Shares dropped sharply after Bloomberg reported that Oracle sent a "force majeure" notice — a legal tool companies use to pause contractual obligations when events beyond their control intervene — to the project's developer, a unit of Blue Owl Capital.
Rather than trying to walk away as the site's main tenant, Oracle is attempting to put off payments should the data center fail to come online in 2028 as planned. The stock fell roughly 4% in U.S. trading and is down 9.4% in Buenos Aires at ARS 71,975.
A Stalled Gas Pipeline Is Holding Up the Entire Campus. A key natural gas pipeline developed by Energy Transfer LP that was supposed to begin service this month was instead delayed nearly six months to February 1, 2027, following repeated permit denials from the New Mexico State Land Office.
The facility is designed to handle 2.45 gigawatts of power — without the pipeline, the fuel cells cannot operate, leaving the mega-campus effectively stranded without a viable power source. No power, no revenue-generating capacity.
Oracle's Cash Position Makes Any Delay Expensive. Oracle spent $55.7 billion on capital expenditures in fiscal 2026, up 162% from the year before.
Free cash flow still came in at negative $23.7 billion.
To cover that push, Oracle raised $43 billion in debt financing and $5 billion in equity financing. With the balance sheet already stretched, shielding itself from open-ended delay costs on a $165 billion project is a financial necessity, not an option.
The PR Spin vs. the Ground Truth. Oracle stated: "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule. We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward."
Blue Owl added the notice "does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project." But you don't invoke force majeure on a project that's running smoothly. Oracle's own co-CEO acknowledged on the Q1 earnings call that relying on every deliverable hitting its deadline is "a bad plan."
This Isn't Just an Oracle Problem. Data Center Watch reported that 45 projects worth $68 billion were blocked or delayed across the U.S. during Q2 2026 , and between 30% and 50% of large data center projects scheduled for 2026 completion are projected to be delayed or canceled due to power and equipment constraints. For investors, the force majeure notice is a rational hedge — but it confirms that the timeline underpinning Oracle's AI growth story carries real execution risk, and that risk now has a price tag the market is unwilling to ignore.