When pipelines can't reach AI data centers, $100M of trucks do
Virtual pipeline operators, the trade term for trucked compressed natural gas, now sign multi hundred megawatt data center supply contracts, beating the multi year pipeline build cycle.
Virtual pipeline operators, the trade term for trucked compressed natural gas, now sign multi hundred megawatt data center supply contracts, beating the multi year pipeline build cycle.
Hexagon Agility, the fuel-systems arm of Norway's Hexagon Composites, just booked its largest single order ever: roughly $100 million worth of Mobile Pipeline modules from Calgary-based Certarus, with an option for another $25 million by 2028 (Hexagon Agility press release). The order is the largest disclosed procurement signal yet that AI data center demand has shifted gas logistics from a workaround into a contracted supply chain.
"Mobile Pipeline" is the industry's term for what is essentially compressed natural gas, and sometimes LNG, hauled in tractor-trailers to sites that lack pipeline access. The modules are the high-pressure transport and storage trailers that make that work. For years the trade served oil-and-gas fields, remote mines, and industrial customers off the grid. Now it is being repositioned as AI infrastructure, and the order sits at the intersection of two industries that have not historically shared supply contracts.
Data centers need power, and across much of the US, gas turbines are the fastest route. Siting a hyperscale campus where electricity is cheap and land is available often means siting it where pipeline capacity is not. Permitting a new gas pipeline takes years, and interconnecting to a regional grid can be just as slow. A multi-hundred-megawatt gas-fired campus can be a fait accompli before the local pipeline operator has finished its environmental review.
Certarus, the company driving the order, has been building around that gap. It announced a Utah expansion and a 60 MW data-center supply contract in Salt Lake City. It separately agreed to supply a 50 MW off-grid natural gas solution to a major US data center developer. And it secured a 135 MW onsite natural gas deal in the US. Three contracts, publicly disclosed; the full pipeline is almost certainly larger.
Each trailer can move only so much CNG per day. Supplying a 135 MW gas-fired data center at baseload takes a continuous, scheduled truck fleet that looks more like a refinery's inbound logistics than a one-off fuel delivery. Local traffic, road wear, and tailpipe emissions become political issues. Counties built around farmland face constant truck traffic and the diesel compressor fuel use that comes with it. The economics still work, because the alternative, a stalled multi-billion-dollar data center, costs far more.
That is why Hexagon's order is a tell. Mobile Pipeline modules are steel-and-composite capital equipment: a multi-year fleet investment that cannot be quickly redirected back to oil-and-gas service if data center demand cools. Certarus is betting, and Hexagon is supplying, on the assumption that AI-driven load growth keeps outrunning pipeline buildout for the foreseeable future.
Diesel-powered compressor trucks still consume fuel at the loading end. CNG's energy density per truck is lower than LNG's, so a steady-baseload site will lean toward LNG or onsite production. Local opposition to heavy truck traffic on rural roads is a real risk. Lifecycle carbon rules, if regulators ever impose them on data center power, would tilt the math back toward grid or pipeline supply. And none of the named 60 MW, 50 MW, or 135 MW contracts has disclosed the end-customer, the off-take volumes, or the term, so the buildout's true scale is still being inferred from the procurement side.
What Hexagon and Certarus are pricing is a speed premium. Pipelines take years. Trucks can be in service next quarter. For an industry committing tens of billions of dollars to be operational inside a single fiscal year, that premium is now an infrastructure line item, not a contingency. The $100 million base order, plus an option that can extend delivery into 2028, is the first time the premium has been large enough to fund a vendor order of this size.