SpaceX has spent years trying to reinvent rockets. Now it’s coming after midstream.
The aerospace giant plans to begin construction next month on an eight-mile natural gas pipeline dubbed “Starpipe” that will feed its Starbase launch facility in South Texas, according to filings reviewed by Reuters. The pipeline is expected to be operational by January and marks the latest step in Elon Musk’s increasingly ambitious plan to control nearly every link in the Starship supply chain.
Starship burns liquid methane—a lot of it. Each launch consumes roughly 630,000 gallons, and today that fuel arrives by hundreds of tanker trucks in a logistical headache that’s fine for a dozen launches but completely incompatible with Musk’s vision of eventually launching hundreds, or even thousands, of Starships every year.
Pipelines solve that problem.
Engineering plans indicate that SpaceX also wants to build a liquefaction plant at Starbase to convert pipeline gas into liquid methane on-site. Company President Gwynne Shotwell recently confirmed SpaceX is also evaluating drilling its own natural gas in Texas, extending the company’s vertical integration strategy from rockets and satellites to the energy that powers them.
It’s a very Elon Musk move.
Why buy fuel when you can own the pipeline? Why just own the pipeline when you can own the gas field?
Whether SpaceX actually becomes an upstream natural gas producer is another question. Drilling wells is a very different business from building rockets, even if both involve spectacular explosions from time to time.
Still, the company has reportedly signed more than 100 oil and gas leases in Texas since 2023, suggesting this isn’t merely an engineering thought experiment.
The timing also highlights an unexpected intersection between two industries that rarely share headlines. As data centers, AI infrastructure, LNG exports, and now commercial spaceflight all compete for reliable energy supplies, natural gas is quietly becoming the fuel behind far more than electricity generation.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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