnership, raised its 2026 growth capital outlook by $500 million to $2.9 billion this week, accelerating an aggressive Gulf Coast and Permian buildout. The August update identified projects across multiple stages of execution: operating, commissioning, construction, and development. Two 150,000 barrel per day Gulf Coast fractionators are being built near Marathon Petroleum's Galveston Bay refinery, with Fractionator I targeting 2028 operations and Fractionator II targeting 2029. A 50/50 Gulf Coast LPG Export Terminal joint venture at the Port of Texas City is targeting 2028 operations at 400,000 barrels per day of capacity. The Blackcomb Pipeline, a 2.5 Bcf per day Permian to Agua Dulce Texas gas pipeline, began commissioning in July 2026 and is expected in service in the fourth quarter. Harmon Creek III, MPLX's 300 MMcf per day gas processing plant and 40,000 barrel per day de-ethanizer in the Marcellus, is beginning operations this month.
Additional Texas Gulf Coast scope is stacked on top: Bay Runner and Bay Runner Twin (up to 5.3 Bcf per day of natural gas transportation between Agua Dulce and Brownsville, Texas), the BANGL Pipeline expansion (Permian to Texas Gulf Coast NGL pipeline capacity increasing from 250,000 to 300,000 barrels per day, Q4 2026), and the Titan Complex (Delaware Basin sour gas treating capacity increasing from 150 MMcf per day to more than 400 MMcf per day, Q4 2026). Every single one of these projects lands inside the same Texas Gulf Coast fabrication and construction supply chain that is already executing on the largest LNG and petrochemical buildouts in the country.
The pattern is worth pausing on. MPLX is not the only midstream company raising capex this year. Enterprise Products Partners, Energy Transfer, Targa Resources, Kinder Morgan, and ONEOK have all announced accelerated Gulf Coast fractionator, pipeline, and export terminal construction schedules in 2026. Permian production continues to grow. Every incremental barrel of oil produced in the Permian generates associated natural gas that has to be moved and processed. That drives pipeline capacity, then processing capacity, then fractionation capacity, then LPG export terminal capacity, then LNG export capacity. Each layer requires shop based fabrication, modular skid assembly, structural steel, and field installation scope. The Texas Gulf Coast midstream buildout is one of the most durable multi-year fabrication demand curves in American industry, and it is running at the same time as the AI data center buildout and the LNG buildout are pulling from the same craft workforce pool.
Meta Commits Over $9 Billion for First Canadian Data Center, 1 GW AI Campus in Sturgeon County Alberta, 3,000 Peak Construction Jobs
Meta announced this week that its first Canadian data center will rise in Sturgeon County, Alberta, representing a more than $9 billion investment in a 1 gigawatt AI campus. The facility will employ roughly 3,000 construction workers at peak and more than 300 permanent employees once operational. This marks Meta's expansion of its AI infrastructure footprint outside the United States for the first time, positioning Alberta as an emerging North American AI data center corridor alongside the established Texas, Louisiana, Virginia, and Ohio markets. Sturgeon County sits just north of Edmonton and is home to Alberta's Industrial Heartland, a mature petrochemical and industrial cluster with long standing heavy industrial workforce, established craft mobilization infrastructure, and Alberta natural gas access that supports co-located power generation at scale.
The Sturgeon County selection makes sense for several reasons that mirror what is happening on the Gulf Coast. Alberta has abundant natural gas at some of the lowest wellhead prices in North America. Alberta has an established industrial workforce with decades of experience at oil sands and petrochemical scale project execution. Alberta permitting is faster than most US jurisdictions for industrial scale power generation, and provincial support for AI infrastructure investment is coordinated at the highest levels of government. And Sturgeon County specifically sits inside Alberta's Industrial Heartland, which already hosts Nutrien, Dow, Inter Pipeline, Pembina, Shell, and Air Liquide operating plants at scale. Meta gets a proven industrial workforce, established craft mobilization infrastructure, mature heavy civil supply chain, and low cost natural gas. That is exactly the combination that has anchored $10 billion plus AI campuses at Beacon Point Texas, Hyperion Louisiana, Paducah Kentucky, El Paso Texas, and now Sturgeon County Alberta.
Meta's Alberta campus also arrives at the exact same moment as several other significant North American announcements. Meta continues expanding Hyperion Louisiana toward 5 gigawatts and $50 billion. Meta closed the $14 billion El Paso Texas venture with BlackRock last week. Meta is now committing $9 billion to Alberta. Meta's total announced North American AI campus capital allocation for 2026 alone is now above $75 billion, and it does not include the campuses that Meta operates through leased capacity from Vantage, Applied Digital, and other neocloud counterparties. This is a single company deploying tens of billions of dollars of institutional scale industrial construction demand every quarter, and it is deploying that demand into geographies where the fabrication and construction supply chain is already stretched thin.
Saronic $3 Billion Port Alpha Shipyard in Brownsville Texas, Plus a Wave of New Data Center Announcements
Saronic, an autonomous vessel developer, selected Brownsville, Texas for a $3 billion shipyard called Port Alpha. Construction of Port Alpha is expected to begin in 2026 with operations scheduled to start in 2028. The initial facility will occupy 835 acres at the Port of Brownsville and could eventually expand to nearly 4,400 acres. The shipyard is positioned as a major production center for commercial, defense, and autonomous vessels, and it puts a fresh $3 billion of industrial construction demand into an already saturated South Texas industrial supply chain. Brownsville is now home to Rio Grande LNG (NextDecade Phase 1 in construction with Train 6 FID targeted H2 2027), Texas LNG (Glenfarne targeting FID), the growing SpaceX Starbase manufacturing footprint, and now Saronic's Port Alpha. Every one of these projects draws from the same craft workforce pool that already serves the Brownsville port complex.
Data center announcements continued at unprecedented pace. OpenAI unveiled Project Camellia in Effingham County Georgia. Iron Mountain broke ground on RCH-1, a 48 megawatt facility on its 66 acre Richmond data center campus in White Oak Technology Park Virginia. Google was revealed as the operator behind Wyoming's 2.7 gigawatt Project Tembo in Cheyenne, solidifying that market as an emerging hyperscale hub. Core Scientific signed a 15 year infrastructure agreement with AMD that doubles its leased AI data center capacity to approximately 1.1 gigawatts. Galaxy Digital acquired 500 acres in McGregor, Texas, around 90 miles north of Austin, for a 74 megawatt Phase 1 AI and high performance computing campus called Project Merlin. CyrusOne is reportedly pursuing a $500 million 460,000 square foot data center in Medina County, Texas. ConstructConnect's data center report published this week reported June construction starts of $22.3 billion, the second highest month on record, across 23 projects, with year to date starts of 116 projects.
The picture is consistent across every geography. Owners are announcing, financing, and breaking ground on data center campuses at unprecedented scale, and they are doing it in states with abundant power, favorable permitting, and mature industrial workforces. Texas continues to dominate the announcement flow (Galaxy Digital in McGregor, CyrusOne in Medina County, Saronic in Brownsville). Wyoming, Georgia, Virginia, and Alberta have entered the top tier. And the announcement flow is now visibly reshaping regional labor markets. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the May 2026 Employment Situation Report on July 3 showing seasonally adjusted construction employment reached 8.337 million, the highest on record, up from 8.32 million in April.
LNG Canada Phase 2 FID Likely Before End of 2026, Baker Hughes Wins Sabine Pass Expansion Award, AG and P Industrial Modular Fab Yard Breaks Ground
Shell CEO Wael Sawan told investors this week that a final investment decision on LNG Canada Phase 2 is likely before the end of 2026. The Kitimat British Columbia facility began exports from Phase 1 in July 2025. Phase 2 would double the terminal's capacity to roughly 28 million tons per annum, cementing LNG Canada as one of the largest LNG export facilities in North America. The FID call arrives on the back of the tripartite cooperation agreement between the Government of Canada, the Government of British Columbia, and the LNG Canada Joint Venture Participants announced in May, which included hundreds of millions of dollars of incremental funding to close remaining commercial, engineering, and First Nations items. If FID is achieved on the timeline Sawan indicated, LNG Canada Phase 2 becomes one of several major North American LNG projects in construction simultaneously alongside Rio Grande LNG, Commonwealth LNG, Louisiana LNG, Delfin FLNG, Argent LNG, and Cheniere's Corpus Christi Stage 3.
Baker Hughes secured a substantial equipment and services award for Cheniere's Sabine Pass LNG facility this week, supporting the ongoing Trains 8 and 9 expansion of the Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish Louisiana. The award positions Baker Hughes as a key equipment supplier alongside the Bechtel EPC prime, and it confirms that Cheniere is moving decisively on the Sabine Pass expansion after the successful FID on Corpus Christi Stage 3 Train 7 earlier this year. Combined with Cheniere's Corpus Christi Trains 8 and 9 development, the Sabine Pass expansion positions Cheniere for roughly 25 to 30 MTPA of incremental production capacity coming online through the balance of the decade.
On the modular fabrication side, AG and P Industrial officially broke ground on its 85 hectare next generation module fabrication yard in San Pascual, Batangas, Philippines. The facility has an annual fabrication capacity of 80,000 metric tons and will serve global demand across LNG, petroleum, clean and renewable fuels, power, refining, chemicals, digital infrastructure, and other industrial sectors. Construction begins immediately with target fabrication readiness by late Q4 2026 and quayside operations slated for Q4 2027. AG and P also announced a joint venture with Pragati Infra Solutions earlier this year to build India's first advanced modular EPC and fabrication manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh, targeting a 2027 completion. Together the AG and P Batangas yard and the India JV represent one of the most substantial industrial modular fabrication capacity additions announced globally in the past year.
Workforce Reset: BLS Construction Employment Hits Record 8.337 Million, ABC Projects 349,000 Net New Workers Needed in 2026, NBER Confirms 7.5 Percent Decline in Undocumented Construction Employment
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that seasonally adjusted construction employment reached 8.337 million in May 2026, the highest level on record. Employment climbed from 8.296 million in February to 8.311 million in March, 8.320 million in April, and 8.337 million in May. Construction is now employing more workers than at any other point in its history, even as ABC continues to project the industry needs 349,000 net new workers in 2026 just to keep pace with demand, rising to 456,000 in 2027 as construction spending growth resumes. The picture is straightforward: the industry is running at record employment and record demand simultaneously, and the workforce gap is being filled largely by wage inflation, project delays, and pushed schedules.
The AGC 2025 Workforce Survey (still the most current comprehensive data) found that 92 percent of construction firms report difficulty filling open positions, 88 percent have openings for craft workers, 80 percent have salaried openings, and 45 percent report that worker shortages are the leading cause of project delays. The AGC/Sage 2026 Outlook confirmed the picture with 82 percent of firms reporting difficulty filling craft positions and 80 percent reporting difficulty filling salaried openings, the highest proportions in three years. Wage inflation continues at over 5 percent year over year for skilled trades. Median age of construction workers is now 42.5, up from 41.4 in 2020. Roughly one in five construction workers is over 55. And Deloitte estimates a potential shortage of over 2 million skilled craft professionals by 2028 if current trends persist.
The immigration dimension continues to sharpen. A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published this year confirmed that ICE enforcement drove a 7.5 percent decline in undocumented construction employment in affected areas, the largest impact of any industry tracked. AGC estimates 35 percent of construction workers nationally are immigrants. 28 percent of construction firms report being directly or indirectly affected by immigration enforcement in the past six months, with impact ranging from 75 percent of firms in Georgia to 8 percent in Idaho. The result is a construction labor market where record aggregate employment coexists with record hiring difficulty, and the gap is being closed by wage inflation, project delays, and geographic reallocation of work toward states like Texas and Louisiana that combine mature industrial workforce, favorable permitting, and access to the largest AI data center, LNG, and petrochemical buildouts in North America.
The Bottom Line
MPLX raised 2026 growth capital by $500 million to $2.9 billion, accelerating construction of two 150,000 barrel per day Gulf Coast fractionators near Marathon's Galveston Bay refinery, a 400,000 barrel per day LPG export terminal joint venture at the Port of Texas City, the 2.5 Bcf per day Blackcomb Pipeline commissioning Q4 2026, and the Harmon Creek III 300 MMcf per day processing plant now beginning operations. Meta committed over $9 billion for its first Canadian data center, a 1 gigawatt AI campus in Sturgeon County Alberta with 3,000 peak construction jobs and 300 permanent positions. Saronic announced a $3 billion Port Alpha shipyard in Brownsville Texas on 835 initial acres with potential expansion to 4,400 acres, construction beginning in 2026 and operations by 2028. OpenAI unveiled Project Camellia in Effingham County Georgia. Iron Mountain broke ground on the 48 megawatt RCH-1 in Richmond Virginia. Google was revealed as the operator behind Wyoming's 2.7 gigawatt Project Tembo in Cheyenne. Core Scientific signed a 15 year AMD infrastructure agreement doubling its leased AI capacity to 1.1 gigawatts. Galaxy Digital's Project Merlin acquired 500 acres in McGregor Texas for a 74 megawatt first phase. CyrusOne is pursuing a $500 million 460,000 square foot Medina County Texas data center. ConstructConnect reported June data center starts of $22.3 billion (second highest on record) across 23 projects with 116 year to date starts. Shell's CEO indicated LNG Canada Phase 2 FID is likely before end of 2026. Baker Hughes won a major equipment and services award for Cheniere's Sabine Pass LNG expansion. AG and P Industrial broke ground on an 85 hectare modular fab yard in Batangas targeting 80,000 metric tons per year of throughput. BLS reported construction employment at a record 8.337 million in May 2026. ABC continues to project 349,000 net new workers needed in 2026 and 456,000 in 2027. 92 percent of construction firms report difficulty hiring. NBER confirmed a 7.5 percent decline in undocumented construction employment in ICE affected areas.
The composite picture is unmistakable. American industrial infrastructure is running at scales that were unimaginable three years ago. Midstream is stacking $2.9 billion of growth capital into Texas Gulf Coast fractionators and Permian pipelines on top of already saturated construction supply chains. Data centers are launching at gigawatt scale in Alberta, Wyoming, Georgia, Virginia, and every corner of Texas. LNG is heading toward another wave of FIDs (LNG Canada Phase 2, Cheniere Sabine Pass expansion, Argent LNG within two years). New industrial categories (Saronic shipyard) are competing for the same craft workforce. And the workforce itself is at record levels while the labor gap is still growing. The economic story of the second half of the 2020s is going to be written by fabricators and construction firms with the workforce platform, the shop capacity, and the modular execution capability to convert this capital into scope of work on schedule. PSV Industries is a vertically integrated joint venture executing structural steel fabrication, process modules, modular skid assembly, field installation, and shutdowns and turnarounds. American operating model. American craft platform. Houston headquartered. Texas and Louisiana geography. The work is here. The capital is here. The constraint is execution. PSV is built to deliver it.