AI's Power Hungry Datacenters Fuel 17,000-Mile Pipeline Boom as Trump Scraps Safety Rules

The rush to power artificial intelligence is laying pipe. A new review of federal records by the Environmental Integrity Project found almost 200 proposed or in-progress pipeline projects across the US, together stretching roughly 17,000 miles — much of it natural gas aimed at datacenters and export terminals. The Trump administration is loosening the rules around them at the same time, the report says.

Those lines would feed at least 98 proposed gas-fired power plants built to serve datacenters, according to the review. If every project finishes, the system would move about 40% more natural gas each day than it does now. Most of the pipe carries natural gas through 42 states, with heavy clusters in fossil fuel country: about 42 projects in or crossing Texas, 27 in Louisiana, and nine each in Pennsylvania and Illinois.

Safety is the flashpoint. The US already averages about 1.7 pipeline accidents, spills, fires or explosions per day, and the report warns that more miles means more of them. It points to a March 2023 blast in West Reading, Pennsylvania, where a cracked gas line exploded in a chocolate factory, killing seven workers and injuring 10. Last month, two workers died when a pipeline blew in New Mexico.

Meanwhile, the administration has pulled back on oversight. A January memo said it would “refrain from taking any enforcement action” against companies violating Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration rules. Enforcement actions initiated in 2025 were halved, landing at 117, the report says. It also alleges companies are being allowed to run higher pressure in populated areas and skip pressure tests.

Permits are moving fast, too. More than a quarter of the projects asked for expedited environmental review, and the report claims the administration is leaning on shaky legal tools — including an “energy emergency” declaration and the Defense Production Act — to push them past state objections. California’s Santa Ynez oil pipeline, shut down in 2015 after a spill damaged about 150 miles of coastline, was jump-started in March; the 125-mile Constitution pipeline from Pennsylvania to upstate New York is being pressed the same way.

Environmental damage is stacking up alongside the safety risks. At least 81 projects are expected to tear up more than 19,000 acres of federally protected wetlands, the report found — right as the administration tries to strip protections from 94% of them. In south-west Louisiana, where export terminals crowd the Mississippi River, residents already live with the pipelines, said James Hiatt of For a Better Bayou. “The people who live here carry the risks and bear the burden while the profits go elsewhere,” he said.