Things are moving into high gear for Prometheus Hyperscale, a Wyoming-based data center developer that is planning to build two huge 1.2-gigawatt data centers, one in Evanston and one in Casper.
The company has just announced that oil and gas heavy-hitter Bernard Looney will be taking over as CEO to lead the two projects, which total $30 billion, making them among the largest private investments Wyoming has ever seen.
Looney was chief executive of British oil company BP from 2020 to 2023. Although he was ousted over allegations he had improperly failed to disclose a prior romantic relationship, Looney has three decades of experience with BP handling multibillion-dollar projects for the company.
“In my career, I’ve been responsible for overseeing some of the largest energy projects in the world,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “We built a gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea all the way through Georgia, Turkey, all the way into Greece, all the way into Italy, into Europe. That was a $44 billion project.”
Looney has been involved in many other huge projects for oil and gas around the world — Papua and Indonesia, West Africa, the United States, and Trinidad.
“So I have a lot of experience in building projects,” he said. “And we’re about to build some big projects with some very big numbers of $30 billion-plus in Wyoming alone.”
With that kind of experience, Looney’s moves would be news anywhere. That he’s centering his comeback in Wyoming — far from the traditional power centers of London, New York, or Silicon Valley — is a striking twist.
Looney sees it as a natural fit.
“I want to do this because I think AI is the future,” he said. “A friend of mine said ‘AI or die.’ So AI is the future. America has a strategic objective to win the battle in the AI space, and if we want to win in AI, we’ve got to have energy.”
Wyoming, meanwhile, exports 15 times more energy than it uses, Looney pointed out.
“We want to keep some of that energy in Wyoming and see if we can do something with it,” he said. “And I can’t think of anything better than taking some of that energy and converting it into electrons and taking the electrons and converting it into intelligence. That’s what we’re going to try and do with the data centers.”
Looney’s Take On Energy Prices And Data Centers
Energy prices top the list of worries Wyomingites have about data centers.
Energy costs in Wyoming have already been spiking, with companies like Rocky Mountain Power seeking a 30% rate increase in 2023. Many consumers are worried that data centers will make an already runaway problem even worse.
Looney acknowledges the fear, but says the company plans to be largely self-sufficient when it comes to that.
“The vast majority of the power that we plan to generate in these two projects will be what they call behind-the-meter, or an island solution,” he said. “We’ll actually generate our own power.
"We will, in time, connect to the grid, but if anything, we ought to be able to help the grid, rather than put a load on it.”
Looney doesn’t believe the projects will drive up energy costs because Prometheus plans to generate most of its own power and will diversify its fuel mix.
“We’ll start off with natural gas,” he said. “Then, over time, we’ll blend in solar, we’ll blend in wind, and then we may blend in some of these small modular (nuclear) reactors over time as well.”
The company has signed a letter of intent with Sam Altman-backed Oklo Partners for a 20-year nuclear power purchase agreement.
Oklo is developing fast fission power plants that it says will provide clean, reliable, and affordable energy at scale.
It has already received a site use permit from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and is developing advanced fuel recycling technologies with both DOE and the U.S. National Laboratories.
“We want to do this in as responsible a way as possible,” Looney said. “So, it will start off with that whole gamut. And the great news is that Wyoming’s got all of the above, which is another reason why it’s a great place for us to do this.”
What About Water?
Water is a close second on the list of concerns Wyomingites have about data centers.
Looney, who is a drilling engineer by profession, said the company has designed a proprietary system to cool its AI centers, one that will leverage geothermal cooling by recycling water from aquifers far below the drinking water table.
“We will drill some wells, and we will make sure that we’re not connected to any aquifer that’s providing water to communities,” he said. “And so, we’ll essentially circulate the water from there through the plant and back on the ground. So, it’s a closed-loop circulating system.”
Prometheus founder Trenton Thornock has previously told Cowboy State Daily that the water issue is one he personally shares, growing up as he did on a fifth-generation farming operation near Evanston.
“We’re a ranching family,” he said. “We want to stay away from that.”
By cycling non-potable water from deep underground in a closed loop, the centers can shed heat without using appreciable amounts of fresh water.
Keeping Wyoming Young People Home
For Looney, a big part of his pitch to Wyoming is how the Evanston and Casper data centers can help keep Wyoming young people home.
Each center, scalable beyond the initial 1.25 or so gigawatts, could employ upward of 600 people.
That scale, Looney added, is why the job numbers that have been associated with the two projects are so high.
“Evanston, we think could go to 4 or 5 gigawatts and Casper could go to maybe 2, 2.5 gigawatts,” he said. “And these will be skilled, they should be well-paying jobs.”
Looney doesn’t believe the company will have any trouble recruiting workforce to Wyoming, if need be, but that’s not the primary aim.
It wants to build a talent pipeline that will train Wyomingites for the positions to keep more Wyoming young adults in the state.
Thornock has previously talked with Cowboy State Daily about having friends who felt forced to leave the state because they couldn’t find the right high-paying opportunities, and says it is something of a personal mission for him.
Prometheus has unveiled plans for an educational pipeline to train data center workers in Wyoming, and those investments are not only going to continue, but will likely spread to other institutions, Looney said.
“Sometime later this month there will be a day at Casper College where people will be taken through the workings of a data center and what it takes to run those,” he said. “And that’s just the beginning of us wanting to invest in education.”
Backers Include U.S. Intelligence
Prometheus’ ambitions have attracted some notable backers, including the venture capital arm that invests on behalf of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Looney confirmed that In-Q-Tel has not only taken a stake in Prometheus, but will place a representative on the company’s board.
“I think it’s just a great vote of confidence in what we’re doing,” Looney said. “Because, as you can imagine, they have all sorts of opportunities to invest their money, and they’ve chosen to invest with us.”
Such involvement also underscores how seriously policymakers and intelligence strategists are taking Prometheus Hyperscale’s Wyoming projects.
“There’s a growing confidence that we’re building a company of real scale,” Looney said. “We’re talking about a pipeline that we can see approaching 10 gigawatts and beyond.
"Across the United States, we can see incredible need for capital investment — numbers that are familiar to me from my oil and gas days, but they’re still extraordinary numbers.”
And those extraordinary numbers are something Prometheus plans in both Evanston and Casper.
“The two projects in Wyoming will cost more than $30 billion,” Looney said. “And I think Trenton and the board are gaining sufficient confidence that now is the time for the company to move to its next stage, and they felt that I could, given my experience, help them with that.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
