Gas Prices Could Triple, Upending Big Tech's Bet

The four biggest US cloud companies are building their own natural gas power plants to run AI data centers — and a new forecast says the fuel they are betting on could triple in price.

Energy research firm Noreva projects natural gas will climb above $10 per million BTUs at certain US hubs for extended stretches, according to a report given to TechCrunch and published August 14. Prices today run roughly $2 to $4.50 per million BTUs, with the widely traded Henry Hub in Louisiana just under $3.

It is a projection, not a finding. Futures markets currently price in no such spike.

"I think everyone in the energy markets has been lulled into a sense that gas prices can't go up," Noreva CEO Peter Gardett told TechCrunch. "You just need simple arithmetic to get to a much tighter gas market than you were in just a few years ago."

Why It Would Hurt

Fuel is about half the cost of electricity from a large power plant. So a doubling or tripling of gas prices makes "bring your own power" AI data centers far more expensive to run — which TechCrunch reports could push up the cost of AI tokens, or drive the hyperscalers back onto the public grid and push electricity prices higher for everyone else.

Gardett said the squeeze comes from three things stacking up at once: supply growth slowing as old wells fade and new wells get more expensive, US gas finally being plumbed into the global market through LNG exports, and what he called "the AI demand pull."

West Texas is the pinch point. Gas there has long been a cheap byproduct of oil drilling with nowhere to go. "They've finally built some pipelines out there, and a lot of that is headed towards export markets," Gardett said — connecting a discounted regional market to national and international prices, and creating the wide regional differentials he expects to drive some hubs past $10.