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Houston data center upgrades facility with sustainability in mind

HARDWARE UPDATE

DUG Technology announced it's increased the company’s high performance computing capabilities and also reinforced its commitment to sustainable innovative technology. Photo courtesy of DUG

An Australia-based company has launched a major upgrade of its Houston data center. With the changes, the facility had optimized sustainability.

DUG Technology announced it's increased the company’s high performance computing (HPC) capabilities and also reinforced its commitment to sustainable innovative technology. The company announced its latest investment in 1500 new AMD EPYCTM Genoa servers, which has 192 cores and 1.5 terabytes of DDR5 memory each. Quebec-based IT solution company Hypertec provided the immersion-born hardware.

“DUG’s decision highlights the unmatched technological advancements and superior performance of Hypertec immersion-born products, which are setting a new benchmark in the industry,” Hypertec’s Patrick Scateni, vice president of global sales says in a news release.

Recently, DUG deployed 600 new Intel Xeon CPU Max Series machines, which are equipped with 128 cores and one terabyte of RAM. All of their existing servers had a RAM upgrade to 384 gigabytes. The hardware upgrades more than “double the effective horsepower of DUG’s Houston data center,” according to the company.

DUG initially started construction on Bubba in 2018, and chose Skybox Datacenters as the facility to put Bubba in after a global search. The supercomputer landing in Houston represented the largest data center transaction in the Houston area's history with Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio having previously overshadowed Houston as hotspots for data center activity in the state.

“Houston was a natural choice," DUG’s Managing Director Matthew Lamont previously told InnovationMap. “Given the low cost of power and the fact that Skybox had the available infrastructure ready to go."

DUG’s Houston facility was the DCD Awards winner of the 2019 Enterprise Data Centre Design Award. The upgrade of DUG’s Houston-based supercomputer Bubba was opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony by the Hon Stephen Dawson MLA, Minister for Emergency Services; Innovation and the Digital Economy; Science; Medical Research, during his “Western Australia: USA Connect” mission to the United States.

Also present for the announcement was Christopher Skeete, Minister for the Economy in the National Assembly of Québec. DUG joined the Western Australia (WA) trade delegation to Texas, led by Minister Dawson. The trade delegation looks to establish strategic connections through investment and trade with WA with a focus on the energy transition and green technology.

"It is very exciting to see our HPC capabilities scale in response to the increasing demand for our technology,” Lamont says in the release. “The new hardware was purchased after extensive testing and our partners were chosen based on the unparalleled performance of their solutions. The Intel machines are already turbocharging our new MP-FWI Imaging technology, which is having a transformative impact on the way we process seismic data.

"Delivering unsurpassed imaging with rapid turnaround for our clients, it is a complete replacement for the conventional processing and imaging workflow," he continued. "The new Hypertec-supplied AMD machines are needed to accelerate delivery of both current and imminent projects, and to support the unprecedented demand we continue to see moving forward.”

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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ExxonMobil expands Gulf Coast CCS business with Louisiana deal

carbon contract

Spring-based energy powerhouse ExxonMobil has picked up another project in the carbon capture and storage (CCS) market.

Natural gas pipeline operator Williams Cos. has tapped ExxonMobil to transport and store up to one metric ton per year of CO2 from Williams’ natural gas collection and processing plant in southwest Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale.

Williams will transport natural gas via its Louisiana Energy Gateway pipeline, then process the natural gas and deliver it to the Gulf Coast for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG). The LNG will be used in power generation, residential and commercial heating, and industrial processes.

Williams recently agreed to acquire Momentum Midstream for up to $5.5 billion to expand Williams’ LNG presence in the Haynesville Shale. Haynesville is the country’s third-largest producer of natural gas.

Once the deal closes, Williams will own a $1.5 billion project in southwest Louisiana that will expand capacity of the Transco natural gas distribution system. The system serves power and LNG-export customers. Williams will also gain over 4,000 miles of pipeline and more than one million acres.

While Williams is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it has a significant presence in Houston. Last month, Green Street’s Real Estate Alert reported Williams bought the 64-story, 1.4 million-square-foot Williams Tower south of The Galleria from Invesco Real Estate for more than $300 million. The company will occupy about 360,000 square feet in the skyscraper for its Houston hub.

Williams employs about 800 people in Bayou City, including roughly 700 who work at Williams Tower, and plans to hire another 100 by the end of this year.

The Williams deal is ExxonMobil’s seventh CCS contract. ExxonMobil’s CCS portfolio supports LNG, lower-carbon-intensity steel, ammonia, natural gas processing, industrial gases and methanol.

ExxonMobil has established a “carbon superhighway” along the Gulf Coast to fuel its CCS business. The company owns and operates a more than 1,300-mile CO2 pipeline system, the largest in the U.S.

“Carbon capture is becoming an increasingly important part of industrial operations, but capture alone doesn’t solve the problem of high emissions,” says ExxonMobil. “What matters next is how CO2 is transported, used, and stored.”

ExxonMobil’s CCS initiatives are aimed at capturing a chunk of the rapidly growing CCS market in the U.S. Straits Research forecasts the market will grow from $5.66 billion this year to $13.56 billion by 2034.

“It’s not every day you get to witness the birth of a new American industry, but that’s exactly what’s happening right now at the U.S. Gulf Coast,” Dominic Genetti, senior vice president of CCS at ExxonMobil, wrote in an article published last year on the company’s website.

Fervo Energy, Mercury Fund leaders named first experts in residence for TEX-E

energy mentors

Two leading companies in Houston's clean energy scene have been named the Texas Exchange for Energy & Climate Entrepreneurship's first experts in residence.

TEX-E announced this month that Houston-based geothermal unicorn Fervo Energy and venture capital firm Mercury Fund have joined the nonprofit's new Expert-in-Residence partnership. The program aims to connect TEX-E Fellows with "the people and organizations shaping the future of energy and entrepreneurship."

The 2026 TEX-E Fellows were named in June and include 67 students from six Texas universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nineteen are from Houston universities. See the full list here.

Through the Expert-in-Residence program, fellows will be able to network and work with:

"More than anything, students need the determination and creativity to step outside of their comfort zones and tackle problems that lack clear answers. At Fervo, we've consistently bet on young people who lack traditional 'hard skills' but are willing to embrace uncertainty and learn on the job. That open-mindedness will take students far," Jewett said in a prepared statement. Fervo named Jewett as COO in June.

TEX-E was founded in 2022 through partnerships with MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship and Greentown Labs. It works with university students from six schools: Rice University, University of Houston, Prairie View A&M University, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University and MIT.

The organization named Houston venture capital and innovation leader Sandy Guitar as its new executive director last year. Guitar previously served as general partner and managing director at Houston-based VC firm HX Venture Fund and is co-founder of Weathergage Capital.

TEX-E is known for its student track within the Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition at CERAWeek. It awarded $50,000 to student teams from the University of Texas and Rice University. Read more here.

BP to sell Houston’s Archaea Energy after $4.1 billion bet on biogas

RNG exit

Oil and gas conglomerate BP is unloading its Houston-based U.S. renewable natural gas business just four years after buying it.

The British company announced the planned sale of Archaea during its most recent earnings call but offered few details.

On the call, BP’s new CEO, Meg O’Neill, said her company had put Archaea on the market and already had attracted interest from potential buyers. BP acquired Houston-based Archaea Energy, the country’s largest producer of renewable natural gas (RNG), in 2022 for about $4.1 billion.

BP, whose North American headquarters is in Houston, is streamlining its portfolio. As such, O’Neill said Archaea represents a “capital intense” approach to biogas instead of the “capital light” approach BP now favors.

“If there’s somebody who sees an opportunity to create additional value, who will invest in that business, who will build on the foundation, because our team has made really good progress in improving the profitability of that business, then that will be a good outcome,” O’Neill told Wall Street analysts.

The proposed sale of Archaea is part of BP’s effort to sell about $20 billion in assets by the end of next year.

Archaea captures biogas, a natural byproduct of waste decomposition at landfills and dairy farms, and converts it into electricity or RNG. This process leads to cleaner air, less odor, and more sustainable energy than traditional fossil fuels.

Archaea was slated to be a cornerstone of BP’s plan to boost its biogas supply by roughly 600 percent to the equivalent of about 70,000 barrels of oil per day.

Bioenergy had been identified as one of bp’s five pillars of its multibillion-dollar energy transition initiative.

Another pillar: EV charging. Last month, BP agreed to sell its EV charging business in Austria to Switzerland’s Volenergy, along with 250 BP-branded stores and a fleet of business vehicles.

“By concentrating our capital on the assets and markets where BP can be most competitive and best serve customers, we are strengthening our balance sheet and creating a stronger downstream portfolio,” Richard Harding, interim executive vice president of downstream at BP, said of the Volenergy deal.

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