INTERVIEW: Permian Basin land owner LandBridge actively developing solar and data centers

Permian Basin landowner, LandBridge Company, is looking to develop certain parcels of land for data center development.

The Houston-based company went public on July 1.

LandBridge owns 220,000 surface acres in land in and around the Delaware sub-basin in Permian Basin. Oil and gas developers pay LandBridge for surface use and other rights, but the sheer amount of acreage lends itself to other uses such as data centers and development of sustainable energy.

In an interview, LandBridge CEO Jason Long and CFO Scott McNeely discussed the next steps.

Presently, LandBridge is in the permitting phase for it’s a 250 MW solar project which will be co-located next to a data center, and it intends to sell the project once it reaches a full interconnection study, according to US SEC filings. The solar project is forecasted to go COD in late 2025, while data center construction is expected to begin in the next 18-to-24 months.

LandBridge is permitting construction of the facility through its DBR Solar unit and other consulting partners. LandBridge’s sponsor Five Point Energy, with USD 4bn in assets under management, is partnering with an experienced developer to construct the initial data center.

Behind that, the company identified five other locations that it believes is conducive to data center operations.

According to news reports, Texas electricity needs will hit 150 GW with a third of the forecasted growth coming from the Permian Basin.

“Our acreage is primed for development alongside this growth, offering expansive continuous, high potential surface acreage, abundant water for cooling data centers and low-cost electricity with access to transmission lines and other infrastructure,” said Long. “While these attributes are typically associated with O&G development needs, they also have utility across a range of alternative uses.”

On the cooling side, Five Point and Bechtel also entered a partnership to provide produced water desalination services to customers in the Permian Basin utilizing Bechtel’s proprietary Low Energy Ejector Desalination System (LEEDS) technology.

Solar project details

The 250 MW project is in the company’s Southern Position.

LandBridge said in its final amended Form S-1 on June 27, before it went public, that it will evaluate the sale of the project after the Full Interconnection Study (FIS) with ERCOT. The company has received the facilities portion of the FIS from the American Electric Power Texas and a first draft of the Standard Generation Interconnection Agreement as of April 2024.

Also, LandBridge identified an additional 1,000 acres of land adjacent to the project which it believed could support a second phase for 120 MW of additional solar generation.

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.

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